deepbrew

Today the four Hershbergers, Mom, Dad, Eric, and I went up to Chambersburg to see the rest of the Hershey gang.  My brother Daniel and my sis Charlene both live up there.

I got to help my bro-in-law Johnny begin building a bookshelf for my room.  It is going to be really special, cause it’s made from a walnut tree that grew behind our house!
I wonder if it will be magical, sometime…… 

What really is magical is my new niece Gloria Dawn, Daniel and Amy’s FOURTH kiddo!  Wow! And what a baby she is.  I wish I had a picture.

As a plain amish mennonite, I am plainly interested in plain talk about plainness.

Merle Burkholder, at a conference at FB a year ago, said something like this: “We are losing a compelling reason to be plain.”

Tonight we had a members meeting at church and we had a very standard discussion on standard issues (church standard issues). I am realizing more and more that I care way less about plainness and conservatism than that which has been normal in my faith tradition. I know many other people in my generation with similiar skepticisms.

I think Burkholder is right. However, I would like to know what the compelling reason to be plain was in the first place.

is what Eric is going to try to make for breakfast tommorrow. 

Tonight Eric and I went out to Believer’s Fellowship in Waynesboro where BMA’s DNA was holding a church planter’s institute.  Steve Byler preached a message titled (Continued)

I want (Continued)

 ”We want to join the battle, the cosmic struggle, and all we can find is the arm-wrestling contest.”

Selfishness is ugly. I know that. Why then, do I still find myself there so much of the time? Here’s something from Lewis that must be very true.

“The principle runs through all life from top to bottom. Give up yourself, and you’ll find your real self. Lose your life, and you’ll save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: Submit with every fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep nothing back.

Nothing that you have not given away will every really be yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ, and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.” from Beyond Personality, CS Lewis

This quote came from an article in the Jan/Feb 2003 Disciple Journal by Gary Thomas entitled “Selflessness.” Here’s a bit from Gary Thomas himself:

“God invites us to experience the freedom that is found when we ignore our first selfish impulses and allow God’s spirit to give us a heart for others. He wants to expand our focus and turn our eyes away from our own small world, to find ourselves by losing ourselves in service to his people.”

It is kind of paradoxical that I want to be unselfish because I know it will bring freedom and joy. However, when it comes down to real life situations, when Eric is simply dying to use my computer, but I just have to finish this post, then the freedom and joy that supposedly comes from unselfishness seem very far away. Unselfishness then feels truly unselfish.