Speaking of Truth?

So this is my sermon title for Sunday. It's on John 14:15-21 which is:

¹⁵ "If you love me, keep my commands. ¹⁶ And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— ¹⁷ the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. ¹⁸ I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. ¹⁹ Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. ²⁰ On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. ²¹ Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. Anyone who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them."

This pericope is problematic for me because it has so many sermons in it. I think you could spend at least 3 months on this single section. It has so many complex theological and practical issues in it, so the question for me is which to choose. Do you preach on the parakletos (advocate/holy spirit), keeping commandments, what does love mean, what does it mean that we have the spirit in us?, etc...but I think I'm going to pass by these to preach on verse 17 and the spirit of truth. I want to look at what it means to refer to truth as a person; The spirit of truth and what it means to have a relational idea of truth.

What do you think? What does this passage mean to you?

How do you organize?

So after my weekly meeting with Bruce, he asked me a bunch of questions about how I get things done. It's really an interesting question, because I'm not much on the organizational side (to say the least) and things pretty much get done with either a deadline or inspiration happen. Neither of which you can count on regularly (well some deadlines but not my self-appointed ones).

So I thought I would give this a try and float one out to any of you? How do you get things done? How do you stay organized?

Here are some brainstorming:

- write it down (keeping copious hand written notes that you check regularly)
- use iCal or Outlook (some kind of software package)
- use an online task manger type thingy (yes technical I know) like backpackit.com or rememberthemilk or ta-da list or Todoist

anyways, my current options (not doing anything on purpose or writing it down and not looking at it again) just isn't working anymore.

In Response to Hunger

So as those of you who follow the news (or like me love NPR) then you are probably aware of the rising cost of stock foods, like Rice. This week at church during prayers of the people this issue was brought up. We've seen the price of rice DOUBLE. That's so not go for the millions of people who function every day with this as the staple of their diet. So in response to this prayer request Tiffany shared about freerice.com which is a vocabulary quiz site that is free to play and the advertising of the website donates free rice for every one you answer. So instead of reading this blog...click over here and earn some rice.

Yes, this could almost count as a part time job...

BTW I've only gotten up to 34 so far (and raise a few thousand grains of rice).