STING

This past Sunday was a great day. We welcomed a new church into our church facility - Hope Chapel - for their first worship gathering. After, we shared a massive common meal and experienced communion together through the sharing of the Lord's Supper. Both groups participated and there was this palpable joy present: like the joy and the urgency surrounding a final meal before a big trip or a journey or quest.

This blog is for Nomad, our homeless churches, but today I want to comment a bit on this movement towards the church as a 'journey' or quest experience. The great thing about a quest or a mission is that you don't do it alone (unless you choose to), and there is incredible reward in the journey (and challenge) even during times when you don't seem like you're going to ever arrive at the goal.

But we all know that the goal is near for us. I'm staring death in the face every day. If that line sounds melodramatic to you, well, then you need to look death in the eyes yourself. See what is waiting for you?

Once there was a guy who faced death and submitted to it. He walked willingly into a situation where death was probably inevitable, and it was. No, he didn't commit suicide: he stood up for what he knew was right and perfect and true, and was killed for the stand.

He took his last breath. That cold glaze of lightless sickness surely came over his face. The settling of the eyes in the sockets. His lungs stopped producing oxygen. His heart slowed and the blood stood still in its caves. He died.

Dead.

And then, a few days later, he was alive again.

When I think about facing death, I stand up straight and stick my chest out and try to hide the fear. But this week, talking on the phone with our brother, Mark, I was reminded of something awesome. He said that where he is right now - sober, trusting God, living for today - he fears nothing. Nothing. No one. Not even death. When he said it - on the phone - I believed him. Do you know what I'm saying? Not that he'd lie to me, he wouldn't; but I believed that he beleived death was inevitable and it has NO STING. Why? Because his trust in his the Lord - fully and completely. If he rose from the dead, then he knows what it's like. And if he conquered death, then he can do it in you and me.

And he promises much, much more than "beating death." If you don't know what he promises, come hang with Nomad this week.