Time is flying

Wow, I can't believe it's almost June again. I feel like life has been a huge blur this past year and half or so. I guess I should get used to it. Our church is gearing up to go to Mexico through the organization Back2Back ministries. We'll be heading out the last week in June. We'll be in Monterrey Mexico working with children's homes by doing service projects and spending quality time with the kids. One of the interesting facts I recently learned about Mexico was that there is no public assistance, and as a result, struggling single mothers end up abandoning their children to a children's home out of necessity. Also, most of these kids cannot be adopted. This is the churches fist time to go on a mission trip like this so we're all pretty excited. I'm excited because we have a good intergenerational group going. It's a good mix of Sr. High, College/young adult, and older adults.

On the summer front, this summer will be filled with VBS, events for youth here at the church, a couple weddings ( one being my sister), and some vacation time to see our parents. Then around August the little one will be on his/her way...!....ok that was a joke..just wanted to see if anybody read that far.

Recently I've been going back and reading parts of some of my favorite books. One of them by Brennen Manning is called The Ragamuffin Gospel. It's main theme is GRACE. Isn't that just a beautiful word? Here's a great quote from it that pretty much speaks for itself.

"Yet God gives us his grace willingly, no matter what we've done. We come to Him as ragamuffins, dirty, bedraggled, & beat up. And when we sit at his feet, He smiles upon us, the chosen objects of His furious love".

I just love that quote. I used to be in this funk back in the day. Trying real hard to keep my regimented schedule of devotions, prayer, and when I missed a day, I'd think back on what I did or didn't do and feel like lesser of a person if I was more on the "didn't do" end. It's easy for us to see God as a score keeper tallying our success & failures. That can get dangerous because it turns to what "we" do instead of God. The idea that personal discipline will mold a perfect us is wrong. Although personal discipline is good, and we have to make time to be with the Lord everyday, it still won't mold a perfect us. We'll get on these great patterns, and then we can fail and think we can pull ourselves up again, and when we can't it's easy to feel inadequate. I would get into these "highs and lows" over and over again. It was leading to a joyless Christianity for me.

I still remember part of a talk that one of my youth pastors in high school (Kent) gave back in the day. It was 6 or 7 yrs ago, so i don't remember much but one thing that he said that has stuck with me ever since is "When we try and try and try we can deny the gospel of grace".
It was at that point I remember thinking that I needed to stop denying this grace.

After all...none of us have done ANYTHING to deserve it. What a great God we serve huh? A God who in knowing our sin...still delights in us..that's pretty awesome. Let us all continue to take time and get to know the heart of God.