The Pack
Having four dogs is not for the weak. They are demanding, and they shed, and they can be big pains in the you know what.
We hosted our small group on Friday night, and after everyone left Aaron said, “Well, I think we’re gonna get left out of the rotation next time.” The dogs were fine — but they’re dogs. It was really hard not to laugh when during serious discussions (and praying!) Eller is laying in the middle of the floor gnawing on a bone like it’s the last bone on Earth. And Julie is sitting on someone’s feet breathing her loud, annoying Bulldog breathing. They’re a little… distracting.
But all that said, I wouldn’t change it. They’re our little family, and though we will never again have this many animals, we love ‘em.
Repeat
On Twitter, when you repost someone else’s tweet or your own, it’s called a retweet. I’m not sure what it’s called when you repost your own words. Reblog?
Anyway. I wrote the below in January 2007, just after Passion ‘07. It’s on my heart again today:
And here I am at 30 with my full-time job and my mortgage payments and my consumer debt, and though God has shaped my heart to love mercy, to want to do justice, I am covered in middle class America, and I am a slave to my lenders.
But yet, I still dream of dirt roads in India. I dream of standing by a well and placing my hand on the arm of someone who was born believing they were literally Untouchable, and telling them that their Creator has invited them to drink from a LIVING well. That they are loved by the God of the sky, the God of the ocean, the God of the heavens. When I sleep, I smell curry. I hear the strings of the sitar. And I see the gorgeous, brown-eyed faces of the three children my family has adopted as our own.
My cousin Matt will venture to India this Spring to pick up their fourth child from a Delhi orphanage, where she has spent the first four years of her life, speaking only Hindi, cared for by petite Indian woman. And soon her father will come and get her – this man who looks nothing like her and speaks a language she can’t understand. But he is her daddy and his love for her will cause him to fly to her country so that he may bring her home.
He is our Daddy and His love for us caused Him to nail His only son to a cross for sins we haven’t even committed yet! Just to bring us home. That is the message for the world, for all the nations, for all the people. And in His great grace and glory He may allow me – me! – to share it.
In Writing
2006 was an exciting year to be a part of Buckhead Church. It was a big year for me personally — I went to Romania and I got baptized — but it was also the year the church broke ground on the new building, and we were all excited to have a real move date ahead of us.
That fall they opened up the building for hard hat tours. At the time it was just cement columns and metal beams. A roof and construction fencing. As my friends and I walked into what was to be the 3,000+ auditorium, we had to close our eyes to imagine what it would ultimately look like.
The big push for the new building was to create “empty chairs.” We had run out of room in the grocery store, and were in need of empty chairs. Those empty chairs=people who needed to hear the story of God’s grace and merciful love. So that day, on the hard hard tour, Jeff Henderson asked us all to think about who we wanted to see in those empty chairs. Our siblings? Coworkers? Friends? He challenged us to pray for those people, and as a physical symbol, to write their names on the cement columns that would soon be hidden behind dry wall and paint and lights and a sound system.
And so I did.
And on Sunday — though it is almost three years later and I am now 1,500 miles away — I got a text message from one of those names that simply said, “Thank you for writing my name on that wall. I love you.”
And every time I think about it, I cry. God, You are so good. And I will praise You for eternity.
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Compassion
