Community Living and other thoughts.

Community living, again. The whole team is here now. Over 60 college students that are plenty excited, as they should be. The weather is amazing. The scenery is amazing. We get to see our ministry sites today and we’ll worship atop Mars Hill at sunset this evening. We are staying at a ministry base here in Athens. There’s plenty of room and we have hot showers. There’s plenty of coffee in the morning- we’re trying to keep a tally of how many cups are consumed this week! But if you want some quiet time, you have to get up pretty early. For some reason my body is adjusting well to the time change which so far has allowed me to be awake an hour or two before everyone else which is the only time I expect it to be quiet around here.

Our ministry will keep us out late every night. I don’t expect to see a bed before midnight this week but that’s ok…that’s sort of my default schedule anyway.

Rumor has it there will be a Govt. Strike on Wednesday which will shut down the Subway system. That could pose problems for us for transportation. We’ll see.

Have you ever heard pastors and mission speakers talk about their trips to the Holy Land…about how being there makes the Bible come alive? Well it’s true. I was reading from Acts 17 the other day while I was sitting on Mars Hill. In about the same place I was sitting Paul must have stood and gotten everyone’s attention and said “The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.” Mars Hill is surrounded by temples. I read somewhere that within just a couple hundred years Athens was filled with thousands of churches. You can still see many of them today although they are no longer vibrant communities of faith- rather they are monuments to a bygone era. That’s one of the reasons we are here. To breathe new life into this place; into these people.