Along the Jericho Road of San Diego

Martin Luther King Jr. asked a piercing question the day before he was assassinated.  It should stir us all, to the core.

His question came on the heels of illustrating the parable of the Good Samaritan.  As Jesus shared it, a man was beaten badly along the Jericho Road.  But people just passed him by.  The individuals that should have stopped didn't.   Even the religious folks passed the beaten man by.  They left him in the ditch.  

There were reasons not to stop.  There was danger.  It could have been a setup.  But MLK and Jesus do not let us off the hook with calculated rationale. Martin Luther pushes back this way:

"The question is not, "If I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me?" The question is, "If I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?" That's the question.

It's simple, yet radical.  Real love moves towards pain.  It thinks about others first. Transformative love risks a lot.  And crazy love might cost us everything.

For the people in our neighborhood, and in light of the brokenness they face, we can't keep walking by.

At our recent banquet, we were able to highlight a few stories of our neighbors and their journeys along the Jericho Road of San Diego.  

Take a 3 minutes and reflect on MLK's question as applies to your context.   It should stir you.  It does me.

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A Backlog of Ridiculousness

While I was away, one of my emerging leaders lost a foot-race to a remote control car.  And his buddies couldn't stop laughing.  <<Click the picture to see the actual race>>.

I walked up on an 'Urban' (apparently) coyote, chilling on our property.

 Our biggest, baddest dude brought his stuffed animal to Mission Week.  Bird and Ernie were something to see.

 We made mustaches cool again, bringing people one step closer to THE image of Jesus.

 Walking outside our church building recently on a Sunday morning, we weren't met by a greeting team, or a refreshment table, or an info-booth.  Instead, we got stared down by the neighborhood creeper, in his "chonies."