Yum yum Dim Sum

We went out for a nice Dim Sum lunch today after church... well, it was more like brunch cos we got there at about 10:30am, and everyone made an effort to show up to the earlier church session at 9am so we could have an early lunch, which was appreciated... It is kinda like a psuedo belated birthday celebration for the wifey, and a general catchup session. We gorged ourselves full of yummo food and sat around and caught up with each other since it's been ages since we had time to catchup.

Church was good today, and we arrived earlier today to help setup the church cafe this morning. One of the interesting points that came out of the sermon was about not understanding stuff when we hear about things. How many of us have been to church, or been invited to a wedding, Easter or Christmas, and have heard the gospel message preached uncountable times. I mean most people know all the facts about what is being said, and can comprehend it, but then decide it's not for them. I think it might be because we try and comprehend it using our brains and not our hearts, and we equate this whole faith in God thing as being illogical. How can something so simple and effectively cost us nothing, be the basis of our lives? We almost have been brought up in this generation to believe that anything that seems too good to be true usually is, and this "free gift" has some fine print attached and might mean a lost of freedom or control of our own lives.

We can only equate getting something with giving something in return. "If I accept the gospel message that will mean that I will HAVE to go to church every sunday and not sleep in, I'll have to be a better person than I am to earn that label..." Cause and effect... If I do x,y,z then I'll be a good christian... If I'm a christain then I'll *have* to be good... and this appears to be a sticking point for most people. What if... it was just as simple as "I love you, and this is what I've done for you, expecting nothing in return, just because I love you, and I would do the same if you were the only one..." and that all those other things that we feel are baggage(going to church regularly etc.) that comes along with this faith, we do because it's an act we do in reponse to God, rather than because we're expected to do so?

In nerdy geek techinical terms it's like the internet, http is based on a request-response protocol, where we type in a web-address, or click on a link, and the browser sends a request to the web server and it responds with the webpage that we're trying to get it. All God is doing is sending out a request to all of us to be part of our lives, waiting for our response. We can either respond with the right page, or an error page... "The person that you are trying to contact is not reponding..." :) It's our choice... but guess what? He'll keep on retrying and resending the request until we respond... (Comforting thought isn't it?)

Food for thought...