insert random title here...

...because honestly, I don't have a quip-ish one today.

I'm just at home with the boy watching Mickey Mouse and now he's asking for 'muziks' which is the plural form of music...which means he wants to wear my headphones and listen to iTunes.

Perhaps by now some of you have noticed the red music@jOURney picture to the right side of the page. That one of many things on my plate over the past few days. The jOURney house band (or JHB*) recorded 6 originals. It's worship music that is part of our community. Although it took 10 and a half hours, it was awesome! When it drops, please consider purchasing one as all the proceeds benefit the Global AIDS Fund and blood:water mission.

It seems as though I've been the middle of a whirlwind of activity, and I'm just trying to keep my feet on the ground. Lots of great things happening, just overwhelming. In the meantime, I've been wrestling with a question: If a Jesus-centered life is to be distinctive, then how am I living distinctively?

I've run into several people over the past few weeks that are rather stand-offish in their attempts at being distinctive. It's almost as if it's been a bass-akwards way of saying 'I've got something you don't.' While it may be true, it doesn't feel like an approach that might illicit the kind of view of God that should be distinctive.

If you've read wifey's blog, you know that we've been growing more and more concerned with our 'footprint' in the world. Where is all this going? Well, it seems that we live in a time where alcohol consumption/abstention and not watching R-rated movies (just examples) don't speak in the same way as showing sacrificial love for others might. In many ways, Jesus style sacrificial love is counter-cultural as we acquire more and more stuff while the gaps between the have and have-nots grows bigger...especially here in the states.

We may be "God's chosen country" (hope you can hear the sarcasm), but we haven't chosen Jesus back for some time now...we'd rather just choose the comfy stuff that we then baptize with our church's name and call it God-honoring.

I am so far from the ideal that I project in this post. I have not arrived, probably never will. jOURney hasn't arrived either, in case you were wondering :) But we're trying. And maybe that's the issue.

We're all trying, maybe we shouldn't try to convince everyone else we're not...