This quote is from "Wild At Heart" by John Eldridge. Still figuring out how much I agree with what he says but it won't be much and there's a lot of good stuff.

"It is fear that keeps a man at home where things are neat and orderly and under his control. But the answers to his deepest questions are not to be found on television or in the refrigerator."
Ouch! That one hurts. I would probably add the computer to that list.

Anybody figured out how to be content yet?

Couple of quotes from Messy Spirituality by Mike Yaconelli

"Rest is the ultimate humiliation because in order to rest, we must admit we are not necessary, that the world can get along without us, that God's work does not depend on us. Once we understand how unnecessary we are, only then might we find the right reasons to say yes. Only then might we find the right reasons to decide to be with Jesus instead of working for him."

"The church, by and large, has had a poor record of encouraging freedom. She has spent so much time inculcating in us the fear of making mistakes, that she has made us like ill-taught piano students: we play our songs, but we never really hear them because our main concern is not to make music but to avoid some flub that will get us in dutch." Robert Capon

I'm confronted today by Jesus' admonishment that I not think like the pagans who are always asking, "What shall I eat? What shall I drink? What shall I wear?" It seems that a major portion of my day is given to thinking about these questions or others like them. On top of my own issues regarding what I eat and what I wear I have to deal with what my daughters are going to wear and eat. Some of you will understand when i say this makes me want a pizza.

Not so clear socio-spiritual conjecturing.

As we have been working out and working through the issues of simple church/house church a couple of thoughts have taken hold of me. Something about our culture's view of meals makes it difficult to get across the value of a common meal for the church. There doesn't seem to be one prevalent factor in this regard but ones I see are: 1)utilitarian view of eating, 2)superficial party dynamic (eating is only hedonistic), 3)supremacy of individual choice. I didn't articulate those very well but there is something there.

Second issue is family. Now that I've started giving more creedence to Paul's use of the family as analogy it makes a lot more sense that the Enemy would put so much effort into destroying families and family relationships. Broad definitions of family can be helpful but the clearest picture of family is that of parents and children, brothers and sisters. Even the broader definitions of families ( any combination of individuals in a close living arrangement) need this basic definition of family to make sense. With so many people coming from screwed up family situations no wonder its so hard to get anywhere using that analogy.