It's an overwhelming world. Rain and the coldest month of the year never help the feels, and to watch the world descend into chaos while that's happening, even more disheartening.

    On an international level, to quote the old book, it is full of wars and rumors of wars, and over all, a lot of unrest. On a personal level, its a low moment, and I'm hopeful it doesn't last long.

    I have remembered lately friends of the past and how they touched my life to keep me going, and I've just learned on a deeper level that an old friend has experienced some of the same issues I've discussed in this blog, in the words of his wife, "he was accused of not preaching the Gospel in his sermons."

    This accusation has been tossed towards me more than once and again and again, and to see it thrown against people I know to be Christ followers, makes me even more determined as I sit here in my chilly living room this rainy end of Jan night.

What is the good news that we apparently haven't been preaching?

I'll tell you what it isn't.

It isn't forcing into peoples homes to take them away.

It isn't violence and war.

It isn't standing by people who are enforcing laws with pain, death and cruelty.

It isn't being silent.

It isn't deciding which color of skin should be preferred over another color. 

And it isn't dictating what is the perfect marriage/family/work dynamic for each household.

or being obsessed with who sleeps with who.

Instead the good news is this.

That those who are powerless, have been granted God's power when they

love

mourn

hope

give

forgive

stand together

preach freedom and dream big dreams

feed the hungry

visit the sick

make sure the prisoners are treated well

heal rather than kill

and sit and learn again and again and again-that those in power, become powerless when we walk this way.

When He cried out,

My God, my God-his weakest moment

The veil tore

When the disciples hid away and lay dead in the grave

He rose

When he left us looking up

the fire came and gave us strength and voice

and now, we are granted the power when we are most powerless

The good news is this-no one remembers the religious leaders names

Pilate had to call him King of the Jews

Death is defeated

And he calls us friends.