SMITCHing

Mike with his nieces A happy heart makes the face cheerful,  but heartache crushes the spirit.  Proverbs 15:13 My brother-in-law, Michael, is a cheerful man. Anyone who knows him would say the same. His eyes sparkle when someone he loves walks into his room. He loves a lot. I can't think of a time when he spoke ill of someone, and the list of his friends is roughly the same as the list of anyone he's ever met. Mike give his heart to others regularly and with little regard to what it might cost him. And even though it's not his fault, Mike doesn't have much to lose in the way of material possessions or status. He's much richer than that. Well into his 50's, he lives in a resident care facility. It's a good one as these places go, but it is not the kind of place most people would choose to live. Mike did. And that choice was an expression of selfless love, because Mike needs constant care. His spe...

Today I heard AJ Swoboda preach about "the love child of our prayer and the Holy Spirit's help is our deliverance." It struck me that he was talking about the intersection of our deepest desires, fears, and hopes with the very presence of God. Jesus called the Holy Spirit our "helper", so his exegesis is pretty solid given the majority opinion in the evangelical church. But I think it's not a functional "helping" where that the Spirit enables us to do things for us that we cannot do ourselves. I tire of that: the God of the Gaps, who fills up the missing bits in our capabilities. But that view is so prevalent: grace as enablement. I believe, after Jonathan Edwards, that grace is not a quality of enablement, but a relational presence—the very Spirit of God alive in us and relationally present to us. Jesus, the incarnate savior, promised to be with us all always. About 1 billion of us Christians. All the time. Everywhere. And always. Okay....