A friend of mine sent me this email entitled: “My coworker overheard this convo today. Thought you being Mr. Burundi would enjoy.”

GIRL 1: He said he was from Africa, but he’s white. Are there different kinds of Africans?
GIRL 2: Yeah, the white ones are South African.
GIRL 3: Is South Africa its own country, or is it, like, just a part of Africa?
G2: It’s own country. I think.
… G1: Where is it? Is it in South America, next to Chile?
G2: Ah, no. It’s in Africa.
G1: Oh, I just thought, y’know, South America, South Africa. Seems to go together.
G2: No, no, it’s in Africa. South Africa is in Africa.
G3: But where is it in Africa?
G2: In the south. Like (*she points downwards) towards the bottom of Africa.
G1: I just thought Africa was one big country.
G2: It pretty much is. It’s just Africa and South Africa, basically.
G1: Like America and South America!

Wow.

we have a wrong view of heaven that we will be, as my professor says, “transported into a disembodied existence of an eternal hymn fest.” Christian hope is that all of creation will be made perfect and we will live everyday life on the renewed earth (working, playing, creating) in fellowship with our Creator. Christian, you have so much more to look forward to than clouds and harps.

I got this prayer request from my friend Alezandra in Thailand. She runs a great organization called The Recycled Child Project (http://www.recycledchildproject.org). I figured that I’d try to get other believers praying for her, her staff, and the boys they serve. Here’s what she needs:

“I would absolutely love some prayers for myself & the boys. We just got evicted from our Youth Center so it was just another blow to the spirits of these young boys (and myself)—prejudice and discrimination is a constant in their lives. I ask that you pray for the people of this community to open the hearts and to see that these young boys are also children of God and deserve love, compassion and opportunity.”

“Theology becomes therapy…The biblical interest in righteousness is replaced by a search for happiness, holiness by wholeness, truth by feeling, ethics by feeling good about one’s self. The world shrinks to the range of personal circumstances; the community of faith shrinks to a circle of personal friends. The past recedes. The Church recedes. The world recedes. All that remains is the self.” David Wells

MLK: “the church is the one place where a doctor ought to forget that he’s a doctor. The church is the one place where a Ph.D. ought to forget that he’s a Ph.D. The church is the one place that the school teacher ought to forget the degree she has behind her name. The church is the one place where the lawyer ought to forget that he’s a lawyer. And any church that violates the ‘whosoever will, let him come’ doctrine is a dead, cold church, and nothing but a little social club with a thin veneer of religiosity. When the church is true to its nature, it says, ‘Whosoever will, let him come.’…It’s the one place where everybody should be the same, standing before a common master and savior.” (The Drum Major Instinct, a sermon on Mark 10:35-45)

my professor, Gregg Allison, asked our class these two questions:
Are you willing to go anywhere, say anything, do anything, and give up everything regardless of the cost for the sake of Jesus Christ?
If you knew that your suffering was God’s best for you and you knew that you could not have His best in any other way, would you be willing to suffer for the sake of His honor?
he cautioned us not to answer too quickly.

a few days ago, ashley and i were at the pediatrician with ava. she was getting her 4month checkup, which unfortunately included…vaccinations. yep. if you’re a parent, you’re already feelin’ me.

this wasn’t her first time. i was at work when she got her first shot, but right afterward, ashley called me from the doctor’s office so that i could listen in on what sounded like a monster metamorphosis as ava was being introduced to pain. so i was dreading the prospect of actually seeing her experience it.

i even said to ash: “i can almost feel the pain.”

and then i reflected on that for a moment. i’ve been guilty in the past of thinking that God is removed from our pain because of His infinite knowledge. in other words, sometimes i’ve thought that he doesn’t waste time feeling our pain, not because He doesn’t care, but because He knows that what we’re going through is for our good and only temporary. but I had that same knowledge about Ava’s pain and yet it didn’t stop me from grieving for her, hurting with her. i knew that she’d be smiling again in a matter of minutes and i even knew that looking back on it, she would see good in it. but my heart couldn’t help hurting with her…simply because she was hurting.

how much more does God know our pain? He has infinite knowledge (Isaiah 46:9-10), well beyond ours (Isaiah 55:9), yet he is intimately aware of how we feel (Hebrews 4:15) and He cares (1 Peter 5:7).

God’s infinite knowledge should bring us great confidence (because He’s ordained how it’ll all work out) but his ability to empathize should bring us great comfort.

A free pdf version of Piper’s When I Don’t Desire God. (click the picture)