Reconnecting

Last week, I got a mysterious Facebook "friending" (for those of you who don't know what that means... ask an internet-savvy nerd/teenager near you) from someone... but I didn't know the name, and there was no picture to back it up, and no friends on her page I recognized. So I sent her a message asking how we knew each other. The response was an apologetic "No wonder you didn't recognize me! No pictures and a new last name!" It was my friend Amanda, whom I lost touch with when I moved to Kentucky -- come to find out she's had a year full of even more changes than I have! I was thrilled to hear she's still seeking the Lord, is now quite happily married, living in Atlanta, and doing wonderfully!! She also caught me up on the life of a mutual friend, Kelsey, and it's her blog I'd like to give a shout-out. Kelsey's in Denver, Colorodo, working in a ministry called "the Esther House." This house ministers to women coming out of poverty and destructive lifestyles, giving them not just rehab, therapy and "support," which any "half-way house" can do, but also giving them the one thing powerful enough to set them free: the Gospel. You can read more about it yourself by clicking the links of this post's title, or the link to the left (sidebar). The Esther House is part of a vision much like the one Immanuel Baptist (Louisville, KY) has-- to move into the inner city and reach its community with the Gospel of Hope. Oh for that vision to burn through America's suburban, wealthy "safe" churches!!

It's always fun to 'reconnect' with old friends, especially when you get to become friends with those who were once only acquaintances, or find that old friends are doing well! When you understand and treasure the Sovereignty of God, such meetings aren't happy happenstances, but rather intentionally orchestrated path-crossings of a relational, kind God. Jacqui and I were talking just the other day about how much "ordinary" becomes "miraculous" when you look at life this way: acts of God on behalf of His Kingdom and People, meriting praise and thanksgiving! When God does everything, what exactly does "ordinary" mean, anyway?

Hmmm... it could look "miraculous" for two people living completely separate lives to find that they are being simultaneously caught up in similar visions, in two entirely separate communities. (I'm thinking of Immanuel in Kentucky, and Kelsey in Colorodo) Sort of like Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz both coming up with calculus at the same time, completely independantly of one another. Way too weird a 'coincidence.' BUT on close examination, even if the two didn't ever interact, they were both drawing from the same body of research, and living in a time that encouraged the lines of thinking that led each man to his similar conclusions. I guess we wouldn't call it too strange if two men drew the same picture looking at the same mountain... My point? The Church should be looking at the same Glorious God all the time, and so should beat with a strikingly similar rhythm a remarkably resemblant tune. I love that we're living in a Day and Age where Christ's Kingdom and renown is expanding, and there will be more and more moments of Christians meeting with similar visions-- soldiers under the same marching orders. God in His Sovereignty, is re-connecting all the World with His Order-- let us look and work towards that complete Redemption; a New Creation!

"By this all men will know that you are My disciples, that you love one another... Father, I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word, that they may all be one, just as You, Father, are in Me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and You in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see My glory that You have given Me ..." Jn. 13:35, 17:21-24