The Good News in Brief

I don't have time to write much more than a note. Church is at 11 and I don't want to miss it. For one it's a date with Marie, and we'll probably go to the movies or have a picnic after.

We go to Beaverton Christian Church, led by Pastor Clark Tanner. The music is fabulous and the teaching is very positive and Christ-centered. Pastor Tanner is a wonderful man and Friday night he sat down with us, counselling us about our marriage. He talked with us for over two hours, just practical and straightforward, and recommended someone for us to see, a counselor named Matt Howell. We really appreciated the sincerity and compassion Clark showed. It's a church with over a 1000 members and he talked and prayed with us like family, incredibly generous with his time.

Last night I worked at The Battle of Bands at the Buckeroo Grounds, one of my sister's events, serving beer and bottled Mojitos with Kristy's friend Melina. She was a nice lady, married with three kids. She had a great energy and a heart for people and really connected with the folks. It was a lot of fun to work and contribute to Kristy's event. The Concrete Cowboys, a country group from Portland, won the battle, and the crowd was well-behaved and had a great time. I made $147 bucks in tips, and there was a great barbeque stand next door where I got a pulled pork sandwich and a plate of leftovers to go home. Cool, huh?

The two paragraphs above will take turns offending people. The first one will offend people who don't like Christians and the second one will probably offend everyone in some way. "See, he's a hypocrite. Running off to church on Sunday and working at a beer stand on Saturday night." That's silly. Jesus' first public miracle was making wine at a wedding. He regularly had dinner with tax collectors and prostitutes, touched lepers with healing power, befriended an outcast woman at the well. People get this image of Christians as being stuffy and judgemental, but Jesus wasn't. He loved life, and people. "I have come that you might have life," he promised, "and life more abundantly." My favorite Bible verse is, "This is a day that the Lord hath made; let us rejoice and be glad in it." They make it into a song you sing at Bible Camp.

You look around and you see broken lives and a broken world, and untold miseries of celebrity obsession, sports fixation, shameful behavior and lost people, and you might start to realize that all the wealth and entertainment we have isn't making us happy. In fact we are the most depressed nation in history, and ahead of us lies a time of uncertainty and despair. A broken economy. International terrorism. Global warming. World-wide food and energy scarcities. In Zimbabwe right now a loaf of bread costs a billion dollars in their currency. For all the technological know-how and scientific wizardry we've achieved we've made a mess of our world and our lives, and there's a lot of hurting people. Marie and I of course have troubles of own, and of our own making. We're working on that. But somehow all of us have to consider that man isn't perfectible, and the sorrows and concerns we have an ultimate spiritual solution.

It's worth considering, anyway. After all it is Sunday. Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to go on a picnic with my wife. Best wishes, and thanks for visiting.