My church, Grace EPC, at the beginning of the year brought me on staff as a Families and Children’s pastor. I love it. Not a lot of pay but it supplements our monthly income and keeps us from being quite so fiscally tight. We went through two years in what at times was a really tight financial period. It sometimes generated more heat than light. We even got a few checks in the mail from complete strangers and a few family members that brought our bank account from out of the hole and back up on to the ledge. We also made it a point not to ask others to help us. We waited on God to provide. He has again and again.

A few weeks ago I started thinking of Mother’s Day. My wife is pretty awesome. She is doing a great job raising our kids during the day. I was a latch key kid and I am so glad that my kids are not. I wanted to get her a iPhone since her computer is dying. Our son whacked it like he was a mini Don Corleone. I figured out a way to get a used one and was going to do it. We had a data plan option that would have made our phone bill only 30 bucks more a month to add a iPhone. I crunched the numbers and re-crunched the numbers. It was finally doable and I was going to do it.

My wife asked me one day a few weeks in to my scheming if she could travel down to Charleston to visit a graduate school friend and go to a concert to see Laura Story and Mandisa. I told her to go. She needed a break. A dramatic four year old girl and a two year old boy that makes Daredevil look like a wuss can make anyone need a well deserved break. During the intermission she calls and tells me about a charity that feeds one hungry child daily for only thirty bucks a month. She felt led to support this kid. The support last for a decade or more. She asked me could we do it? How could I tell her and God no? How do you say no to supporting a kid that just needs someone to love them by giving what ultimately is not that much money? How could I choose getting my wife a iPhone over supporting a kid? I told her go for it. It was a God thing. We now get to support a kid in the name of our son just like we support another kid in the name of our daughter.

As mother’s day was approaching I still wanted to get her a new phone. We talked it over since her phone was busted and it sounded at times like she was talking in to a tin can on a string, a change needed to happen. We agreed that we couldn’t responsibly get a iPhone with the extra data charge that our carrier tacks on for owning a smart phone. What had been a extra 30 bucks was now going to Feed the Hungry to support a adorable little girl in Africa.

I was about to give up on the iPhone entirely until I found a Verizon service reseller called PagePlus. PagePlus offers the Verizon network but charges a flat fee. Unlimited calls, texts, and a gig of 3G is a flat $55 a month. Our prior phone bill was always like 52.30 a month. God was gracious and still gave us the little desire of my heart to get a iPhone that I know will eventually die and to support a child that will eventually live forever. So the results all said and done is my wife has a spiffy new iPhone at a flat 55 rate for as long as it last. The difference in money saved lets us sponsor the child that will one day live on in to eternity. Maybe, just maybe, our compassion to sponsor her will change her life in a way that leads her to serving others.

This kid and her family now gets to eat three times a day every day. We live a good life and we are sharing it with stranger. This child now has hope for a better life. She knows someone cares for her. There are countless kids who have yet to experience God’s grace, grace that may only come through you be willing to help. Maybe you can’t now, maybe you can. Could you pray about sponsoring a child? Can you find 30 bucks in your budget or even cutting something out of your budget to save a kid’s temporal life? As you read this a child has entered in to the other side of eternity from complications with hunger. Let your grace change that for some child half a world away. Save a life. We recommend both Compassion and Feed the Hungry. It may not always be easy but it can change a life. I know it’s changed ours.

By the time you read the end of this post, a child will have died. They will have died from starvation. A completely curable social problem at least for some kids. I can not come even close to understanding what exactly that is like but I can imagine to a degree.

When I was younger I was introduced to the American version of suffering. We moved from a comfortable childhood life that was filled with love to a city that was slowly dwindling from the dying of American industry. As a kid I began to blame God for the world around me.

It took nearly a decade for me to learn that God suffered too in the person of Jesus.

The world is broken. That is why God died so that we could experience grace in the life and death of Jesus. This grace amazes me. I am amazed at grace.

A decade ago I was effectively homeless, jobless, almost died, & single. As my twenty first year ended I had quite a descent job in the IT field to work for a seminary in their IT department. Ironically, it fired me after a few months. At that time, I was a very rough around the edges new Christian. I did not always act or talk like what they expected a Christian to act like. Candidly, I didn’t act or talk like I probably should have. It was a ungracious separation. I have come to believe they would probably have fired all the apostles if they could have but that is a different story. Rent came due and I couldn’t pay it. I’ve had a job of some sort since I was 9. It went against my nature not to work. The trailer I was renting with a friend was to expensive to live in and we had to let it go. I was effectively homeless. My grandmother graciously let me stay in a house that she owned rent free so I wouldn’t have to quit college.

Not long after that I turned 22 and my insurance ran out, and as fortune would have it I developed a rare disorder where the tissue in my stomach died. It was cutting off the flow of blood to my organs. If I hadn’t been operated on I would have within a few days gone in to organ failure and died. The first doctor I saw at Duke wanted to send me home because he thought it was all in my head. The second doctor decided to do exploratory, removed the necrotic tissue, and saved my life. Duke charity paid my entire bill which as I recall was more than four thousand. I didn’t know that they even had such a charity until three months after I woke with an eight inch scar and metal staples in my stomach. Ironically, if I had been working I would not have qualified. I was clueless but thankful that by God’s grace I had made it through and he provided for every single bill and need.

That was over a decade ago. I write this from my home that God has provided and even the MacBook Pro that I’m working on. It is furnished by a job that I love. I get paid to work on a mac, fix computers, and do billing for a small non profit that helps kids. I’m comfortably waiting for wife to get home as my kids are upstairs asleep, the dogs in the crate, and the rain gently pours outside. My life is blessed. God though is still working on me. Refining my desires and showing me perspective to think of this life in reflection of eternity.

Part two, tomorrow.

Never bring a gun to a dragon fight.

And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and he regained his sight. Then he rose and was baptized; and taking food, he was strengthened.
For some days he was with the disciples at Damascus.
(Acts 9:18-19 ESV)

The text does not indicate a trip to the Roman baths in Damascus that would have made it possible for Paul to have experienced immersion. The text implies immediacy. First century homes did not have private baths. Nor did most homes have immediate access to pools. Water was brought in to the homes by carrying it in it. A example would be the woman at the well (John 4).

Instead Paul was likely either baptized by Ananias by pouring water on to him or sprinkling him. Since the Greek word baptized means primarily to clean. There is no immediate context to imply immersion, it is unlikely that Paul experienced a immersion baptism.

Peter in the city of Jerusalem leads 3000 men, the Greek term for men that meant either men only or a mixture of people, to Christ and to show it by the act of baptism. Likely it was men since for the Pentecost celebration in Judaism, the Feast of Weeks, the men were the ones who went up and in to the temple. The idea of federalism (the husband as spiritual leader and representative) is shown here. The men are told to “repent and be baptized” because the promise of forgiveness was for “you and your for your children.” The word baptized is used but no source of water is given. In Jewish ceremonial washing (like Jesus did to the disciple’s feet in John 13:5-11) washing one part of the body symbolized washing the whole body. It is likely that they practiced sprinkling or pouring water as they laid hands on the new believer though immersion is possible. The amount of water needed may have been a logistical issue. The text though gives us no clear indication either way.

Paul affirms the linkage to federalism in 1 corinthians 7:14 to children being considered holy by proxy, which means set a part. A child with a parent in the covenant has the promise of the covenant available to them. They of course can reject it just as the disobedient children of Israel rejected the ethnic and national covenant that God made with Jacob-Israel and his descendants. There is though a higher probability of a child being saved if their parent or ideally parents are saved under God’s new covenant.

There are many scriptures that talk about our spiritual nourishment; one of the most significant ones to me is John 6:35: “Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” This verse alone is absolutely incredible when you really think about what it means. When you factor in all the verses about the word of God serving as nourishment, such as Matthew 4:4 (But he answered, “It is written, “‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”) and you equate the fact that in John 1:1 Jesus is described as being the Word (“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”), the enormity of what it all means is overwhelmingly wonderful! Jesus is the bread of life, He is also the Word, and we are instructed to live by every word from the mouth of God. We live by Christ. He is our sustenance. He is our nourishment. Without Him, we become weak, frail, and our growth slows. And ultimately stops.

Ignatius – To the Ephesians 4.2 It is therefore good for you to be in perfect unity, that you may at all times be partakers (μετεχητε) of God. (Fathers of the Church – The Apostolic Fathers, vol. 1, p. 89.)

This is our goal. This is our hope. This is our work. Let’s move on to work for a Kingdom that shall not perish nor change as demographics shift.