Hugs

Although summer school starts tomorrow, I still have much joy in my heart.
At church tonight (yes, i do go to church at night) we dug deeper into Mark. There was much that we learnt about, but I will share the two things that REALLY stuck out for me.

1)I don't know if this will be a comfort or something to make you uneasy, but Sebastian (my pastor) said this in passing: "Christ is hugging you while you are sinning". Now first off, that made me want to burst into tears, because sin, by definition is a conscious choice of seperating yourself from God. While I am in the process of seperating myself, Christ is there...loving me. Blows my mind away. I like this image (as much as it hurts) because I think the world often sees God as this big nebulous sky fairy, or something, holding a lightning bolt readt to strike you down. God's all about love. It is essentially also a haunting image, in the fact that we keep sinning. It brought me to tears this evening. The fact that Christ continues to love me. Even IN my sin...

2)Being the SALT of the earth. Now being a PK I have heard this all my life. But I found some new insight this evening. If you are around "salt-less" people, then when you are wounded by your sinful nature, you won't feel that sting that consequentially comes from contact with salt. Withought the pain, your wound could go untreated...unnoticed. Think about that. The image of decay and zombies flood my mind, but in essence, that's what's happening spiritually. I pray that I would have the SALT in me, to feel the pain of my sin, so that I can receive His healing and be made whole again.

I must say - I love my church. I've only been there a few months now, but I love the realness of it. It's so blunt. Non-pious. I love how in the sermon tonight we talked about how much we need to embrace other churches and celebrate our diversity and not fight but love one another. It's not about numbers. It's not about "looking like we're successful". It's about the heart. Amen.

PS - Thanks for all who came out to my b-day bash last night. Oh yeah, Nathan - I won at MAFIA!!! Who knew?