And now...

The continuing story of Jesus not looking like he usually does.

We'd planned to take the kids from our church bowling. April and I made up invitations that looked like bowling balls (my my wife is hella-creative) and we sent them out to the 5 kids that come to our church, along with an invitation to the kids of a couple we are friends with. I reserved two bowling lanes, thinking that would be enough.

Man, was I wrong.

We ended up needing 4 lanes we had so many kids and parents bowling. The friends we invited brought a family with them we didn't know, so that added a couple more. After the bowling was all done, everyone (all 26 of us) drove back to our house for grilled hot dogs, hamburgers and some pretty darned good BBQ chicken. People ate tons, kids ran around outside and a bunch of us chatted until later in the evening. Dustin even got our fireplace started up for us! We'd been wondering how to do that for the past two years :)

Sunday morning was, well, mind blowing. The friends I mentioned in the last post came to church yesterday. He has no church background at all and she grew up Catholic. I tried to be so mindful of them, knowing this was all brand new for them. Turns out he really enjoyed it and it looks like they will be coming back.

Communion yesterday morning was, in a word, an encounter with God. I've had meaningful experiences before during communion, but God's presence was so strong to me yesterday. I think as I sat and considered the meaning of communion in the context of my sermon (I talked about how since God has extended grace to us, we need to extend it to others), I was able to extend grace to a few people that have wounded me.

Jesus is continually shattering my image of him. It seems with every pre-conceived notion I have about how he works or who he's working on, he seems to come up from behind me and yell 'Surprise!'