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We were talking about Isaiah 28 at the mission yesterday. Isaiah 28:16 (HCSB) Therefore the Lord God said: “Look, I have laid a stone in Zion,a tested stone,a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation; the one who believes will be unshakable.” In ancient times when they built buildings, it was very difficult to make a large stone perfectly square. SO they would spend all of their time on one perfect stone, making it completely square, and then line up all the rest according to its edges. The other stones needed to be flat, they couldn’t be big round boulders, but they didn’t have to be flattened into perfect square because the cornerstone was perfect. As long as they were lined up correctly with the cornerstone, the building would be built correctly. It’s the same way with us and Jesus. HE is our righteousness; HE is our correct standing before God, and as long as...
Tonight I left work after about a 14 hour moving extravaganza. Over the course of about 13 hours, we moved over 150 homeless men from our old facility to our new one. It was exhausting, full of unexpected questions, and tiring. After our first dinner and our first chapel service, everyone began to settle in to the new place. Curfew is at nine o’clock, so we figured the check-ins would slow to a halt by then. I had been walking around, tying up loose ends, checking to see that I didn’t put any old guys in top bunks or young & spry guys in bottom bunks. A guy I’ll call Sean came up to me. “Dan, can I show you something?” We walked into the suite reserved for men in our discipleship program. We stood just inside the door so as to be unnoticed. Four guys were playing pool and one was turning off the air hockey table. “Would you *look* at these guys?...
This week we took the final pieces of the old Evansville Rescue Mission down and prepared for our grand opening of our new building at 500 E. Walnut st. One of the last things to do was to take down the cross in our old chapel and bring it over to the new chapel. Who would have thought such a thing would happen in the process. Billy is one of our maintenance men. He couldn’t get at the bolts that held the cross on the wall, so he cut off the brackets with a hack saw and began to carry the old cross out of the building. I’m not sure how he was carrying it, but there began some commentary from the other guys that were around. They told him he was carrying it wrong. The way he was carrying it wasn’t the right way to carry a cross, the peanut gallery protested. “Isn’t that the point?” Billy asked. “Not a one of us could carry it right! It’s not my cross anyway. He carried it right and now...
2 Corinthians 5:17 is on my mind tonight. We go there a lot at the mission and my co-workers were talking about it today...