Don't know if you subscribe to the TMC Chapel podcast ... if you don't, let me suggest you drop everything you're doing right now and go and sign-up for it HERE. Now! Don't wait! ... well ... wait 'til you finish this post, at least.

Of course, some of the messages they post are better than others. Pick the flowers and leave the weeds, as they say. But, let me encourage you to find the message by Francis Chan on the "Love of God". It was posted 18 April, 2007. Take a listen, and then write back to me and tell me if you were able to listen to that message completely unaffected!

... wow! ... What a great message!

I usually listen to messages/sermon MP3s while I am doing school work — preparing lectures, reading, grading, that kind of thing. I don't know why it doesn't bother/distract me. You would think it would. But it doesn't. At least not most of the time. (My brain is wired strangely, I confess. Sometimes its disconcerting even to me!) Well, I want to tell you that THIS message was one that REALLY distracted me! I had to stop working on three or four occasions simply because Chan beat the snot out me, man! I was a sobbing mess at my desk - crying out to God in abject repentance! "Oh God be merciful to me, a sinner!"

What a GREAT message! If you haven't heard it already, grab a cup of coffee and listen when you've got about 45-50 minutes. I promise you that it will not be a waste of your time. Chan will mess with your soul! And you'll be blessed for it!

Horatio

Just found out that I've been lied to for the last 43 years of my life. (I confess its a bit surreal, and I feel a bit stupid. And I don't know whether I've actually come to grips with the whole thing yet.) As it turns out I do NOT, in fact, have a blood-related sister named Wendy. And I do not, in fact, have Japanese blood in my veins. I have a two-page document from the County of Sacramento's Department of Social Welfare informing me that Wendy and I are full brother and sister, that my mother was half-Japanese, and that my father was German-Irish ... its all bunk! The whole thing! (Which probably comes as no surprise to most who have known me.) I met up with Wendy a few months ago (after being estranged from her for more than 20 years). We spent a week together talking about all sorts of things - including our suspicions that we were, perhaps, not as closely related as we had been led to believe. She thought that, perhaps, we had the same mother but different fathers. It was my suspicion that we neither had the same mother NOR the same father. So we pursued some genetic testing ... to solve the issue once and for all. Lab results? I was right. She was wrong. We're not genetically related whatsoever!! The State of California, the foster home, the adoption agency, our adopted parents, the whole lot of them have conspired against us for the last 43 years! Only now does the truth come out!

Reminds me of a skit done by Bill Cosby - "To My Brother Russell, with Whom I Slept" — one brother says to the younger, "I don't want you touchin' me on my side of the bed, cuz you're not really my brother anyway. The police brought you here and said you could stay until you started lying. The police are your parents!"

As I said, its a bit surreal to find out that even the small tidbit of your origins that you THOUGHT you knew (the only things to which you could actually grab onto) are actually lies. The police are my parents! From a purely worldly perspective, one begins to ask: "Well, then, who am I, really? If all that they've been feeding me for the past 43 years of my life is nothing but hogwash, then from whence HAVE I come? Who WERE my parents? What ARE my earthly roots?"

Okay, I'm a grown man. Its not like my world is going to collapse around my ankles and someone's gonna need to prescribe me some Ritalin ... but still ... it IS somewhat disconcerting. I mean, how would YOU react if YOU found out that everything that YOU believed about your relatives was in fact false — they were not your relatives at all. In fact, you have no blood-relation to "those people" whatsoever?

Its strange. Even at 43, its strange.

Horatio