"Oh, Lord, prepare me to be a sanctuary, pure and holy, tried and true."

[hermionesviolin]

I was wandering blogrolls yesterday, and I really liked this post, which is worth reading in full but I'll post an excerpt:

In Luke 10, Jesus sends out 70 disciples into the surrounding community. I have been thinking about this story a lot, and will be preaching on it tonight. Here's where I am right now:

I think we can learn a few things about being disciples today from these 70 disciples of long ago.

First - their message wasn't "Jesus died for you," because Jesus hadn't died yet. There message was "Peace be with you" and "God is here." Maybe we shouldn't minimize the Gospel to "Jesus died for you so now what are you going to do for him" as much as just offer people peace and point out that God is all around us.

---

Later, I read this post (and I was reading top-down, so I had already read this one about stones [Joshua 4:1-7]).

It opens:

It took me four years to get through seminary. I've been here at Hope four years, and I've learned more here than I learned in my time in school.

For instance, I know:
that the live load capacity of the flat part of the Hope roof was designed for 50 pounds/square/foot, with a dead weight allowance of 10 psf.

My eyes starting prickling around the time I got to:

I know which hospital most of you go to.

but then I got to:

I know how to design worship for Jews, Christians, Muslims, Quakers, Lutherans, and the rest of us, and how to plan an event for liberal and conservative Christians together.

and was like, "Yeah, okay, whatever" (even though the actual text of that I'm like, Yes! Really?). But I kept reading, and:

I have learned that when you take a roof that has a live load capacity of 50 psf and a dead weight limit of 10 psf but the insulation is wet, adding 5 psf, and when the previous roof was installed the former roof wasn't removed so the dead weight the roof is carrying is actually 24 psf, and it is March and you have 40 psf of wet snow on the roof, you have a problem –
and when you have just cut the budget by 20%, and taken out a $100,000 mortgage for the new elevator, and the roofer tells you it will cost $200,000 to fix the wet, rotting and overloaded roof, and the Fire Marshall tells you to put in an addressable alarm system or else and that system costs $26,000 –
I know that if the people have hope, they will find a way through it, and when they are finding that way through and things are going fine sometimes a check will fall out of an envelope from someone who hasn't been here in 40 years that will make it all that much easier.

and somewhere in there I started crying and actually had to move away from the page for a bit 'cause I was at work.

Comments

Luke 10

[onwingsofeagles.livejournal.com]

I LOVE that! See, now if all Christians thought like that, my life would be more comfortable. Hmmm, but life isn't about being comfortable (at least if mine is an example). Still.
The Boy said the other day, when I said he was making it hard for me to work by getting the Red Sox (on the computer) -- "well, I think it's been made pretty clear that it is so not about you." (paraphrase) I had to laugh.
I just finished preparing a list of words for an Index for The Book That Ate My life -- in 4 hours. Does that count as amazing?
Catching up on your LJ, I feel like if I had time to have a life, I could really just participate in your cyberlife and probably that would fill up any free time I'm likely to have for some time to come.
:)