What keeps you faithful...

[Ryan Parker]

This might be a fairly heady discussion going into the weekend, but an old friend asked me today what I like about Jesus and his people. I thought I would turn the question over to this small, but hopefully growing, group. What is it that keeps you faithful. What about your faith, Christian or non, or your denomination attracts you? It's easy to bash religion these days. Here's a chance to reflect positively.

[tripp fuller]

This morning I got up early and went to a lectio group that meets in the back of a bar @ 8 am. The passage read aloud was the beginning of Mark where the Father speaks to Jesus during his baptism and says "you are my son in whom I am well pleased." The phrase that stuck out to me and centered me throughout the meditation was 'my.' In that time I became aware again that God knows my name, my face, and my sh*t. While some of the sh*t is my own, there is a gracious freedom in knowing I am not my own. God reminded me that I am an image-bearer, an Ikon of God. God has said and I have heard in Christ that we are all recipients of God's gracious and empowering 'my son, my daughter.' This identity is a gift and it comes with a task (Global Ikon-restoration), but today I was kept faithful because God not only gives us our beautiful identity in the 'my' but God has also made my sh*t God's own.