Tapestry

Torn in two. That's the feeling of several friends currently in what has been called the “sandwich” generation. While continuing to parent their own children, at the same time they are more and more needed to care for aging parents. With a great desire to honor their parents they feel torn between competing priorities. Most often this is complicated by distance and travel.

In my small group study this past week, the teacher introduced the phrase "the gift of consequences." I love that description because I have come to trust over the years that everything God gives us, including the consequences of our actions, is good even when it doesn't feel like it. How can the consequences of a bad choice be a gift?

One of our pastors shares a favorite story: a young man in Sweden, while trying to get rid of the watermark on his trial software so he could use it illegally, did some online research that led him to a YouTube film clip from our church (Watermark Community Church) making the case for waiting to have sex before marriage. The twenty-something had never heard of such a thing, and while it sounded crazy to him, he continued to watch more clips, which intrigued him further, and he did more research that led him to the conclusion, "Wait a minute, there's something really different about these people."

While hurricane Sandy was chugging north off the east coast last Sunday we were headed south, hugging the Appalachian mountains through Virginia then cutting through central North Carolina to our home in Columbia, central South Carolina. Skirting the edge of Sandy’s windfield our experience of the deadly hurricane was limited to overcast skies, winds at 15 miles per hour and passing fleets of utility trucks headed north. On Friday we had spent the day at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, his stately home engraved on the back of every US nickel. One day before Sandy hit and one week before the election Thomas Jefferson’s world and words spoke profoundly to both national events.

I’m talking today with my friend and fellow Tapestry blogger, Kay Daigle, who recently released the book, From Ordinary Woman to Spiritual Leader: Grow Your Influence.

 What inspired you to write this book?

Now that we are living the networked life, technology opens doors of innovative and unimagined possibilities, but are there ways that technology could diminish us? How should the discipleship process be reshaped in a digital world? It's time for a conversation.

The last presidential debate ended this week. We will soon go to the polls and we will hopefully move forward, trusting God with the future of our nation. Thanksgiving approaches and soon after, the Christmas rush begins. With the holidays around the corner, folks anticipate their greatest stress — family.

Jesus' most famous parable in Luke 15 tells the story of a rebellious young man usually dubbed "the Prodigal Son" who demanded his share of his father's inheritance while his dad was still alive, shameful enough, but then went off into "the far country" to squander it on riotous living. A modern-day prodigal and his mother have written their story, telling parallel stories from each one's perspective. The son's "far country" included drug dealing, living it up as a party animal, and gay promiscuity leading to a diagnosis of AIDS. But God brought both mother and son out of the far country to Himself.

It’s election season in a fallen world and a sagging economy. Our national conversation focuses on discouraging statistics, economic and cultural decline. There’s quite a chorus of voices and images out there railing at the darkness. As followers of Jesus should we join them? What are we prepared to do?