Non-blogging blogger

I haven't posted anything since March, so I guess that makes me a non-blogging blogger! Someone wrote me to say they actually read my last post and wanted to see more. Wow!

Since March a lot has happened. I had a birthday and am now only one year away from Medicare or Medicaide or Medi-something. I missed getting the senior citizen hunting license by half a year - and they moved the age up to 70. So, I still have to pay full price until then. Cheryl and I took a trip to Georgia to visit my sister Ann and brother-in-law Doug; then I went back in October to visit them after Doug had by-pass surgery - successful surgery!! I am on another team for Tres Dias - Men's #151, which meets January 14-17, 2010. Am preparing for a men's retreat in February. And in church I started a series on Romans which is taking a long time, but is giving me a real appreciation for what Jesus has done for us - and for all humanity. God is no respector of persons - Jews and Gentiles, white, black, red, male, female, slave, free - EVERYONE is the object of his work on the Cross. And how we need it! None is good. Only by the grace of God can we escape sin and its penalty.

Tomorrow I get into chapter four: "For what does the Scripture say? 'Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.'" (v. 4) Justification by faith, and faith alone - one of the pillars of the Protestant Reformation. Whether we be Reformed or not, we are heirs of that great theological insight. It is not by our efforts, our works, but by faith alone that we can come to God for justification.

Recently I have had occasion to reflect on my sobriety - twenty-four years and counting, one day at a time. Why is it that I was able to stop drinking and have the compulsion lifted, when some of my friends are still out there drinking alcoholically or, even worse, dead! It is purely the grace of God. I recently told a congregation at a funeral that we have to give up trying to be better; give up trying to overcome our addictions; give up trying to lose weight, quit smoking, or whatever our particular problem might be. We have to give up and give it to God. We can only come to God through Jesus and his Cross and lay it before the Cross. The only appropriate response to grace is "Thank you." And I do thank Jesus for all he has done in my life - there is a ton of work for him to do yet, but thank God for what has been done!