1. Jesus is not a cheerleader. When I was in High School, our football team was never good. Everyone expected them to lose most of their games. Even the Cheerleaders expected them to lose. And yet they kept cheering as if our defense could stop the other team and our offense could score. They knew this was fiction, however. Everyone did. When Jesus says things like “Don’t worry about your life…seek first the Kingdom of God and everything else will be provided for you,” he is not cheer-leading. He knows what he is talking about.
2. Many discouraged pastors need to hear, “Celebrity and popularity are not fruits of the Spirit.”
3. No political party is consistent. Republicans/Democrats can get mad all they want, they both ignore in themselves what they hate in the other. There is no hope in this.
4. Josh Garrels new album on a loop.
5. Have you ever stopped to wonder what you are surrounding yourself with and how it might be affecting you?
6. I have had in mind lately the question, “How different is my life than those who do not believe in supernatural realities that are unseen?” In other words, do I live as if there is a God, Who is there, as Schaeffer said.
7. Goodness, it was hard to say “Goodbye” to students this week. I loved them far more than I liked being a teacher.
8. I just assume “deny themselves” includes Constitutional rights. That sounds harsh and hard. Like a kind of death. You could say it sounds like a cross, even.
9. It cannot be pointed out too often how much money and time and attention is given to fit bodies in our culture and how little attention is given to our hearts and minds.
10. I was named after the Apostle Matthew. Former tax collector. Gospel writer. The name means “gift of God.” To see him portrayed in The Chosen as someone with Asperger’s as the father of one with Asperger’s is…something I cannot yet put words to.
Echoes and Stars 