This morning, my family rose up early and went forty minutes north to Santa Barbara for the day. There’s a lovely artwalk on the beach there where anyone can find a kaleidoscope of characters. That’s definitely what we found.

We met a young woman, paralyzed on one side, who asked for my assistance in lighting her cigarette in the wind. I’ve never lit a cigarette in my life until today. I stopped on the pier and spoke with a man named Steve who learned to make beautiful flowers out of palm fronds. I asked him where he learned to do that, and he told me that he saw a guy doing it once, and learned it from him. He told me that palm fronds are incredibly strong. I left him a couple of bucks and thanked him for the conversation. We walked past a protest for peace where the group had placed a cross in the sand for every life lost in the war in Iraq. Looking at the sea of crosses, I couldn’t help wiping a couple of tears away. We passed a young man with a backpack who told us that we were all Jesus and that we needed to know that. I don’t know, but I think that Jesus must’ve been bursting out of him today. Yes, it was an interesting day at the beach, but the most interesting person was the last one we encountered.

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Sorry for the late report.  I am still decompressing a little from the Born Again Church Tour (Off The Map’s “LIVE” event) in Denver.  You’ll notice I do not say much about the actual content of the event here (I did more of that in my Seattle report).  It’s not because I wasn’t amazed by it, but this event took a more personal track for me.  So this will be a more personal reflection.  And please…forgive me for the rambling here.  Things are still settling in my soul.

Foothills Community Church was the venue, a church that decided to stay in the strip mall they were renting in and express the Kingdom of God right there on the bus line.   Read the rest of this entry »

When we first started our ministry to seniors, I was under the impression that this was a ministry to seniors, but I have learned that this is really a ministry to families. Families everywhere are going through the horrible and excruciating process of trying to deal with the plight of their aging parents. It wouldn’t be so difficult if their loved ones weren’t fully immersed in the process of dying, but the reality is that they are, and the family members are dealing with this reality as best they can.

I was reminded of this yesterday after we completed the service at our second senior facility. As I greeted our seniors after the service, I came to a young woman who was there with her mother. Her eyes were filled with tears and her nose was reddened from crying. She reached out and took both my hands, “You really have no idea how much this service has meant to me,” she said, and her voice wavered with the emotion. “I am going to write you a letter to tell you all that has happened in my life and how this has affected my life. I want you to know how over these last six months it has all come full circle.”

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