I'm heading out east in a few days and I'll get to see most of my family when I'm out there, and that's always a good thing.  They say you can choose your friends but you can't choose your relatives...or was that you can fool some of the people some of the...I was never very good at old sayings.  But I like my family as well as loving them, and I'm not talking just about Mom, Dad and siblings at points east.

I've got all these wonderful theological ways of describing why we do what we do as church, as Oasis, but the one thing it boils down to for me is that we're family. Our relationships with each other are really the thing that makes this baby run, and we saw it so clearly at our gathering this past Sunday.

For those of you who weren't there, every so often we like to just kick back (which for us is kind of like telling a man in a hammock that he should swing a little more--we're already pretty laid back!) and put aside the agenda and let anyone who wants to talk about what God is doing in their lives. It took a little while to get there, but in one amazing moment, god took us deep into the hearts of each other, and we ended up gathering around three families dealing with difficult things and praying for them as their...family. Love, care, concern, compassion...family.



Now just to make sure you understand, we think we have family with a purpose, that we live together as family in order to accomplish the mission of God. (Will I ever be able to not hear Dan Ackroyd when I say those words??) We are part of God's larger story, we are joining with him is his rescue of the world, we want to love those around us, those in our personal communities, with the love of Jesus.  But in order to do that, we need a place of support and encouragement; a place where we can find healing and compassion; a place to celebrate and commiserate; we need...family.  People who love us no matter what. People who are partnered with us in this greater purpose. People who will watch out for me, challenge me and cry with me. People who will remind me of why I'm here and of the God who loves me. 


When you're family and not an organization, you put up with a lot more from each other.  You overlook a lot.  You're much more accepting.  We may have chosen to be part of Oasis, but it's God who has made us family, and you can't fire your relatives. 


Thanks John, Michelle, Susan, et al who helped us get below the surface on Sunday, and experience the connection that God wants for us as his church...his family.

I see it's been a while since my last post, but I did promise up front not to do this just to do it, that I'd wait till I had something to actually say.  And I'd prefer to just put this one off even longer.  It's a whole heck of a lot easier to tell YOU what you should be doing differently than it is to have to deal with anything concerning myself. Hey, I'm a pastor, I'm perfect! (let me say it for you...yeah, right!)

I have been married for 30 years now, and you would think that after 30 you'd have learned just about everything there is to be learned, you'd have perfected just about everything about the marriage gig. And Ann really is pretty close, but I'm probably just a slow learner.  Here's what I'm finally coming to understand after 30.

Jesus has a couple of things to say about following him that if we're honest, we really would rather just gloss over and get to the good stuff about peace and joy and no worry. He says, "Greater love has no man than this--that a man lay down his life for his friends." (He then goes on to astonishingly call us friends which is a topic for another day.) And he says "If anyone would be my disciple, [and I really don't like this one] let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me." And then John picks up on this and drives it home in his first letter: "This is how we know what love is, that Jesus laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren." Or for our wives.

Now this doesn't just have to do with marriage, in fact doesn't really have marriage in mind here, but I can't get past the idea that marriage is included in being a disciple of Jesus, that Ann is one of the brethren I should be laying down my life for.  Which doesn't sound right, but you get my meaning here, I hope. Following Jesus is about denying ourselves, about laying down our lives for each other, about sacrificing our own wants and rights in order to love like Jesus loved. 

Denying myself. You don't hear a lot about that kind of thinking in our culture. Fulfilling myself sure. Looking out for number one absolutely. Becoming self actualized...did you hear about the man who went into the bookstore and asked the salesgirl where the self help section was and she said, "Well, if I told you that would kind of defeat the purpose wouldn't it?" No?  Well, I'm just stalling anyway.  We rarely live in such a way that we are more concerned with denying ourselves than we are with focusing on ourselves.  Without going into too many specifics, I have spent 30 years in pursuit of my rights, my wants. Not totally, I'm not a complete slouch on this discipleship thing. But in some pretty important areas I have been more selfish than sacrificing.

And now, probably not for the first time, but maybe for the first time that I'm willing to consider this possibility, I'm being called to deny myself, to lay down my life, and to sacrifice. And I don't like it, because it is sacrifice, and as sacrifice implies, it requires giving up something.  It requires a choice to love someone else more than I love myself, or love what I consider to be my rights.  For me at this moment in my life, that has to do with my relationship with the woman I have loved for more than 30 years. But there are so many other relationships, so many other ways this needs to be applied.  Your kids. Our church family. Our co-workers. Wherever and whoever. the way of the cross is through the path of denying ourselves.

I'll be sure to let you know how this all works out. Next time I'm writing about you.

So it all came to an end last night, 6 years of fantastic story that centered on an island that, well, we still don't have any idea of what it really was. Bu there was a smoke monster that, well, we really don't have any idea of what he was either.  Of course, the Others, who, um, we still don't know who they were. At least all the major questions were answered...no, not even that!  But you know what< I find myself oddly satisfied in the show's finale, and if I haven't had all my questions answered, I still have had an awfully good time with this story and its characters.  I admit it, I'm a Lostie.

So before we get too far away from the aura of the last 2 1/2 hours, I wanted to get some of my thoughts and feelings out before I forget them.  I went back this morning and watched the end again so i could hear everything that was said and I think I've got a pretty good handle on what went down...no really, I do!  I'll get to that in a minute.  I think I cried more the second time watching it then the first.  That's just the way I am!

Now we need to be careful drawing too much philosophically or theologically out of the show.  Did you see that church at the end had symbols for all the world's major religions? So it wasn't going to give us a purely Christian worldview, and didn't, but there were some very interesting pictures of redemption (do you ever think you'd actually like Ben by the end?), spiritual warfare (Jacob vs his unnamed brother, the MIB), and just the existence of a spiritual realm. But there was one picture that I really thought was cool.

We've been talking at Oasis about John 3:16 lately and this week we're going to deal with the "...will not perish but have eternal life" part of it, and I think the writers gave us a terrific glimpse of what that might be like for us (if, that is, you can set aside whatever that sideways flash universe was exactly supposed to be.) Several times throughout the finale we saw characters 'awaken' to their past life on the island with each other.  In each instance it was a time of reconciliation, or joy, of reconnection with people whom they loved.  Each time I smiled, cried and cheered. We liked it so much that we were urging the ones who hadn't yet reconnected (like Jack) to hurry up and get there! I think there's going to be a lot of that kind of relational joy in eternity for us as followers of Jesus.  Ann always says that relationships are eternal, they're the thing that will last, that we can take with us into eternity. Paul would seem to agree when he says "Now these three remain [or are eternal]: faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is love." We look forward to a day where everything that has ever led to brokenness or separation in our relationships will be gone.  Where we will be perfectly reconciled.  I don't know if there will be a meeting like the LOST people had in the church, but I do believe we will love and be loved there.  Reunited. In relationship. Filled with joy and love for each other.  I thought they pictured that really well last night.  I caught myself smiling along with them, wanting that kind of connection.

Yes, I cried, I'm man enough to admit it.

I think that's the biggest thing I'm taking out of the show. So you want to know my take on what went down?  If you go back to the end and listen to Christian, he says that Jack is dead.  He says there is no 'now, no time, where they are, and that some have arrived before him and others many years after.  And he says that the place, the sideways flashes of life, was a place they corporately created where they would all meet up at the right time.  So everything on the island happened in reality (they did not die in the plane crash!) and possibly the man in black had to be defeated in order for them to be able to get to that ending.  When they were all finally dead (Kate, Sawyer and Claire leave to live for possibly many years, as does Hurley. Maybe Ben hasn't died yet.) then they all arrive in the sideways time in order to be reconnected and "move on." 

And that's the way it happened...or not!

So I can't shake this lurking feeling that I'm in trouble.  I've been taking a look at the phrases from John 3:16 on Sunday mornings and this past week was on "God's Whoever Policy" (any resemblance to Max Lucado's book John 3:16, The Words of Hope is purely...well, it's because I'm blatantly stealing him blind.) and I ran across this story in Philip Yancey's book What's So Amazing About Grace (I am an equal opportunity plagarist--hey, all creativity and no plagiarism makes for dull preaching--I stole that from Charles Spurgeon!) that I thought really illustrated the point well. The gist of it was "We're all bastards, but God loves us anyway." No one has said anything, and I hope I didn't offend anyone, but aside from being able to say the word 'bastard' at church on Sunday morning, I really like the truth communicated by that phrase.  (It was almost as much fun as my Christmas message a couple of years back called, "The Day God Opened a Can of Whoopass."  I hope my Mom isn't reading this.)

I've got a friend right now who needs to know that we're all bastards but God loves us anyway.  He's having an awful time with an addiction, and feels pretty worthless and ashamed. I'm pretty certain he doesn't see anyway that God would love him right now, how could He when he keeps failing like this? I want him to know that what Yancey says about grace is true: as a child of God there's nothing you can do to make God love you any more than he already does, and there's nothing you can do to make him love you any less.  His love and acceptance of us is not based on who we are or what we do, even though we're bastards. It's while we're still sinners that Christ dies for us. We struggle like Paul: The things I want to do are the things I can't do, and the things I don't want to do are the very things I find myself doing! Who will deliver me from this body of death? The answer? God has, through the work of Jesus.  Start with God's love and don't give up hope.

We don't like the word bastard, it's kind of ugly. but more than just being crude, I probably find it offensive more because I don't think I spiritually am one!  Truth be told, I probably think that I deserved to have Jesus die for me, that I was a pretty good candidate for salvation.  I'm no bastard! He says indignantly!  But the minute I think that, the minute that I look at someone else as worse of a sinner, that I'm not as bad as them, I make it about something other than grace. Some have got to get to the point that they believe God loves them in spite of what they do or have done.  I probably have to get to the point where I believe I was bad enough for Jesus to die for.  To be overwhelmed by his grace.

Isn't that what we all need?  My friend needs to be overwhelmed by God's love and grace.  So do each of us. Because if we start there, with the truth that God loves us, and don't allow anything to chisel that away, then I can face anything with confidence.  Even being a bastard.  Had to say it one more time! I'm such a rebel.

If you were at Oasis yesterday, you heard me tell this story so you could probably stop reading now if you wanted to...but who knows, maybe there's something else really surprising in here that you didn't hear yesterday, you never know.

I just got back from a trip to Florida. People tell me I'm really tan now, although, truth be told, it's just a farmer's tan. No one needs to see me with my shirt off.  But I went down there for two reasons: a church planter's conference in Orlando for the first week and then some much needed alone time with Ann over on the east coast.  Those were the reasons I went, God had some others reasons for me to be there...as always.

There were 2000 or so church planters at the conference, lots of major speakers. It always jazzes me to be with guys like that who share a common heart for reaching lost people for Jesus. The final speaker was a guy by the name of Francis Chan, pastor of a church in the Simi Valley of California that he planted there and is now enormous...not that that makes him any more or less important than anyone else.  But he was talking about how he resigned from his church just that past Sunday, headed for service in the inner city of LA, and that his heart was just to hear from God "I am well pleased with you. Well done." Well, that just resonates with me, because that's what I have always desired from God, t hear him say "I am well pleased with you."  And not later when I die, I've wanted to hear that now, mostly because I'm never sure whether he's really pleased with me or not (I'm not sure where that insecurity comes from, but boy is it ever strong.) So when Ann showed up after the conference on Thursday I was telling her about Chan's message and she knows how I've longed to hear that, I was like "you'll never guess what Francis Chan talked about," and she was like, "Wow, pretty relevant to you, huh?" and I was like....well, you get the  picture.  So he dredged all this stuff up in me again.

Well, we went from there to Sarasota to spend a couple of days with friends down there, and then headed over to the east coast to a condo there right on the inter-coastal waterway, just several miles from the beach...you know how I feel about the beach. So Sunday evening we head over to the beach to walk, it's close to sunset, and all of the parks that you can access the beach from say that they lock their gates at sunset, all except Ambersand Park which has a gate but no sign saying that it closed then.  So I pulled in, we walked for a while down the beach, came back just as it was getting dark...and our car was locked in the park. Big chain and padlock on the gate.  And we're miles away from where we're staying.  Long story short (too late) the people who lived next door pulled up as we were trying to determine what to do and invited us in so we could try to get someone to unlock the gate.  While we're talking Ann mentions to Tuck and Cathy that I'm a pastor (she doesn't ant them to think we're casing the joint so we can come back and rob them, but I'm pretty sure some people would rather have thieves than a pastor sitting in their living room!) and he's thrilled, gets his Bible out and asks us about our church.  So I'm telling him all about how wonderful you all are and what  good thing God has going here and instead of saying any number of things that he could have said (That sounds nice...isn't that cool....you must be lying...) Tuck says this: "Oh, God is pleased with you." 

Those very words.

And I looked at Ann and said, "Did you hear what he said?" 

A couple of days later I'm reflecting on this encounter and ask Ann what it is about me that makes it so hard to accept that that was from God and not just a coincidence.  Why do I have such a hard time believing God loves me or is pleased with me? We go to lunch, and just to put the exclamation point on it all, Tuck and Cathy are at the same restaurant we go to. So I relate all of this story to them and Cathy says "Listen, that's prophetic.  Tuck is a prophet, that's from God for you."  (She also graciously pays for our lunch, that's the kind of people these two are.)

Well, needless to say I've been chewing on that a lot now.  I'm amazed at how God orchestrates these things.  I've got more to share about some of the things I heard at the conference, but this was the coolest thing from the time away. 

I have to confess that it's a little scary trying to deal with a serious topic in a limited space (and you know me, it's hard for me to be serious at all!) But these two stories kind of juxtaposed (I don't even know if I'm using that word right) themselves in my thinking over the last 24 hours, and I think I need to say something about them. 

One of my friends on facebook posted the story yesterday about Jennifer Knapp, Christian rock singer, who has just revealed that she is in a same sex relationship.  She realizes there will be repercussions among her fans, but needs to be honest with who she is.  Then in today's Arizona Republic is the story about this months gay pride festival, the 30th anniversary of the event here in Phoenix.  And as I sit here and think about what my response as a Jesus follower should be, I wonder if you're having the same internal struggle between what my old nature pushes me toward and what I believe about Jesus and the grace of God. 

Now I don't know Jennifer Knapp, but I do know that she's expecting the Christians around her to respond with moral outrage and to quote what she calls the "clobber verses" about homosexual behavior in the Bible...I guess that's how we're perceived as using those verses, to clobber people with.  And I have to confess to some clobber mentality in my mind. 

But thankfully there's also another thought that comes alongside that, and it's only there I'm sure because of God transforming my heart to be like his (and I'm still a long way from the full reality of that).  That thought has to do with mercy and grace.  Mercy is not getting what we do deserve and grace is getting what we don't deserve. That's what God has done for us in Jesus, and I think it's probably the way he'd like us to respond to those in our world as well. 

We've been looking lately at the Ten Commandments at Oasis and have said that God gave us these as fences to keep us from behavior and choices that would lead to brokenness and pain in our lives, while pointing to how we were made in his image.  Adultery. lying. stealing, murder...homosexuality...all of these lead to emotional and relational destruction.

But far from making me homophobic, that realization should lead me to be homo-compassionate, like it should adulterer-compassionate, or cheater-compassionate.  For one, when it comes to God's love and acceptance, I am simply one beggar among everyone, all of us on the same level, none of us deserving more consideration than another.  I am no different than the gay person--same problem (wanting to run my own life), different expressions. God's acceptance is not of works, that's what keeps us from judging others for their mistakes.  And secondly, as a child of God, wanting to see people as Jesus sees them, shouldn't our Jesus follower response be sadness for the person who has been deceived by the enemy, no matter what his or her failings are, and compassion, caring, love and acceptance for them.  

We say this all the time around here--Jesus was known as a friend of sinners. He wasn't very discriminating about who he hung around with--cheaters, prostitutes, betrayers, and I'm sure there must have been some gay people too.  And he hung around with them because he loved them and was saddened by the effects of sin on their lives.  Our lives. That's why it says he came to bring freedom to the captives, release to the prisoners, sight to the blind, healing to the brokenhearted.  Like Max Lucado says, he loves us just the way we are, but too much to leave us that way. 

I'm not sure how coherent all of that is, there's so much I want to squeeze into this short space.  When we've gone through difficult things in our past, so many of you responded so gracefully, saying "hey, we're no different, there but for the grace of God go us!" That's seeing people with grace-healed eyes.  Those are the kinds of eyes I'd like to have.

I walked in on a telephone conversation Annie was having with a friend yesterday and "accidentally" for the next five minutes...okay, I was blatantly eavesdropping but only because I was so intrigued by what she was saying.  I didn't know who the conversation was with (okay, "with whom she was having a conversation"--I can do good grammar if I want to!)  and thought it might be a little rude to ask her to put it on speaker phone, so I basically found a few things I "had" to do in her proximity.  I don't care who you are, that's just good parenting right there!

From her end of the conversation, she was telling the person on the other end that it didn't matter what he/she had done, we all make mistakes, she wasn't going to judge her/him because of his/her behavior, that she loved her/him and she would always love her/him.  And as I listened in I was struck by how beautifully I had just witnessed someone express the grace and acceptance of God. 

It's so much easier to stand in judgment of people for what they do and how they act.  Instead of loving them, instead of being friends of sinners, instead of recognizing that the playing field before God is a level one, we're all beggars telling other beggars where to find bread.  Easier than expressing grace, mercy, love, acceptance for the hims/hers of our lives.  The kind of love, grace, mercy acceptance Jesus shows to we/us/you/hims/hers/thems.

I'd like to say that Annie caught it from me, but just recently, in another situation with one of my kids, saw an uglier side of my character as I was less than accepting of some they/thems he/she was hanging out with.  This being friends of sinners seems easy in theory, but it's much harder in practice.

So I want to thank my kids for reminding me of God's grace, of how we need to be "arms open" people when it comes to the hims/hers/they/thems/youns (for all you western PA people out there)/us's of the world...the whoevers. 

A little bit different of a post, sometimes my nerdish alter ego pokes it's head out (sometimes?) and I give into it like Jekyll does to Hyde...

Has it ever bothered you that Jesus tells his disciples that he is going to be crucified (that's not the part that bothers me) and that he will rise from the dead (that doesn't bother me either, I like that!) but that it will be three days between the two? And at one point He specifically says three days and three nights in the old earth. Now we typically think of Jesus being crucified on Good Friday (which was convenient) and walking out of the tomb Sunday morning.  Now I know there are really good theologians and Bible scholars who say that in the counting methods of the day that could equal three days and three nights...I don't know, must have been base 2 or something (that was for you, Scott Adamson!) There's for sure only two nights there, no matter how many days. I've always been bothered by that.  And I'll bet it's never crossed your mind!  Well, if you're interested at all, I think there's a lot of evidence that Jesus was actually crucified on Wednesday, but whoever heard of Good Wednesday?  Here's where I get that from:

Keep this in the back of your head: Jewish calendar days run from sunset to sunset (which means that famous song from Fiddler should have been Sunset, Sunrise. I'm just saying!).

The reason that Friday is thought to be the day of crucifixion is that the Bible is clear that the next day was a Sabbath day. Mark 15:42-43 says "It was Preparation Day (that is, the day before the Sabbath). Since a normal Sabbath would begin sundown Friday and end at sundown Saturday, Jesus must have been crucified on Friday afternoon. Seems pretty clear cut, right?

Ah, but what if it wasn't a normal Sabbath? What if it were an abnormal...er, a different kind of Sabbath? Read John 19:31 "Now it was the day of Preparation, and the next day was to be a special Sabbath. Because the Jews did not want the bodies left on the crosses during the Sabbath, they asked Pilate to have the legs broken and the bodies taken down. Interesting, huh? A special Sabbath, John says. Come on, you have to admit that's a little intriguing!

You see, the Old Testament talks about more than just one kind of Sabbath, days where there would be no work done, that were set aside to be holy to the Lord. For instance, Leviticus 23 when talking about the Day of Atonement, it says, "You shall do no work at all. This is to be a lasting ordinance for the generations to come, wherever you live. It is a sabbath of rest for you, and you must deny yourselves. From the evening of the ninth day of the month until the following evening you are to observe your sabbath." Other feast days designated this same way in Lev 23—Passover, (14th day of first month); Unleavened Bread (15th day of the first month).  

Now, we also know that the day following Jesus crucifixion was the Passover, John 19:14--14It was the day of Preparation of Passover Week, about the sixth hour.  "Here is your king," Pilate said to the Jews.

So what if the Sabbath that begins at sunset of the day Jesus is crucified is not the regular Sabbath, but is instead the Passover Sabbath. Jesus would actually then have been crucified on Wednesday, and put in the tomb before sundown of that day. The next day was the Passover Sabbath, the day following that would have been the Feast of Unleavened Bread Sabbath, and then the following day the normal weekly Sabbath, which would have ended at sundown on Saturday night.  The women come to the tomb at first light on Sunday morning and find the tomb empty.  Jesus would then have been in the tomb Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights, potentially rising Saturday evening, and the empty tomb discovered by the women Sunday morning, the first chance they had to come and do the work of preparing the body, because they couldn't do it on a Sabbath of any kind.

In addition, your Honor, I would submit to you Matthew 28:1--1After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb. The word Matthew uses for the Sabbath here is actually in the plural, after "the Sabbaths." The Passover Sabbath, the Unleavened Bread Sabbath and the regular Sabbath. Your Honor, I rest my case!

I don't know if that really matters, you probably weren't as irritated by this I was, and I've probably confused you sufficiently that you stopped reading paragraphs ago.  But it is good to know that when Jesus says three days and three nights, it actually could have been that way.  Here's hoping you have a great Easter week, and don't forget to celebrate Good Wednesday!

 

 

That got your attention, didn't it?  I got invited to go to a spring training game at Tempe Diablo stadium yesterday and somewhere around the fifth inning, these three girls sat down behind us.  I didn't pay much attention till two of them headed down to the row in front of us and pretty aggressively approached two college age guys sitting there drinking beer. I thought maybe they were underage and wanted the guys to buy them a drink, but about 10 minutes later they came back up to the other girl.  Then they started talking about their lives. Strippers..well, dancers they said. At the ball park advertising. What they made. Jobs they'd been fired from. Boyfriends who didn't know what they did. Pregnancy. Abortion. 

I wish this story had a happy ending--like I turned around and told them how much God loved them and gave them hope and they were rescued.  But I didn't, they didn't, and it doesn't.  The more I've thought about it, the sadder their stories get.  How much they must hurt behind the facade. How hopeless their lives must feel. How much they just want to be loved...really loved.

I guess you don't have to be a stripper to want that.  I see people every day who I know a lot better than those girls who want the same thing--to be loved for who we are, not for what someone can get from us.  God loves us like that.  We're to love others like that.  When we do, everyone will know that we're followers of Jesus.  When we do.

I've probably told you this story before but now that I'm, er, slightly older than 40, I'm allowed to tell the same ones over and over and you should just nod like you would at your crazy uncle when he tells you about the first car he ever owned for the hundredth time.

Back in Indiana, our church was close to two other Brethren churches, so every so often, like once a year, we'd swap pastors for a Sunday...no I'll just leave it at that...and I ended up in Muncie, Indiana (where Close Encounters of the Third kind is set BTW) on a Sunday where I wasn't really feeling that well--high temp, kind of rung out. My message was from Proverbs about the importance of the Bible, and I was nearly done when a lady in the group raised her hand. That hadn't happened to me a lot at that point (we're a little more interactive now), and I thought, well, ok, what is it? She said, "I just wanted to say that i really don't agree with what you said earlier."  Yikes!  So, against my better judgment, I waded into that, and asked her what she didn't agree with, and she said, "You said that if your wife doesn't agree with you that you should get rid of your wife, and I just don't think that's right!" Double Yikes.

Now, remember, I wasn't feeling too well, so I immediately thought, Am I so delirious that I said something like that?  I really was at a loss, so I assured her that if I did say that I didn't mean it, and then just tried to finish before I blundered into some other small, minor heresy. 

I was shaking hands at the back afterwards (this was one of those pretty traditional kinds of churches), and trying to avoid all the wives while all the husbands were slapping me on the back and offering to buy me a drink...ok, that part's not true...when a teenage girl came up to me and said, "I know what you said."  First I was astounded that a teenager was actually listening to me (as I still am!). She said, "You didn't say that if your wife disagrees with you that you should change your wife, you said that if your LIFE disagrees with the Word of God, you don't change the word, you change your LIFE." (It's actually pretty good that the lady asked her question, imagine if she'd gone through life thinking that was what I'd said.  We cleared that up.)  What a relief! 

The reason that story came to mind was this whole ten commandment thing we're looking at and how God is describing for us what life should be like, how he created us.  What I find is that I am really good at rationalizing my behavior against what the commands say. I don't want to change my life, I want to change the scope or meaning of the Word.  Instead, we should be wanting to bring our lives in line with what God has established for us.  Philip Yancey, in "What's So Amazing About Grace" tells the story about a man walking into the dressing room of the actor W.C. Fields and finding him reading the Bible. Fields was embarrassed that he'd been caught and muttered, "Just looking for loopholes."  I guess if God's heart for us was to be mean and stern and take away enjoyable and pleasurable activities, then we might want to find a loophole. But if he really does love us, and he really wants us to be safe and whole and healthy, then maybe our loopholes are really still just deception.

And I just got to say it's a good thing Ann hasn't disagreed with me all these years!