Who guarantees you a purpose?

Steve Addison shares his struggles with depression. 

Rod just looked at me and said, “Who guarantees you a legacy? Who guarantees you a purpose? Where did you get that from?” I’m  the missionary, right? But he reaches into the drawer of his desk and pulls out a pocket New Testament and starts reading me verses about the love of God. He said, “This is all you got. This is all you can claim.”

Listen to his struggle and hope here. What Depression Taught Me about My Legacy | The Local Church

Romans 5:8, "But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

Chapel Concert

"I am."

The story goes that early in the 20th century, The Times of London sent out a query to famous writers, asking, “What’s wrong with the world today?” The great Christian apologist G. K. Chesterton replied, “Dear Sir, I am. Yours, G. K. Chesterton.” 

Read more: Whom Should We Blame for the Violence? | Christianity Today

Blaming others is the direct result of sin. Genesis 3:12-13, 'The man said, "The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate." Then the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this that you have done?" The woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate."'

Bryan Stevenson: "Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption"

You must listen to this amazing lecture on justice by Bryan Stevenson: "Just Mercy: a story of justice and redemption" - YouTube

Matthew 23:23 "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others."  Jesus Christ

“Mercy is most empowering, liberating, and transformative when it is directed at the undeserving. The people who haven’t earned it, who haven’t even sought it, are the most meaningful recipients of our compassion.” Bryan Stevenson

“The true measure of our character is how we treat the poor, the disfavored, the accused, the incarcerated, and the condemned.”

Grace, Justice, & Mercy: An Evening with Bryan Stevenson & Rev. Tim Keller Q &A - YouTube, Doing Justice and Mercy – Timothy Keller [Sermon] - YouTube, 
We Need to Talk About an Injustice | Bryan Stevenson | TED Talks - YouTube

More: Evangelicals Ignore G.O.P. by Embracing Syrian Refugees - The New York Times

Where Shrines once thrived...

The red-roofed temple at the top of the hill closed about a decade ago, and now Yoshihiro Shibata can’t even remember its name, though the 54-year-old dairy farmer has lived in this picturesque village all his life.

“The income of the temple depends on the number of residents, and there weren’t enough to keep a monk here,” he said, looking around the deserted grounds nestled amid the village’s lush landscape of tea plants and hydrangeas, bamboo and pine trees.

The local Shinto shrine is barely hanging on. With only about 250 households left in Hara-izumi, which is technically part of nearby Kakegawa city, the village no longer has enough men to hoist up the traditional float and parade it around during the shrine’s annual festival.

“They just set it out there and it doesn’t move,” Shibata said. In a few more years, even that may not be possible. “We’re supposed to lose half our population in the next decade.”

Please read: As Japan's population shrinks, bears and boars roam where schools and shrines once thrived - LA Times

Please pray for the Norukura Fellowship. Up in the Japan Alps, northern Matsumoto, is a fellowship of about 20. The worshippers are primarily of North Star. Ask the Lord that they would be able to reach out to the local people with the message of 'Christ our hope'. 

Why Politics Can't Save Our Politics

"Insofar as both liberalism and capitalism tend to devour and erode the institutions and communities that made them possible, they end up parasitically consuming the host and thus engendering their own demise, starved by their own hunger.

"We want the fruits of stability without its demands; we want the free-flying feeling of liberation without the anchored foundations that launched us. 

"'To learn from nostalgia, we must let it guide us not merely toward 'the way we were,' but toward what was good about what we miss, and why.'

"The creative way forward, then, is to recover a culture of solidarity in the face of atomistic individualism and an abstract state.

"Social conservatives must therefore make a positive case, not just a negative one. Rather than decrying the collapse of moral order, we must draw people's eyes and hearts to the alternative: to the vast and beautiful "yes" for the sake of which an occasional narrow but insistent "no" is required. We can do this with arguments up to a point, but ultimately, the case for an alternative that might alleviate the loneliness and brokenness evident in our culture requires attractive examples of that alternative in practice, in the form of living communities that provide people with better opportunities to thrive."

from Hope in the Ruins: Why Politics Can't Save Our Politics | Comment Magazine

Joni Eareckson Tada

I sure hope I can bring this wheelchair to heaven.

Now, I know that’s not theologically correct.

But I hope to bring it and put it in a little corner of heaven, and then in my new, perfect, glorified body, standing on grateful glorified legs, I’ll stand next to my Savior, holding his nail-pierced hands.

I’ll say, “Thank you, Jesus,” and he will know that I mean it, because he knows me.

He’ll recognize me from the fellowship we’re now sharing in his sufferings.

And I will say, ”Jesus, do you see that wheelchair? You were right when you said that in this world we would have trouble, because that thing was a lot of trouble. But the weaker I was in that thing, the harder I leaned on you. And the harder I leaned on you, the stronger I discovered you to be. It never would have happened had you not given me the bruising of the blessing of that wheelchair.”

Then the real ticker-tape parade of praise will begin. And all of earth will join in the party.

And at that point Christ will open up our eyes to the great fountain of joy in his heart for us beyond all that we ever experienced on earth.

And when we’re able to stop laughing and crying, the Lord Jesus really will wipe away our tears.

I find it so poignant that finally at the point when I do have the use of my arms to wipe away my own tears, I won’t have to, because God will.

Hope...the Best of Things: Joni Eareckson Tada: 9781433502194: Amazon.com: Books

More: Why Joni Eareckson Tada Thinks You Should Go See the New Pro-Suicide Movie, “Me Before You” | TGC