Caleb: Dad, Dad, do you know what today is?
Patrick: Yeah, it’s Wednesday, have you eaten breakfast?
Caleb: Yeah, but it’s more than Wednesday..
Patrick: I don’t know, did someone famous die today (Caleb loves trivia and is always hitting us with some new fact)
Caleb: No.  C’mon man, you don’t know what today is??  It’s August 4th!
Patrick: Fantastic, cut to the chase man, we have to get everyone to school.
Caleb: Dad, 3 years ago we came to the US…

To be honest, I froze.  I had been so consumed with what has been going on in our family I had totally forgotten today was ‘Gotcha Day’.  I literally felt like I had been punched in the stomach.  How could I forget such an important date for them?? Josiah cut the silence.

Josiah: Wow, it’s crazy that its been 3 years.  It seems like it was just yesterday.

I recovered quickly with my typical fly by the seat of my pants reaction.  Exactly, it’s Gotcha Day and that’s why I’m taking you guys to Atlanta for a mens conference (they didn’t look thrilled) and we will eat Ethiopian food in ATL (broad smiles spread across their faces) and we will go see a movie (the fact that Dad may have forgotten Gotcha Day was quickly erased by excitement).

The boys absolutely loved our time.  In God’s providence, we met two families who had adopted 14 year old boys from Ethiopia and the boys had been in the US for about a year.  A quick friendship was struck and all 4 boys quickly began speaking Amharic and learning about each others journey.

Caleb mostly sat and absorbed everything; I have never seen him so quiet.  Josiah was like the Energizer Bunny on crack.  Amharic poured out of him and he couldn’t stop speaking it.  He smiled the entire evening.  At the close of the evening Josiah told me that I could just leave him there and he would live there.  I had to promise him to bring him back once or twice a month just to get him back in the truck.

I’ll never forget Josiah’s big smile when he said, “I Remember”.  It was an important connection for the boys to make and we are all looking forward to our next journey to Cottage Ethiopian Cuisine.

Emma is a natural when it comes to singing and performing.  She loves to be on stage and does a fantastic job.  We were able to enjoy her in singing in her school choir.  As always Emma performed brilliantly and is learning to control herself.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

a time to be born, and a time to die;
time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.

We have been working through the book of Ecclesiastes at New City.  It has been a great book to study through and I have been  challenged on many levels.  This past week Keith preached through Ecclesiastes 9 and really focused the message on living, dying, and not wasting it all.  This is a theme that I think on more often than not.  There is not a week that goes by that I do not consider my time and the spending of it.  I am constantly asking, ‘are you wasting it?’  I fall off the side that many probably don’t.  I have to fight to not dwell on wasting my life.  I have to fight to not picture myself as an old man looking back on my life and being overwhelmed with the sense that I wasted it.  It can quickly grab my heart, drive me to depression and leave me hopeless.  The thought of wasting my life can often drive me to work harder and longer than I should, to try to please people in ways that I shouldn’t.  I confess that there are times that I feel like I need to pay God back for all that He has done for me and continues to do.  I know that I don’t deserve grace and at times I hate that I receive it.  How can someone so good love someone so evil?

But God…

I turn 37 this year and I feel like I have only truly begun to understand, apply, live out the Gospel…to live out grace.  I credit this awakening to the preaching and ministry at New City.  I have sat under many good men and they have been exactly who I have needed at the time.  It seems that God has me now at a place where I need to go back to the center of it all…the Gospel.  I have paired the sermon series with  Driscoll’s book ‘Death by Love’ and I must admit that there has been new freedom found, a new thirst for God’s mission, and a movement away from guilt to forgiveness.  Tears usually burn.

If you live in Macon, come join us as we gather at the Cox Capitol Theater and hear the Gospel…maybe applied in ways that you have never dreamed of.  If you do not live here, then follow us live on Sunday mornings or watch the recordings later on.  If you are not hearing the Gospel every week then you are missing it.  If you are not living out the Mission, then make the changes necessary to live it out.  Don’t waste it.  Jesus has called you to trust Him and there is a fine line between foolishness and faith – are you walking it?

This past Sunday I was reminded that I am dying.  I have one life.  I should feel the freedom to enjoy the good gifts that God has so graciously given as I join God on His mission.  I should be about His Kingdom and not my own.  I should not fear.  I should be a faithful fool that spends his life well.

Thank you Jesus.

Click here to learn more about the 2009 Conference.

1. And you people voted for her??
2. If I was a criminal I know where I would be hitting!

And may God bless you all…