Plant & Water

I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow. — 1 Corinthians 3:6

Paul is making the point that our worship focus must be directed toward God, not men. But maybe there's another message: that we can be too occupied with making spiritual things happen — God's work — when we should be creating the right conditions for those things to happen.

Left Untried

“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” — Matthew 22:37-40

Theoretical, academic, ethereal, cerebral – words some retreat into when given broad, all-encompassing instructions. What if these were treated as down-to-earth and practical? What might the Church be like? Jesus' ministry was a practical working-out of these commands. Might it be that they seem impractical to us only because they've been left untried?

This Lap, Then Another

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us — Hebrews 12:1

… to share in a companionship of the saints,
with the Father and the Son,
where Kingdom life is becoming more normal, less foreign;
working for good in the world,
and recruiting one more disciple of Jesus …. (repeat)