Church: a communion

church is a communion...
it is a communion in the heavenly realms--with JESUS. We are seated with Him in the heavenly realms. everything else will pass away. period.

church is a communion of saints. That's in that one creed thingy, right? We believe in that, right?

now, a communion like this transcends boundaries of race and nationality, space and time, gender and age... This is a communion with Jesus. He is the link between each of us as we gather around HIM. He is the SINGLE connecting point in the whole gob of us.

the church has meetings, but that's not the church.
we meet as a manifestation of what we are: a communion...

a communion means that we have one common union: JESUS

buried in winter? Coffee!!!

Posting has been hard. and you know you're not in the right place to write when you blog about blogging. It's just that the "rut" of daily life began to run away from daily thoughts, writing, regular stuff like that...

and so here i am.

this morning, it's all about the coffee. it is a rainy, cloudy day. I just took the boys to school and got home. it has been winter, so that's cold, youknow? and i never wear enough clothing for that. Usually i wear a knit hat and a hoodie over a teeshirt. I have discovered that, like my youngest son, i hate wearing clothes. Makes me wonder if heaven is nudist. i think it's not, b/c angels always have stuff on... but at least i'll have just a tee shirt and jeans or shorts on... you know?

anyway today is all abotu the coffee. Judy's been on the warpath about my coffee drinking. I'm giving up at least half of my public coffee times to offset some home expenses, but we brew the finest, here and i drink a lot of it. like 10 cups a day, in toto...

10 cups isn't actually ten cups of coffee, but rather around 10 8 ounce servings. 80 ounces a day doesn't seem like a lot when you sit around talking to people a lot. or writing or skateboarding, and it's cold outside and dark and you didn't sleep well...
some sleep problems are simply logistical.

but today it isn't about beds or noise or bruised consciences keeping me up. it's about the coffee.

aaaaah.
the warmth.
the bitter.
the brown.
aaaaaah.
a little cream to take the edge off and she's smoothe as chocolate.
coffee.
perfect breakfast and perker-upper...

is coffee a drug?
is it just food?

i don't know, but sitting here this morning, the day after Thursday night bible study, I'm happy to have a nice cup here. Judy's here, too. She's working and i'm blogging. Got Chris Tomlin and stuff playing on Pandora.com... and some coffee...

I know. You were sure it was all about jesus, and it is. just this morning, the coffee is all about jesus, because it's about the coffee.

Good Technology.

More than a Month?!!

amazing... i made a shift a while back to writing on paper more often. in 4 weeks I filled an entire "Moleskine". some of it is good enough... it might actually help someone. someday... probably after i'm dead...

sitting at the big table with a cup of coffee and some donuts. Saturday morning. Yesterday was a snowday. There was sledding. Miserable, rainy, whiny sledding, and a visit to Bobby and Melissa up north in West Chester...

i've started helping a friend of mine with his skatepark design firm. yeah, i just called it a firm. i like that tirm.

you should taste this coffee. no. really. you should. you should come to cincinnati and stay a few days and see what beauty there is in a small communion of saints who live like this.

Last night, Judy and I had dinner at the Trues' house. Baby Isaac is an incredible little dude. He seems to like my speaking voice. That's nice.

We have a Brazilian Exchange student living with us. His name is Marcelo. He's great! We hold out to the end of the season and only host if necessary, with all the increases in activity around here. marcelo came in January. He'll stay 11 months.

We just finished the week-long stay of a Kuwaiti student. He was great! an avid and passionate rollerblader, looks like we may design a park for them, over there. Funny thing, I'm in contact with a Saudi dude about a park over there, too...

Well, i trolled a bit of news and had a bit of reggae on Pandora and now it's time to get moving...

thanks to all who read here. I'll try to be back soon.

enough whining about the weather. I've got a lot of great stuff going on around me. From Judy's work with foreign exchange, which keeps us in contact with people around the world, to my kids' school and daily skateboarding and stuff like that... to Sam, who lives on our 3rd floor and lights up this house with so much love. thanks for allt he dishes you do, bro.

this winterr has been so much different from so many that came before. I'm not sick, thanks be to God, for the first January in forever. I really do think it was the wisdom teeth, afterr all. I got out my last 2 last march, and I gotta say, that really hurt for a long time, but feelign is almost back in my tongue on that side, and I'm not sick and dragging all the time.

I'm getting more and more involved in efforts to get skateparks built in our city, too. I've been talking with a lot o fpeople lately and I see a coalescence of people who would like there to be good spots set aside for skateboarding in the cityscape. Why aren't there quality provisions for skateboarding within the reach of our metro routes? There should be, and hopefully will be, soon.

working on the Northside Park will be a start, I hope.

Well, I hope you're all okay. really. Peace.

this snowy morning

this morning, the kids went back to school. what a crime. 7:25 wake up for a 6-yrs. old of a kid. i can't wait. that's just one more small thing that won't be going on in the kingdom of Jesus...

holy cold, Batman!!! like 8 degrees with snow coming down sideways in the wind... and the driving? INSANE! What an insanity that people would drive on these frozen roads! Yet drive we did, and there were tons of accidents on the traffic report this morning.

Growing up in New York, we had a thing we called a "delay" that we'd use on days like this to let the roads get warmed up, so the frozen chemicals and water could get thawed... working folks also used a technique called the "personal day", and also "coming in late" to fend off the risk of roadway death and whatnot...

I think Ohio should make a discovery of the use of this "delay" thing. That should help our nation become great. I have also heard that in lands far away there is something called the "snow day". I'm not sure I believe it, it sounds so fantastical, but people tell me that when the roads are so dangerous that people's lives are risked in daily transit, many institutions--especially schools--actually close for the day.

These are foreign ideas, I know, but that's what makes great cultural understandings in U.S. and A.

church

yesterday morning's church time was...well, we're the church. No matter how it "goes", we belong to Jesus. There is something there that is much greater than anything else. so how do we measure it?

I'll tell you what. The Word came. There was a word shared by several people. It took form as they each shared their part, or asked their question. JP and Lew preached, some commented, some questioned...

I left the time together freshly amazed at the God who has chosen us for His dwelling on the sole basis of his pleasure: he is pleased to have us! That from Ps.132:13-14

We stood amazed as God clothed Jeshua the high priest in Zech. 3

...marveled at Jesus calling us his friends in John 15:15

...rejoiced in Romans 5's good news that God has loved us while we were still His enemies, how much more now that our hearts yearn to love Him back?

Colossians 2:12-14 spoke of the "death warrant" being cancelled--God is now longer angry at us!

Micah 7:8-9 spoke of how Jesus has plead our legal case before the Father. We are fully reconciled.

All of this bundles with words from Zech 3 and Isaiah 6 that show that, as Jesus said, we did not choose Him. He has chosen us.

Please, read through these scriptures this week and think on the very GOODNESS of the news in Christ! No matter how you may have failed Him, He is on your side. Just turn to him in your heart, trust His atonement on the cross for your sins, and start fresh WITH HIM, TODAY.
String together a bunch of TODAYs and we'll catch up on the other side...

and happy new year.