This week’s severe chill has generated several, “So how do you like North Carolina now?” messages, lobbed in my direction via email, text, and facebook.

My answer remains, “I like it just fine, thank you. This place rocks.”

There are several reasons behind my response.

FIRST – and most importantly – anywhere Rebekah and I live is going to be wonderful: Because that’s where God has called us to be and it’s our decision to love where we are; it always has been.

SECOND – There’s a stark beauty to the winter landscape that I haven’t appreciated in over thirty years: I took the above photograph Sunday morning on a lake in North Georgia, and the second here on our deck. The cold, the muted colors, the gray tones, the naked branches, the invigorating freshness in the air. I have always enjoyed looking for meaning and beauty where I am, not somewhere else; it’s the way my soul is wired, and it informs my writing too.

THIRD – Wake Forest Presbyterian Church: We’ve been in town four full months now, and the personality of WFPC is coloring my impression of North Carolina in beautiful shades of belief, commitment, hope, love, and promise.

I understand that we’re still the new kids on the block, but God first gifted me with a spirit of discernment back when I was still a teenager, and what I see at WFPC is a congregation rooted in a genuine love for Jesus and all of God’s children. And, when a church begins to tell the truth about the Gospel of Love, both in worship and via doing life together as a community, then the possibilities are as real as the promise.

AS REAL AS THE PROMISE: I like that phrase, “The possibilities are as real as the promise.” It fits in with our year-long emphasis on “God’s Promises,” and it also spells out a foundational truth in terms of our walk as followers of the Living Way of Jesus.

That truth is the complete reliability and the unrelenting faithfulness of God. We aren’t building our lives here on our own abilities, around any exclusively crafted doctrines, or in response to the latest opinions or restrictions regarding the reach of the Gospel of Love.

No, our experience here at Wake Forest is emerging out of the context of the complete reliability and the unrelenting faithfulness of God, and out of the commitment of this faith community to live the Gospel of Love like we mean it – because God most certainly does.

In love, and because of love – DEREK

May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully  giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. (Colossians 1:11-12)