i read this book that has led me to some maybes.
We Really Do Need Each Other its a great book, by Reuben Welch. pretty easy read with great Biblical principles.
one of the ideas i love from the book is that God doesn't need us to tell Him how much we love Him (although, I think it naturally overflows out of our lives), but we can show how we trust and believe His love by the way we love others. Its like if we are convinced that our lives are caught up in Christ, then we are FREE to lay them down because we believe that they will be raised up with Him. so we can be spent loving people. seeing people. really seeing people.
we are free to love because we know that Jesus loves us.
if we don't think the love, the life will run out, then we are free to love and give life. Jesus says, "what good is it for a man to have the whole world and lose his soul?" what good is is to have life saved up when we die?
maybe saved up life is more like manna then money. maybe everyday God gives us more than enough life for the today and if we try to save some for tomorrow it will be rotten like the Israelite's manna. what if our "saved up" life won't gain interest and earn us more like a bank account, but will spoil like yesterday's manna. maybe we need to believe God when He says that He cares more for us than the sparrows and meadows which are abundantly cared for.
maybe its not just the physical, maybe its everything.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Sunday, March 2, 2008
greece!
i'm currently in athens, greece. and let me tell you, they are not lying when they say its breathtaking. its been a fun day and a half. people sometimes hate the play-by-play but i'm going to do it anyway, so now you've been warned. but i thinks its been a pretty unusual/funny couple days.
we arrived at the airport on saturday morning, our flight was early (like that ever happens), so our ride wasn't there to greet us, so we waited and then he came. this nice staff guy from texas left his usual saturday with the family to pick us up. he told us the things we needed to see and the areas of town that might be a little shady and even where to go to church. super helpful.
we checked in to our hotel, the pictures online give it a bit more credit than it deserves (its still really awesome and i'm so thankful to be staying here). then we decided to make good use of our day. we were told that the sunset from mars hill was amazing, so we planned our day around that. we walked up this street that has all the "galleria" shopping. carnival began this week, its the weeks leading up to Greek Orthodox Lent, so for carnival kids (and some crazy adults) dress up like princesses, pirates, cowboys, the three wise men(grown-ups), bumblebees, and other random stuff. so here we are in greece walking up this street that has random people in costumes, stray dogs sleeping where ever, native americans dancing, standing basses playing, refugees selling weird toys, the smell of sesame bread, its not what i thought of when i thought of greece. but i love it. so after finding this little cafe and having some lunch we walked toward the archeological sites. but it was still early enough that we didn't want to go up to mars hill, so we went to the national garden. it was a nice garden and the sun was shining, so we decided to take naps on the park benches. it was so funny. i was awakened by lisa telling me that turtles were fighting, we went to watch. the bigger turtle was running itself into the smaller one. the bigger one then was biting the neck of the smaller one. then the big one got on top of the little one and began making some strange noises, we are convinced they were mating and all of a sudden i felt like i shouldn't watch it, especially with a creepy greek dude watching it with us. then we went onward toward the sites. we stopped outside the gates of the old olympic site, the temple of zeus, the theatre of dionysos, the acropolis and finally made our way to the top of mars hill, the very place where Paul made his address to the "Men of Athens" in Acts 17. we watched the sunset over Athens from this incredible vantage point. so we returned to our hotel through the bustling streets of athens. then sunday morning we went to the international church. it was good, fun to see so many people from so many cultures worshipping together. after the service we briefly met a few of the stinters here. then we were off again to see this city (we got to see all of the archeological sites for free, because in the off-season on sundays, they are all open). we grabbed lunch at another cafe on a busy street, then headed straight for the acropolis, on the way we bumped into hadrian's library and roman agora, so we stopped in. then up the hill to the acropolis. we took pictures next to pretty much every ancient column in the city. it was fun, but now there are a lot of pictures of each of us standing by ourselves in front of some old marble stuff, we got a few pictures together though thanks to the mono-pod. its amazing to be at the top of the city on the acropolis because you can see the whole city, the mountains on three sides and the ocean on the last side. also very fortified in case greece has any enemies :) our last site to see was the filopappou hill. this was amazing to see the acropolis from another high spot in athens. then we hiked back down the hill in search for some good food. we stopped by many little restaurants, but just weren't feeling them. we walked around this busy little corner to find a small, fairly vacant restaurant. it seemed to have some stuff that looked good so we sat down, ordered some coffee and food. the owner was talking with another american in the patio area about how he was moving to wisconsin. we were intrigued and asked him where he was moving, turns out he is moving to a little town where a friend of ours went to college. through out the night we talked with the owner and the other american woman, it was just a nice little spot to enjoy a laid back meal. the food was excellent, as was the coffee. then the owner brought out this great greek dessert. lisa didn't love it, but i thought it was really good. it was a greek yogurt with honey. sounds strange, but it was good. then a nigerian refugee (there are lots of refugees here) came to our table and tried to sell us dvds. when the sale wasn't going well, he decided to try to flirt us into a sale. that didn't work either. in the end he walked away from our disinterest. i like this city. anyway, i recommend athens. and its fun to have a fun friend with you.
we arrived at the airport on saturday morning, our flight was early (like that ever happens), so our ride wasn't there to greet us, so we waited and then he came. this nice staff guy from texas left his usual saturday with the family to pick us up. he told us the things we needed to see and the areas of town that might be a little shady and even where to go to church. super helpful.
we checked in to our hotel, the pictures online give it a bit more credit than it deserves (its still really awesome and i'm so thankful to be staying here). then we decided to make good use of our day. we were told that the sunset from mars hill was amazing, so we planned our day around that. we walked up this street that has all the "galleria" shopping. carnival began this week, its the weeks leading up to Greek Orthodox Lent, so for carnival kids (and some crazy adults) dress up like princesses, pirates, cowboys, the three wise men(grown-ups), bumblebees, and other random stuff. so here we are in greece walking up this street that has random people in costumes, stray dogs sleeping where ever, native americans dancing, standing basses playing, refugees selling weird toys, the smell of sesame bread, its not what i thought of when i thought of greece. but i love it. so after finding this little cafe and having some lunch we walked toward the archeological sites. but it was still early enough that we didn't want to go up to mars hill, so we went to the national garden. it was a nice garden and the sun was shining, so we decided to take naps on the park benches. it was so funny. i was awakened by lisa telling me that turtles were fighting, we went to watch. the bigger turtle was running itself into the smaller one. the bigger one then was biting the neck of the smaller one. then the big one got on top of the little one and began making some strange noises, we are convinced they were mating and all of a sudden i felt like i shouldn't watch it, especially with a creepy greek dude watching it with us. then we went onward toward the sites. we stopped outside the gates of the old olympic site, the temple of zeus, the theatre of dionysos, the acropolis and finally made our way to the top of mars hill, the very place where Paul made his address to the "Men of Athens" in Acts 17. we watched the sunset over Athens from this incredible vantage point. so we returned to our hotel through the bustling streets of athens. then sunday morning we went to the international church. it was good, fun to see so many people from so many cultures worshipping together. after the service we briefly met a few of the stinters here. then we were off again to see this city (we got to see all of the archeological sites for free, because in the off-season on sundays, they are all open). we grabbed lunch at another cafe on a busy street, then headed straight for the acropolis, on the way we bumped into hadrian's library and roman agora, so we stopped in. then up the hill to the acropolis. we took pictures next to pretty much every ancient column in the city. it was fun, but now there are a lot of pictures of each of us standing by ourselves in front of some old marble stuff, we got a few pictures together though thanks to the mono-pod. its amazing to be at the top of the city on the acropolis because you can see the whole city, the mountains on three sides and the ocean on the last side. also very fortified in case greece has any enemies :) our last site to see was the filopappou hill. this was amazing to see the acropolis from another high spot in athens. then we hiked back down the hill in search for some good food. we stopped by many little restaurants, but just weren't feeling them. we walked around this busy little corner to find a small, fairly vacant restaurant. it seemed to have some stuff that looked good so we sat down, ordered some coffee and food. the owner was talking with another american in the patio area about how he was moving to wisconsin. we were intrigued and asked him where he was moving, turns out he is moving to a little town where a friend of ours went to college. through out the night we talked with the owner and the other american woman, it was just a nice little spot to enjoy a laid back meal. the food was excellent, as was the coffee. then the owner brought out this great greek dessert. lisa didn't love it, but i thought it was really good. it was a greek yogurt with honey. sounds strange, but it was good. then a nigerian refugee (there are lots of refugees here) came to our table and tried to sell us dvds. when the sale wasn't going well, he decided to try to flirt us into a sale. that didn't work either. in the end he walked away from our disinterest. i like this city. anyway, i recommend athens. and its fun to have a fun friend with you.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)