Where is God?

God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house.

God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives.

God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war.

God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives, and GOD IS WITH US IF WE ARE WITH THEM.

- Bono

"If you remove the yoke from your midst, the pointing of the finger and speaking wickedness, and if you give yourself to the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then your light will rise in darkness and your gloom will become like midday and the Lord will continually guide you and satisfy your desire in scorched places" Isaiah 58:9-11

...one more sample

here's a good ol hymn they shook up....sorry, no visual. use your imagination

Mars Hill Easter Tribal Gathering

As a way to signify the tribal-like community shared at Mars, they did an all-percussion worship. Now, of course my little camera taking video does not give justice to the power and chest-thumping rumble of the experience of being there, but here's a quick sample.
There were about 8 guys up there pounding on everything from trash cans to waste baskets to large cardboard boxes to toilet tops to dust pans; there were no "real" drums or percussion instruments.
Check it out....

The end of the world as we know it

An interesting article in the latest "relevant" issue:

We can be so excellent in relating the details of one scene in the Jesus drama, that no one knows the whole script. The good news becomes the "good sound bite" as the story is reduced from a cosmic epic to "The idiot's guide to the things Jesus said and did".

Tractor beaming the Jesus event down to the level of my culture turns the story into a convenient parody, like depicting an anglo republican Jesus or a revolutionary, AK 47-toting Jesus or a big-therapist-in-the-sky Jesus or Venture Capitalist Jesus, all of whom look like us.
Most of the time, this captured Jesus seems on a mission that amounts to helping us live the american dream (suv's, lattes and botox) with heaven as the big exclamation point at the end. So is that the kingdom of God?

The kingdom of God is the only real world, Jesus came to announce the demise of everything else. He did not go to the cross and raise from the dead so we could live more successfully in a world that is temporary. Rather, his purpose was to make it possible for us to live right now in another eternal world that is breaking in all around us if we have the eyes to see it.

The kingdom of Me + God? or The kingdom of God + Me?

- earl creps