Last Night's Conversation

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Monday morning again. Rise and shine. I love when our conversations don't end in a nice tightly wrapped up little package. Instead, like last night, sometimes they end really...messy. Sometimes comprehension and understanding of the particular part of Scripture that we are discussing is not the result of our conversation. So let me be the first to say that that is totally, 100% ok. In fact, I'm not even so sure that our be all end all goal of a "Bible study" should always be comprehension and understanding. What if God sometimes longs to connect with us somewhere beyond our comprehension or understanding?

Anyway, our conversation last night focused on Acts 8 in which the story of the second person listed to be among "the Seven" from chapter 6 is continued. His name is Philip, and he is a Grecian. How incredible is the always present "string" that can be found woven throughout the course of history as God orchestrates all things to work together for His glory. For example: Acts chapter 6 tells a story of a conflict between the Grecian and Hebraic Jews (see the last week's post) which God then uses to raise up "half bread-ish" leadership (again, see the explanation about this in last week's post). Without this new leadership, the gospel would not have been able to be taken to Samaria (which is where the story in Acts 8 occurs), because the Samaritans HATED the Hebraic Jews and vice versa. Wow, so there is God, in the midst of a stupid conflict between cultural sects weaving the thread of His will throughout the events that transpire...

Last night we also made a few minor changes of schedules and opened up for some ideas of ways that we can connect with each other and with our Creator-Savior in ways other than discussion of the written text. Starting this week, we'll get started at 6:00 pm instead of 6:30 pm on Sunday evenings. A few ideas that arose were taking a reflective nature trail walk together (Romans 1:20), doing some "film theology", and meeting somewhere different (i.e. Charlie Daniel's park) every now and then. Any other ideas?? We feel that this variety is important to us as a community of faith because our God is multi-faceted and He longs to reveal Himself to us in a plurality of ways, of which study of the written text is but one--though a significant one.

In addition to those ideas, we're also going to be partaking of a meal together, where we can just kick back, eat, and grow in our relationships with each other, every other Wednesday night (for now anyway--the night may change in the future). The logistics of this aren't quite worked out yet, but it'll be potluck-ish. This was actually Shaunna and Brittany's idea that will allow us to keep Sunday night stuff to a reasonable hour so everyone can have ample recharge time before the grind starts on Monday--thanks ladies, yall rock! This every other weekly shin dig will take place at Shaunna and my's house. Hit the link on the sidebar that says "when & where we get together" for address, link to directions, and map.