Thankfulness for someone who encouraged thought

A great man of God passed away yesterday: Chuck Colson.

There are leaders of the faith who have inspired me, those who have equipped me, those who have encouraged me. But Chuck Colson is a leader who challenged me to think about and understand my faith. And in doing so he inspired, equipped, and encouraged.

The first time I ever heard Chuck Colson I had no idea who he was or that it was him I was listening to. At the beginning of his song, "Heaven in the Real World," Stephen Curtis Chapman had a sound bite of Colson saying this:

"Where is the hope? I meet millions of people who feel demoralized by the decay around us. The hope that each of us has is not in who governs us, or what laws we pass, or what great things we do as a nation. Our hope is in the power of God working through the hearts of people. And that's where our hope is in this country. And that's where our hope is in life." 

His life story is about that hope. His story is a testimony to the powerful grace of God.

If you've never heard of or interacted with the work of Chuck Colson, I highly recommend you do.

Read his obituary press release here.

Read his story here.

Check out his books here. If you want some suggested starting places I'd go with The Faith, How Now Shall We Live, and The Body. 

And check out this video...

The humor of Gmail going down today

My Gmail wasn't working earlier today. Getting the send error led to getting an "oops...not able to connect to servers" error. What in the world is going on? 

So I went to Twitter to ask the world what was up. There were a ton of responses back from the simple search of "Gmail Down." There was first confirmation that the service was indeed not working for many people. A large amount of people actually. Not being the only person affected by the outage, my Twitter search also brought a lot of responses from people "sharing" about the outage. 

Some of the responses were just stating the growing obvious - the service wasn't working. Some were disgruntled users acting like bratty 4yr olds. But there were also a ton of humorous comments. I got to the point where screen shots started to get taken as I laughed more and more through them:

Dealing with the CONTRASTs of life

This Sunday at New Life we are beginning a new teaching series called CONTRAST. This is a great description of what it's all about:

This world can be a dark and broken place.  The headlines tell of unjust wars and gang violence, misused wealth and extreme poverty, broken relationships and fragmented families, anger, selfishness and fear.  But there is a contrast. A light more powerful than the darkness also shines. A new world is breaking into this old one. In our newest teaching series we'll see that the light is Jesus and  His new world is entering through the people who restore in His name. This is a series about being a faith community that is seeking to be the difference, restoring light rather than cursing darkness.

The teachings will be based on John's first letter, which is toward the end of the New Testament. I'm really excited about this this series because it is about identity and empowerment, truth and justice. It will be phenomenal! 

If you are in Chicago I hope you can come and be part of it (Our services at New Life Lincoln Park are at 10am and 5pm). Or if you aren't in the city you can download the messages from here.