For the sake of the cross...

As I listened to a reporters rendition of the final moments of Flight 93, I was struck by the passion that would move ordinary individuals to make destiny changing decisions. Knowing that their actions were most likely going to cost their own lives for the salvation of many countless strangers they would never meet, they acted in an instant.
I couldn't help but let my mind drift to my latest reading addiction, Paul: A Novel, by Walter Wangerin, Jr. In this Bible-based, yet ficitional account of the Apostle Paul's life, the author lets us see through the eye's of his many acquaintences. In one place he recounts Paul being dragged before the proconsul of Corinth (Acts 18). In Wangerin's account, Paul tries to protect Sosthenes (the leader of the synagogue that brought Paul to the court) from being killed by the angry mob by covering him with his own body. His friends inquire after the event as to why he laid face up so that the crowd could strike him so painfully. The gist of Paul's tongue-in-cheek comment was that after so many beatings, there simply wasn't much of his back left to offer the crowd. In speaking of his passion for the church in Collosae, Paul wrote, "Now I rejoice in what was suffered for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ's afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church." (Colossians 1:24 NIV).

And with that long discourse, I simply ask you, "What is your passion level for a lost and dying world?"

Grace and peace!!! Pastor Brian