Today would have been the perfect opportunity to start that “video-blog” thing I’ve been thinking about. I was asked to speak at our Tuesday morning “Sonrisers” (90% guys) breakfast and a two-minute clip would’ve been a nice addition to today’s post.

The leaders asked me there to talk about last week’s “On this polarizing need to be right…” post.

DISCUSSION: It turns out that the majority of those present had already read the post, so I skipped directly into the discussion. “Who here is consistently 100% right, pretty much all the time?” I asked. Fortunately, all I got in response was laughter.

“But we often think that we are!” Bob chimed in, demonstrating a lot of insight.

My next question required a short response from everyone there. “Share one thing, in a word or a short phrase, that God has done for you,” I said.

Then we went around the table. God forgives me. God loves me. God gives me purpose. God accepts me. I know God is waiting for me. God believes in me….

And we talked about Jesus, about how Jesus didn’t spend a lot of time outlining church doctrine but rather spent all of himself loving people, healing people, forgiving people, teaching about the Kingdom of God.

I talked about children, and how they come into this world with their spirits wide open and their hearts naturally attuned to God’s grace and love. And I talked about how the wide-open spirit of children is gradually, systematically, sadly constricted over time until they become cynical adults and all they have left of God is the law.

So of course we talked about how Jesus intends to reverse that process of constriction.

CONCLUSION: Then (and I’m skipping over a whole lot here), I asked one more question, almost the same as the first but slightly nuanced. “What truth about God do you want the whole world (and most especially your un-churched neighbor) to know?”

And their answers (many more than this sampling) pretty much mirrored the first set. “That God loves them.” “That God knows them.” “That God cares for them.” “That God wants to give them meaning and purpose.” “That God wants them to experience grace.” “That, because of God’s love, I love them too…..”

Finally I asked if it is reasonable to conclude that – by acting as caring, living, forgiven, grace-filled, purposeful, joyful Christians – we are communicating the Good News of the Gospel of Love more accurately (and certainly more eloquently) than if we’re arguing the fine details of doctrine, bad-mouthing other believers, and staunchly insisting that we are right and that others are wrong?

It was a good discussion, and I felt the presence of The Lord of Love in a very real way.

ONE LAST Q: I didn’t have time for my last question, so I’ll pose it to you here in this post:

1. “Have you ever read a familiar passage of scripture and been confronted with the realization that it spoke to you as if it was brand new?”
2. “Have you ever seen something in the Bible you’ve never seen before?”
3. “Has God ever revealed something to you during Bible study that was a breath of fresh insight, something that came at you like a shaft of light, something that illuminated the word as if for the first time?”

If you answered “yes” to any of those questions, then were you WRONG the last time you read it? Did God tell you the wrong information the other 25 times you studied the text?

Or, is God “New Every Morning?”

It helps me to remember that this faith thing is more about my relationship with God than it is anything else; and that Jesus is all about teaching me, loving me, and showing me what it looks like to love with God’s kind of love – DEREK