A Journey to Mars

I'm at church. The topic this week in the 'doctrine' series is stewardship. It's so refreshing in a Christian culture of prosperity to hear that God doesn't give us money to improve our standard of living but rather to improve our standard of giving. Mark is talking about how we rip off God; He gives us resources to do His work and then we totally waste it... It makes me think about how sometimes I don't give money to people on the street because I think that they will spend the money on alcohol or crack. Its humbling to think that I'm that crack addict to God. He blesses me so much knowing that I'm still a sinner. He gives me grace everyday yet I still neglect to spend time with Him. God gave himself to the world, the greatest gift ever given, and some people unwrap it only to throw it under the bus.

We as Christians give to others because Christ gave Himself to us. We are bought with a price and have no right to claim ownership to anything.

We are doing well. I have the day off tomorrow because Ive worked every day since the 9th of June. Im pretty tired. Sarah started working full time as a manager at the bead shop and is pretty tired as well. Hopefully next weekend we'll be able to get out of town and have a good time together.

Some cool stuff coming up. We are hosting a block party for the fourth of July, live music and food vendors, even a tattoo artist coming out to do tattoos with sharpie pens. Its cool that we are downtown and close to the water as we will be able to see the Elliott Bay fireworks from our parking lot. Also, we are partnering with the city of Seattle to spearhead a community cleanup day; picking up trash, pulling weeds, painting graffiti. The city is of Seattle is pretty excited that we are actually getting involved in the community, I guess its unprecedented for people of faith in Seattle to do these kind of things.

Summer arrived finally. The first week of June was stormy but I think we made it. I was really excited that we are going to start having good weather until I realized that its downhill form here as we passed the longest day of the year, we're already heading back into fall. Thats northwest weather for ya I guess.

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Grace, peace and love you.
Joel and Sarah