10/27/14

10/15/14
Something that is on my mind and I want to share. Monday Night Service is a ministry that was founded on bringing more teaching and spiritual growth to those that are served by the pantry. The Bible study was a integral part of the purpose of Monday Night Service. It was to give those touched on Saturday morning pantry the means to "give them more" in coming alongside their journey to and with Jesus.

As you know many of our serving volunteers may not be able to stay for the entire evening. Some come to lead worship and some have to leave after providing and serving the meal. However, it has been burdened my heart that all of the core ministry team does not participate in the entire ministry of a Monday Night which I would like to see change.

I feel it is important that each of us as the core ministry team be there for the entire ministry from worship, to meal and to the Bible study. It is why we are there. While there is a physical meal, for many of the beginning years the purpose of Monday was the feeding of the Word of God. If the core ministry team/leads do not find it important to stay for the Bible study, this is not in line with the vision for the ministry in which Monday Night Service was started.

I would like for you to pray and seek the Lord's direction. I am also asking that if you are a core team member of this ministry that you stay for the Bible study. When I return from Chicago, we can discuss this individually and as a group, but it saddens me that this ministry's entire core team does not stay for the Bible study.

- Kelly


10/24/14
Hello everyone, below you will find the schedule for this coming 4th Monday of the month. Greg, you and your group are on for worship and the meal. Jim you are finishing us up in the book of Romans, Chapter 16. What a wonderful time it has been in the book of Romans.

Starting this Monday we will be switching up the schedule of activities during the course of the evening, please be sure to review the new evening timeline below:

5:30 Doors Open to guests (group/meal should be here)
6:00-6:10 Announcements
6:10-6:40 Worship
6:40-7:10 Bible Study
7:10-7:40 Meal and then cleanup
(food served by small group)
Cleanup- group helps clean up pantry and kitchen.
All serving, kitchen and other activities will pause during the teaching/message.
Matthew 4:4 - Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ " (Deut. 8:4)



Tonight as I drove back from the Pantry I reflected on this past weekend.
God's will too great to be considered a coincidence.
There in the wilderness in that far off place witnessing what I saw.
What do I do with this?
I didn't ask for any of it but here I am.
What would You have me do?
Ed said tonight we will not have the meal after the bible study.
all volunteers are welcome no matter if they can stay for the full time or not.

I sat there in that building listening to the two of them speak thinking about the years we have spent together. How many cups of coffee and scoops of potato salad have we seen pass through that building.

And there I was sitting on a log stoking the fire as my friends and I set up camp and prepared dinner after the half day hike to where we would rest for the night. Why was I there at that time? The original plan was to start Friday night. Why that forest to hike through? Why that weekend? It was suppose to be earlier in the month but schedules shifted. That moment in time that collision course orchestrated perfectly and me there on the log blank into the fire and words, empty words, rattled into my ears and soaked in my brain. Words but words seem so silent with the scream of sight.

Why did we bring the dog? It was a last minute add to the crew and without it's leash it wouldn't have wondered off. Mutual friends too strange. The whole situation too much to process as I sit jabbing the pile of embers.

Now what?
ignore it?
attack with it?
invite a third party?

The older I get the more curtains in life I seem to pull back. Is any of it real?
Are there any sincere?
oh how I thirst for something genuine. Something I can put a flag in and know this, this is a rock that will not wash away. But where do I find such a thing?

Does one even exist? and if not what does that mean as far as pulling curtains? Will I one day pull the final one and confirm my greatest fear?

But this entire situation it seems to strange to be chance.

Christ show me the way. Let me drink from Your peace. Let me rest on Your path. Show me oh Lord.

Down in the River to Pray - Alison Krauss

10/23/14

Christian cobblers, does his duty not by putting little crosses or ichthuses on them but by making the best shoes they can make and selling them at a fair price so their neighbors can have good shoes. A cobbler, a smith, a peasant, every man, has the office and function of his calling, and yet all alike are consecrated priests and bishops, and every man should by his office or function be useful and beneficial to the rest, so that various kinds of work may all be united for the furtherance of body and soul, just as the members of the body all serve one another.
-Martin Luther

Damien Jurado - Sheets

10/18/14

Council of Jerusalem 0050
First Council of Nicaea 0325
First Council of Constantinople 0381
Synod of Hippo 0393
The Council of Carthage 0397 Issued a canon of the Bible
Council of Ephesus 0431
Second Council of Ephesus 0449
Council of Chalcedon 0451
Second Council of Constantinople 0553
Third Council of Constantinople 0681
Second Council of Nicaea 0787
Fourth Council of Constantinople 0870
Fourth Council of Constantinople 0880
East–West Schism 1053
First Council of the Lateran 1123
Second Council of the Lateran 1139
Third Council of the Lateran 1179
Fourth Council of the Lateran 1215
First Council of Lyon 1245
Second Council of Lyon 1274
Council of Vienne 1312
Fifth Council of Constantinople 1351
Council of Constance 1418
Council of Siena 1424
Council of Florence 1449
Synod of Constantinople 1484
Fifth Council of the Lateran 1517
The Protestant Reformation 1517
Council of Trent 1563 Vulgate
Church of England completed the King James Version in 1611
Synod of Jassy 1642
Synod of Jerusalem 1672
First Vatican Council 1870
Synod of Constantinople 1872
Second Vatican Council 1965

The History of Christianity can be summed up in one word: division.
If Jesus rose from the dead in the year 33 then there were only 17 short years before Christians started dividing. Even Christianity at it's root was a splitting from the Jewish faith.

Jesus came to fulfill the Jewish faith not divide it.

Even before Jesus there were the Samaritans and the Jews.

I see Jesus not caring about people being Samaritans Jewish or Gentile.

It makes my heart heavy spending a morning reading about countless councils over the last two thousand years all of them excluding and undoing and redoing. Over and over and over.

None of it looks anything like Jesus' actions and teachings.

How can any of these religions claim to know God while still remaining divided?

When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear: sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these. Let me tell you again, as I have before, that anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the Kingdom of God. But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!
-Galatians 5

A kingdom divided by civil war will collapse. Similarly, a family splintered by feuding will fall apart.
-Mark 3

Show us how to love.

If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.
-1 Corinthians 13

Lets die with the dying
Lets cry with the crying
Lets love like Jesus

Josh Ritter - Girl In The War

10/15/14

I woke in the morning my sleeping bag covered in dew, the fire reduced to a smoldering, although still showing life. The sky was dark but the sun was scaling the hillside making good on its promise of another day. I was the first one up so I sat silently in my cocoon sleeping bag. I locked my eyes on the hill where the sun would show its glory. The sky swirled with colors purples yellows orange the kind of stuff brushes dream of being dipped in. Eventually the sky turned blue but the sun wasn't revealed. I'm not use to this sort of sunrise. In the flat land of Wauseon I'm guaranteed a sunrise payoff but not in the hills here. I slowly leave my cocoon of heat and make may way over to the fire I grab a couple handfuls of straw and attempt to resurrect last night's fire. After a couple heavy blows from my mouth the fire is back giving me the heat I was hoping for.

Its interesting to think about last night's fire this mornings pile of ashes but just as God turns beauty from ashes and life from death I to get a taste of my image bearing Creator as I breath new life into the dead pile.

Tents slowly unzip behind my back and coffee is placed in my hands.

sipping and stoking I leave my masterpiece and make my way towards morning devotions.

After prayer and breakfast when the morning's chill was replaced by the afternoon warmth we headed to Brush Creek there we met up with Tom, Karen, and the two boys. They were in the boat Tom hand crafted. It looked like something straight out of the Lord of the Rings. We hopped aboard and rowed to the Ohio River.

There we swung on a rope swing off an island sat on the shore chewing lunch the weather was perfect. We headed back up the creek and once dried off we shared another warm welcoming meal together.

After the meal I headed back towards Columbus. I wonder what life would look like if I were born 100 or 200 years ago.

First Aid Kit - My Silver Lining

10/01/14

Isodore's Plough

St Isodore (1070 – 1130) the Farmer was born into a very poor but devout family in Madrid. He lived his life as a farm labourer yet found the time for daily devotion to prayer and often attended daily Mass. He married and had a child. One day the child fell into a deep well. His distraught parent’s prayed as they tried to help. Miraculously they watched the water level rise to bring the child to the surface. St Isodore was well known for his many miracles but he also had critics. Fellow workers once complained that he often arrived late in the morning for work because he attended Mass. His master, while investigating their complaint found St Isodore in Church but an Angel ploughing the field. On another occasion he was seen ploughing a field with an angel on either side of him. St Isodore’s wife would often keep a large pot of stew on the boil for her husband when he returned from work, knowing he was likely to be accompanied by poor people he met on his way home. On occasions the pot seemed to miraculously feed many more people than physically possible. St Isodore is the Patron Saint of Farmers and bricklayers as well as his home city, Madrid.

As I slowly pull around the curvy gravel road I see behind the cloud of dust two doberman pinschers, Merry and Pippin, racing in my rear view mirror towards the farm. I pull off into the grass to join the rest of the group. We are all greeted by two barefooted boys with wooden swords, Isaiah and Arbutus. Behind the two brothers is their father, Tom leading Violet the cow into the pasture and behind him is their mother, Karen. I stand back a bit as I watch this community reunite. I see decades of friendship in their smiles and embraces. This is so much bigger than me. Yet here I am invited to partake in this expression of love this expression of God.

We unpack our stuff in the yard pitching our tents in a row as if we were a tribe of nomads. I walk towards the barn stepping between two bails of straw I see a 1969 Volkswagen van. As we make our way to the back where the Christmas lights are strung about the dusty rafters I am hit with two distinct smells.
My grandparents barn in Lyons, Ohio. The barn my brother, our cousins, and I would climb and explore all over on the weekends we stayed with grandma and grandpa. Playing with old farm tools and running through the field behind it.
The other smell was a bit more recent and caught me by surprise. It smelled like N'Dola, Zambia. The simplicity and the beauty within it. These two memories triggered in an instant at a simple inhale of my tiny nose yet such vast places in my memory.

I'm reminded of my grandpa's death one year ago this past Monday. My grandma selling the farm house to move into a senior care center while I was home this past Labor day for the county fair. How much things have changed in her lifetime. How much things have changed.

We take a tour around the land. We see the brand new privy behind the barn, we see the newly planted vineyard, the chicken coop and the garden in front of it. My heart is nearly maxed and I haven't been here for an hour. Tom tells us the horn will blow three times when dinner is ready and he leaves us to our discussions.

After we settle in with our coffees and readers the environment is so completely different but the conversation and my friends are the same. We dig into discussions of Christ in the wilderness of the temptations of Christ, the temptations of all of us. How Jesus overcame them and how we pale in the shadow of His triumph yet hope in the mercy of His grace.

After the discussions our warrior friends put away their wooden swords and pick up their mallets inviting us to a game of croquet. The Lockridges share a mallet and ball as a team while Angela Mandy and I play individually, the rest of the group cheering as spectators. As the game goes on a frisbee is thrown over head. The dogs now joined by Kaiden add an element of surprise to the match as they trample through the field of play back and forth pulled by the desire to catch the disk. The air is completely silent with the exception of our laughter as Erin and Robert struggle to pass through the first wicket, Joshua runs with the dogs after the frisbee and jokes are made inbetween. The sun is setting and dusk is here. This moment is so peaceful.

After the game its nearly completely dark but the boys aren't finished yet. They have set up the capture the flag game and are ready to pick teams. We split and in almost complete darkness begin to strategize. After a bit of running, tripping, falling, and laughing a flag is captured and the game is over.

The horn blows and we make our way slowly up the hill exhausted and retelling our highlights of the game. We remove our shoes and enter into the single room home. Inside its a different feeling. The sun has fallen and the sky seems to remind us it is time to rest. The room is lit only by candles and very small lamps. We gather around the large table holding hands giving thanks to God for this meal and this day.

After the meal I find myself again lost in the midst of a beautiful community. I haven't met any of the people in the stories that are told. Some stories I've already heard before but I love hearing them all the same. The wine was flowing and the room ebb and flowed with sighs and laughter.

We existed our hosts' home thanking them over and over for the meal. We followed behind Joshua leading by the light of his headlamp to our campsite. There we built a fire and cracked open a few pumpkin beers. The conversation continued but this time of a different nature. Now outside we are reminded of our smallness. Under the stars in the cold dark of a late September night. This conversation was intimate. It was slow. It was precise. As the fire began to fade I wasn't ready for the day to end but I knew the only timepiece we had was the endurance of the logs. I asked if I should find more wood and my fears came true. The group politely refused as they stood one by one stretched and moved towards their dwellings for the night. Left alone I decided against a tent. I wanted the stars and the fire as my bedtime story.

I unrolled my sleeping bag and crawled inside looking up at the dark sky seeing all of God's stars crystal clear. My eye lids grew heavy and closed slowly like garage doors.

Breathe Owl Breathe - Swimming