Life Group

So Forefront has life groups three times a year. Out spring one just finished. We were looking at the gospel of John. It was pretty different since we did the entire book in about 9 weeks. We were having to do like 3 chapters at a time to get all the way through at times. But we got to see the big themes in John, like Life, Divinity, Love, Truth, stuff like that. Anyway, for our last meeting we did some artistic reflection. We had paints, playdoh, and I played a song I had written on my guitar the week earlier. It was all pretty awesome. Kevin, who is a music connoisseur played some sweet "artistic" music he had on his ipod as we created our art.
Here is Katie and her fish. This is one of the fist caught by the boy to feed the 5000.
Here is Carrie's pic reflecting the Life that Jesus gives.

Here we kind of took a picture too late and Kevin was taking his playdo masterpiece apart...

Here's my picture. I just wanted to paint, so I started splattering and dripping paint on the paper. It looked cool, so I ran with it. I decided that it's the blood of Christ on the road to the cross.

Afterward, we went to a bar close by to hang out and eat hushpuppies! Yeah!

All in all, it was a great group. Some are moving away :( but the rest of us will hopefully stick together during the Summer as we look at the book of Proverbs.

The Mets

So it's either the Mets or the Yankees. You've got to pick one right? I'm not sure it's the same as Chicago with the Cubs and the White Sox where you must pick one and be against the other. It's definitely not real heated in New York. But at this point, when people ask, I always say I'm a Mets fan more than a Yankees fan. Why you ask? Well, it all goes back to my childhood.....not. A few experiences. Comparing the fan base, Mets fans were much more excited and supportive of their team at the first game I went to (granted I sat in pretty bad bleachers at the Yankees game I went to). Then there's the sense of just jumping on the bandwagon of the Yankees, since they are iconic of New York City. Then there's ARod and his fickleness (will he stay with the Yankees or not? How many more millions does he need?).
If you know me well, you know that I've never been a hard-core fan of any team anywhere. So who knows if being a Mets fan will stick? And yes, I did have to do some wikipedia searches to make sure that some info in the post was correct if that tells you anything.
So a few weeks ago, Forefront had a volunteer appreciation and Caren got a bunch of us decent tickets to the Mets Braves game (Mets won by 1, yes!). So here's my boyish picture at Shea Stadium. It was so cold that day!

Stolen Computer

My computer was stolen last Friday.  I was sitting in Chipotle (fast food restaurant) and while my roommate and I were talking, it disappeared.

We had gone to a Good Friday service earlier that night at Redeemer Presbyterian.  Man, it was powerful.  I don't know if you're a fan of liturgy, but it can sure focus one's mind well.  I was really confronted with my own sin.  It's been a while.  And it made talk of the cross so much more penetrating.  I had met God.

So after meeting with God, we went to Chipotle.  From the moment we left the church, Tim and I began to discuss church and worship and community - good stuff that you don't get to talk about at length often enough.  I decided the get tacos instead of a burrito this time.  It was alright.  We kept talking for at least 30 minutes after we were done eating.  I thought of something and got a pen out of my backpack that was right by my leg on the floor.  About 10 minutes later, we decided to leave and discovered that my backpack was gone.   From then on, lots of emotions flooded through me.  I sure am glad that Tim was there, because I could hardly think straight enough to think of anything I should do.  We called the police, scoped out the place, talk to the management, sent out text messages for prayer, etc.  It was rough.  No one saw anything.  There were 4 people sitting right by us, and they saw nothing.  There were no security cameras by us (I checked the others later and found nothing).  So, today it's 5 days later, and I'm pretty sure that my computer has a new memory and is in the hands of someone else.  Though there's always hope that it will get back to me with the memory still in tact.

For the most part, I've been a little surprised at how OK I am.  It's a big deal and a major inconvenience, but God is faithful.  I lost some stuff, yeah, but I've got a job so I'll be able to get replacement stuff again.

Last night in my Life Group, we talked about Jesus when he said, "I am the resurrection and the life."  Death was in the air, and I couldn't help seeing that before we can have the life that is truly life that Jesus offers, we have to face death.  We have to face our own sin and the consequences.  And when we accept Jesus' death on our behalf, we can experience resurrection.  And what does that resurrected life look like?  It's: exciting, a new lease on life, part of a bigger story, giving love to others as we've been given, running through a field, loving people unconditionally, and so much more.

So I think about this guy who lifted my bag.

I've been reading Genesis lately and before God flooded the earth, Genesis 6:5-6 says:

"Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.  The LORD was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart." (NASB)

"His heart was filled with pain." (NIV)

"It broke his heart." (NLT)

My sin is a part of that.  The man who robbed me (God's creation in His own image) broke God's heart.  If God's heart is broken, then so if mine.  This man does not know the love of God that I have experienced - the kind of love that voluntarily sacrifices itself for another despite full knowledge of their complete sin.  I pray that God would reveal himself to this man, that he would crash into his life.  I pray that I would meet him one day... as a brother.

Presuppositions

So it's been a little weird telling people that I work at Jews for Jesus. I seem to often an "OH" response. It's like I just told them, "and oh yeah, I'm an expert on all things Jewish." It's funny. It's like telling someone you work for a hedge fund and immediately being asked financial questions. Well, I'll tell you now that I don't know a lot of things about Jews in NYC. I'm learning here and there, but my main job is to support the staff who does know so they can reach out to Jews.
Here's the reason I'm writing about this. I don't want to be defined by what I do for a living. I want people to known me for me.
If I tell someone that I'm a "Christian," they immediately have a stereotype in their minds of what that person believes, looks, and acts like. For the most part in New York City, it's negative. We've got to live a life so that people can be surprised when they hear we're followers of Jesus. Am I defined by following Jesus? Yes. However, people have extremely different and diverse definitions to draw from. In this context, I am forced to follow the real Jesus or fall into one of many false definitions.
There's you're fun fact for the day.

The Past Month

As you can see below (previous post), it's been a while. February was a pretty eventful month I guess. I started a new job for one thing. This past week was three weeks. I'm an administrative assistant at the Jews for Jesus office in Manhattan. Josh, the branch director was one of the speakers for two of the Ozark classes. After he taught the second class, we got to talk a little, and he half-jokingly asked if I wanted to do some "administrative grunt work" when he heard I was in search of work. I answered a quick Yes! A few weeks later I had an interview. I learned later that he was not seriously considering hiring someone until that conversation. So, I'm learning the ropes of the office and eventually I'll be his assistant. It's definitely not what I envisioned myself doing, but it's where God has led me. I thought I would get a job where I could be around lots of unChristian people, but I guess I get to share the gospel in a different way to people when they call the J4J office. So, I'm thankful for work and a paycheck.
Last weekend, an Ozark class also came out. They were here just from Friday to Monday. It was an "Introduction to Church Planting" class, and I got to be with them all weekend. They were a great group, and we had some great teachers. I am so thankful that God led me to be involved with this. I've been learning stuff and have had church planting on my mind more and more. Pretty sweet.
Life Groups also started this month. I'm leading one that's studying the Gospel of John. The three meetings we've had have been great so far. There's about 11 of us altogether (though not everyone has shown up at the same time). Though we're meeting in the Forefront office, everyone has felt comfortable. I've tried to make it as homey as possible. The group is kind of backwards from what I thought it would be though. I kind of envisioned having some people who weren't Christians, but everyone is. I also thought it would be super focused on study and not so much on relationships, but people have been staying after group for a whole hour just talking. That's OK with me.

Wow, so it's been like a whole month since I've posted! Oh my! The fan mail has just been piling up, so I haven't had the time! Rest assured, blogging will return.

So last week on the way home from work I saw a guy who obviously was either coming from or going to the airport. He had a large thin case, and I asked him if it was a snowboard. We started talking, and he told me that he had just come from Colorado from a snowboarding week. He got to see The X Games and showed me a video on his camera. It was pretty cool, cause I had watched a few minutes of the X Games on Sunday. It was just a random conversation with a random person, but I really felt like I should keep talking to him. It was weird, but it was like the Spirit was prompting me. So I asked him questions about whatever I could think of, and he was pretty talkative. Now the amazing thing was that this had been going on for about 30 minutes and he and I were both not home yet. In the back of my mind I kept thinking how awesome it would be if he lived in Bensonhurst and how much more awesome it would be if he was at my stop! Well, we kept talking, he wants to go to Colorado and live on the slopes. Not a bad life if I say so. Anyway it turns out that, wonder of wonders, he got off at the same stop as me. He lives like a block and half away from me! We exchanged numbers and hopefully will be a drink this weekend or something.
I question all the time why God led me to live in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. It's kinda far from Manhattan, and there's only a few people from Forefront here. I dream all the time of being a part of a group of Christians that can live close together and radically effect the neighborhood where they live. I guess God works all the time when the circumstances aren't perfectly like we've planned.