Reservation Fail

As I was double-checking my flight itinerary around midnight last night, I was shocked to find out that my scheduled departure flight was 12 hours earlier than I thought.  Instead of a PM time slot, I was leaving on the AM.  This was the first time I goofed up on my reservation.  (I was trying so hard to believe that it was a computer glitch.)  It was supposed to be a red-eye flight, now I am literally going to have red eyes for lack of sleep.  Needless to say, I panicked because I wasn't packed and I was scheduled to preach the next morning.   

I inquired as to how much it would cost to change the flight to a later one, and the reservation agent matter-of-factly said that I would have to shell out over $600.  Who, in their right mind, would agree to pay that much to reschedule a flight just a few hours later?  

Well, I got my luggage packed, sermon re-assigned, and sanity checked.  I arrived at Portland International Airport a good hour prior to departure, ready for what the church conference has in store for us this week.  I am headed to Orlando, Florida, for what promises to be a great week meeting old and new friends, listening to awesome theologians, and having a grand time in Mickey's world.  

Entering the Blogosphere

I have tried a couple of times to enter the blogosphere, but my fear of HTML codes and the time involved encoding and decoding was enough to scare me away.

But it has gotten a lot easier to publish your thoughts online. With Facebook and Twitter leading the social pack, ordinary (or should I say extraordinary) folks can hop online and make themselves, or at least their ideas, known to the rest of the world, through status updates or tweets. Frankly, with all these thoughts and opinions floating around, it can be information overkill. It may be best, sometimes, to just curl up in your favorite chair and read a good book or take a nature hike.

But blog, I must, because I want to share a point of view. And what is that, one may inquire? It is that life is best lived knowing that we are embraced by God, and embracing others is a mighty good thing.

It seems like it is just as difficult to think that we are embraced by God, as it is to embrace others. We do not want to be near people who caused us physical and emotional hurt, so, in turn, we may feel that God does not want to be near us because we caused Him harm by sinning and not spending enough time with Him.

The most wonderful thing is that God embraces us, wants to hang out with us, and desires to help us in our darkest moments. He doesn't need any appeasement or proof of fidelity for Him to come near us. He is with us and in us because He is for us. Our moral failures and temporary lack of sanity drive a wedge between God and us, but it is a wedge that we erect and that God demolishes. Though we make that barrier taller, wider, and stronger, it is never that big enough for God to get through to get to us. He longs for us to feel His embrace, to cry on His shoulders, and to feel safe in His arms.

When the goodness of God penetrates our soul through His embrace, another wonderful thing happens. We begin to embrace others, to be more tolerant of the quirkinesses, and to judge people in the same way that they are judged by God, accepted and loved in Christ.

So, let's learn to inconvenience ourselves in service to others, be slapped without retaliating, and pray for those who malign us. In so doing, others will know and feel the unmistakeable embrace of God flowing through us.