A few nights ago my son and I had a couple of hours together to just do whatever. So we went to the church and listened to our new worship band practice for the kickoff of our new worship service called Third Service(shameless plug), then we headed out for some ice cream.
We went through the McDonald's drive thru to get some cones. After we got our cones, we are sitting in the parking lot and Parker just says out of the blue, "I love this in my life" referring to the ice cream cone. I started laughing because it was just so funny how he said it and for some reason I immediately thought of GRACE. God's abundant, sweet GRACE.
I don't know why I did this maybe it was because I was thinking about the message I have to preach in a few weeks which has to do with sin, and I LOVE having grace in my life which covers so much in my life. How I need to have grace for others, and from others.
As we head toward Easter may you remember how good the grace of God is, poured out on us through Jesus.
So for all of you who will be attending Third Service you just got a sneak peek of part of the message for May 3rd!
Hope to see you all there.
To stretch your ice cream metaphor- God is the cone that holds it all together, Jesus is the ice cream, and the Spirit is the sprinkles or whatever you like for a topping. And the sum is a reflection / magnification of all the parts that through Grace makes for a most satisfying treat that is best when shared. This should probably go on a t-shirt.
Posted by: Spencer Jackson | March 31, 2009 at 09:31 PM
I'll come back around to this post later, but the thoughts of this post inspired one of my "Special Pictures" and with permission from Spencer, I present what this blog post looks like on a T-Shirt:
http://www.geocities.com/awilhelmsen1/spencersicecream.jpg
Thanks Spencer!
Posted by: Alexander Wilhelmsen | April 09, 2009 at 11:33 PM
Amazing how Grace is, and how there's such a favorite of a song so named "Amazing Grace." That's not the original name for it, but it stuck and it reminds us of how sweet it is to be loved by God... Yes it is! (now sing that last little bit, and stop... and thank you Jesus! Now you want to stop... and thank you Jesus!)
Anyways, If you haven't seen it, I had some fun with Spencer's idea.
On a side note, one of the younger and pretty fascinating members of my current youth ministry happens to be named Parker, and I know that you'd love this guy. Not only for the name, but how he just steps up to volunteer for both the goofy games we sometimes have and helping to serve. Hopefully your Parker is like this one, energetic and he understands that being a teenager isn't about being cool and he's not the church of tomorrow, but of today, just younger.
I'm confident that yours is because just like I know the Parker of the youth's parents, I know more of your Parker's parents. If he's cool like them, then he's gonna be great!
The moral of the story: Parents, love your children and point them towards God first.
Posted by: Alexander Wilhelmsen | April 20, 2009 at 01:06 AM