encouragement

It's always nice to receive encouragement, although, tonight, my encouragers didn't know they were doing just that.

You see, recently, we made a few changes on the fshbwl, one of which means that the blogs of site users are featured on the front page of the site under the "live" heading. The basic idea is giving visitors and opportunity to look in on the lives of people who are trying to live out this faith. As a result of this change, I'm far more aware of what others are posting.

Well, tonight, as I was clicking through "live", I ran across this post which is basically a summary of earth in the elemental life. Then, the next post I read in "live" was this one, which really jives with the whole idea of wind in the elemental life.

So, where's the encouragement? It's always cool to see that you're not way out there in what you're thinking and, if nothing else, you're resonating with others. Thanks for the encouragement Paul and Jay!

What a past couple weeks it's been. From all the stress involved in finally getting the Fishbowl up and running to the conclusion of the whole Lenten season with Easter weekend, I'm not exactly sure how I stayed conscious, let alone sane.

Beyond prayer and an incredibly supportive wife, there were some incredible words of encouragement from a few of different sources. Two of them fell very much along the same lines. One was a pastor back East who found me through the Genesis page and sent me a message titled, "Renegade Lutheran". The other was one of the elders at Christ Lutheran in Denver where I've been helping out in the absence of their pastor. Both gentleman are very conservative and commented how refreshing it is to see an LCMS pastor who is passionate about reaching the lost, and yet also bold about his Lutheran confession.

The other compliment came from a long time LCMS pastor who a friend of mine might coin as "theologically loose". When he got word of the Fishbowl he was simply delighted that somebody in the LCMS was truly willing to step outside the box and engage the world at large.

Then of course, you have the other pastor who's assisting with me here at Christ. His encouragement? He sent me this cartoon (and took sermons on both Maundy Thursday and Easter Sunday)!

To all of you, for all of your encouragement, I thank you.