resident alien day 12...living on the edge

It's been a couple of days since I was last able to sit write. It has been very busy indeed.

This past Saturday I was at our annual meeting for the Anglican Church of North America. We were impressed upon to live life on the edge, not so much expressively as positionally.

As resident aliens we are called to live on the fringes of society. Do we?

Take a look at your contact list in your phone. Are you pouring into the lives of folks who look as different from you as East is from West?

The Messiah spent his time with those on the edges of society; women, children, prostitutes, terminally ill, mentally ill, dead. Do we?

When was the last time you sat down and talked with a prostitute sharing the love of Jesus?

When was the last time you sent an email out to your friend who shunned by her family?

When was the last time other than a holiday or when your church planned the event that you sat down with a homeless person to share a meal and conversation?

Why do we have such an aversion to the edges? We crave them in brownies, but not in our churches?

Why?

Resolve this day to live on the edge for the love of God.

Levi gave a large dinner at his home for Jesus. Everybody was there, tax men and other disreputable characters as guests at the dinner. The Pharisees and their religion scholars came to his disciples greatly offended. “What is he doing eating and drinking with crooks and ‘sinners’?”

Jesus heard about it and spoke up, “Who needs a doctor: the healthy or the sick? I’m here inviting outsiders, not insiders—an invitation to a changed life, changed inside and out.”