God's offer to us to share his blessing with others is how we find our deepest sense of personal meaning and satisfaction. Jesus said it this way: "Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and the gospel will save it" (Mark 8:35). This wasn't a call to drudgery and painful sacrifice as much as it was Jesus' way of saying, "Sir, catch a clue. If you really want to have a blast, then free up some time and money and go bring a smile to someone's face. Relieve someone's pressure. Surprise someone with a gift." Jesus mentions blessing as giving sight to the blind, captives being set free, debts being paid off, food for the hungry, friends for the lonely, meaningful employment for the discouraged and self-doubting, rest for the weary, and anything else that could be felt or touched on terra firma. The Tangible Kingdom! Blessing wasn't just nice things you said to make people forget about their problems. It was actually doing something about their problems.
p142-143, "The Tangible Kingdom: Creating Incarnational Community" (Halter & Smay; Jossey-Bass, 2008)
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October 18, 2009
Op-Ed Guest Columnist
Rebranding America
By BONO
A FEW years ago, I accepted a Golden Globe award by barking out an expletive.
One imagines President Obama did the same when he heard about his Nobel, and not out of excitement.
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: September 28, 2009
Centuries ago, historians came up with a classic theory to explain the rise and decline of nations. The theory was that great nations start out tough-minded and energetic. Toughness and energy lead to wealth and power. Wealth and power lead to affluence and luxury. Affluence and luxury lead to decadence, corruption and decline.
Read the rest .
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has collected several dozen buckets of data — from the size of the yoga industry to spending on the Iraq War to the Chinese defense budget — and given us a sense of their relative weight.
I thought was worth sharing.
The institutions—both those already so stripped and those being stripped—are finding, in the loss of discussion and differences of opinion and experience, a uniformity that, like uniformity everywhere, is stultifying.
Sometime last year I met my friend's wife for the first time and she asked where we lived. Her second question was, "What do you do in La Jolla?" I proceeded to tell her that I didn't actually work in La Jolla, but that I was a teacher in a neighboring community. As I was rambling on about my profession I got the the feeling that I had completely missed the question. She was attentive and alert and warm as I spoke, but I couldn't help feeling that I wasn't answering her question.
I wasn't.
She asked what I did in La Jolla. What did I do in La Jolla? The question was honest and simple enough. Why was it so hard to answer?
As usual, we spent Sunday morning at La Jolla Shores having breakfast with our friends. We were blessed this morning to catch up with some we hadn't seen in about a month. They were excited to see us and have their friends there with them.
This is church for us. Friends, food, fellowship, prayer.
After sharing a meal together and talking about how we are doing and seeing what needs we can pray for and try to meet we all circled on the grass to pray together before leaving. A couple of us prayed, and one friend in particular asked if he could pray at the end. Part of his prayer went something like this,
"God, we don't deserve your love and kindness. But if you can, we'd really love to be in heaven with you someday. Do you think you could just let us come and sit in the back row?"
The back row. I think heaven is going to be full of people like this. Surprised to be there. Expecting to be sitting in the back row, only to discover special VIP seating reserved especially for them, the least of these.