98.6 Degrees

I do not remember a time of such great sickness. It seems like there are plenty of sick children and adults to go around this winter. On her job, my wife seems to be covering for just about everyone imaginable forcing her to work seemingly impossible hours. The schools have had students out sick by the busload.

One thing I have been looking at is the organic nature of the church. It is an organism, not an organization. So I got to thinking about the two things together. One way we know someone has a fairly serious illness is by the presence of a fever. I think it is an amazing truth that most people are within a few tenths of a degree of the worldwide average 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. I was thinking about how amazing it is that humanity shares this closeness and how churches share something very similar. All living people have the same type of vital organs, but there is nothing more common than a temperature.

If our body temperature fluctuates too many degrees one way or another from that place, we ultimately die. Naturally, the base temperature for the church is 316 degrees for John 3:16. We always find a dangerous place when we move away from "For God so loved the world." Replace any of those words with some of what we see today and we see our problems. We say them correctly but live as if to say:

"For God so hated the world" - People and churches who isolate themselves from the world

"For I so loved the world" - People who try to earn their salvation by being a "good Christian."

"For God so loved the church" - People who buy into a "God will make me healthy, wealthy, and wise" approach to faith


I can claim an unhealthy fever from all of them at some point in time in my life, and I fear that if we do not see the passion of God behind His most gracious act of sending Jesus to die for "whoever" that we will see the death of many churches.

May we strive for health!

So here I am, one week in to my new birthday club. Loved the shirt I got: "In Dog years, I'm dead."

The truth is I don't feel any older, its everyone else around me thats getting older.

Preaching on the lost son in Luke 15 is such a reminder to me of what I have been in my life. I've been lost and rebellious; I've wasted and wanted. I've hurt people and been hurt by people. I guess most of us could write that same script.

This week, my attention turns to the Father in the story. This is where my perspective continues to grow and change. Being a father helps me relate in ways I never have before, and having kids approaching those teenage years really does a number to me.

While theologians debate wheter or not the father represents God in the parable, he, at the very least, points us to God and reminds us of Him...a wise and loving Father. He even treated his servants with plenty of respect. What an admirable example and one to strive to be more like. I will spare the 40 reasons to try and be like the father and leave it with one really good one: the world needs love and forgiveness.

Catch ya later.