I’ve been listening to a teaching series by Joe Mcgee lately. I learned something really interesting while listening to this series. He was talking about life and migrated over to talking about sin. In Greek terminology, sin was an old archery word. Every archer tried to hit the center of the bulls-eye on the target; or in other words “hit the mark”. The distance from the bulls-eye to where the arrow actually hit was called the “sin”. So, in Greek times this word sin meant you missed the mark by “x” amount or “by this much”.

This means that in the Greek culture, when sin was talked about they instantly gained a mental picture of missing the mark with an arrow. Really interesting. I have always loved metaphors and parables, because they help you really grasp the full meaning of a teaching and continue to remember it long after it has been spoken. So, hopefully this helps you understand another viewpoint of what “sin” was seen as.

I’ve been sick since the beginning of the week. We have had a flu bug going around the town for a few weeks now and I happened to catch my share of it at the annual Super Bowl Party we have every year for the youth. So, none the less I have been feeling under the weather for a while. Well, this morning I suddenly realized that I was 1) out of Tylenol Sore Throat (God’s gift to all sore throat sufferers) 2) I was completely out of tissues… definitely not friendly on the nose. So where do I go to fill my flu needs… none other than Wal-Mart.

Well, I pull into my local Wal-Mart and much to my surprise I see one of the local radio station vans with a guy holding a sign saying “Free Hugs” No more had I seen the sign did this lady driving a HUGE black truck in my direction, Stop in the middle of driving… bolt out of her truck (or I should say fall out of her truck) and ran over to give the radio guy a hug. I of course was stopped in my car… watching… sniffling… not from tears though… completely the flu.

I started thinking about the “Free Hugs” idea. It seems kind of silly. The radio guy giving the free hugs was even doing it because he lost a bet on the Super Bowl at the radio station. But if you do a google search on Free Hugs, you will see there is one site impeticular, www.free-hugs.com that has a national campaign for giving away Free Hugs.. Why??? Just because they want to make sure everyone knows they are special. I kind of like that idea.

I think it is easy at times to let life run past us… we somehow miss it while at the same time we think we are getting closer to experiencing it. What does any of this have to do with church software? Well, really not much.. but simple things like letting people know they are meaningful have everything to do with the church community.

We did a survey of our youth a few months back, asking various questions about their life, what they thought of themselves, and so on. The most common answers we got led to the youth feeling at times like they were meaningless. I do not think this is just affecting our youth either, their responses match some more national surveys that have been done. As a Christian, I want to make sure the people around me know that they have meaning and worth. Especially my kids in the youth group and family and friends. Sometimes it can be difficult to know what to say in certain circumstances or know how to relate.

One of the people I admired the most when I was growing up in the youth group was a wonderful lady we called Mrs. Debbie. She was like the youth group Grandma. It didn’t matter who came in our doors or how they appeared, Mrs. Debbie made it her priority to make sure they knew they were special and valuable. Many of the times she would just walk up and give them a hug and start telling them how special they were. Yeah, at times it could have seemed a little akward, but if you ask anyone that has met Mrs. Debbie, they have only good things to say about her and how special she makes people feel. I’m not trying to be cheesy but maybe there are times when a free hug is all that is needed; especially with your family. Maybe it’s not a hug but just some encouragement that is given. Free hugs or not, I think I’m going to try harder to make sure the people around me know they are special and of worth. How about you?

I had one of those moments a few weeks back. You know… one of those moments that God decides he is going to teach you something and you are going to realize how little you really know or how little you remember. Yeah, it was one of those moments.

My fiance’ has this cat, that we so creatively named “lil kitty”, who is one of those pretty cats. Everything she does is pretty. She sits pretty, walks pretty, she is even a pretty cat!!!! To mess with her sometimes I will rub her hair toward her head… she doesn’t like that…. why I do it, I don’t know… but it is fun. I would have never considered myself a cat person but lil kitty has made me different. I really like that cat. The only thing that I don’t like is how much she sheds.

I am honestly surprised that lil kitty is not bald based on how much she sheds. We always keep lint rollers around so we can get the hair off of us after we play with lil kitty. Well, this day we did not have any lint rollers. We had used the last one and the replacements were in the car, which was not in town. I usually sit on the couch to work and lil kitty likes to jump up on my lap and work with me on my laptop. I’m usually ok with this because after I’m done I can go grab the handy dandy lint roller to get all the “pretty” cat hair off of me. I couldn’t do that on this day and of all the days lil kitty could pick it was this day that she was overly persistent that she wanted my attention.

She would jump up on me, and I would put her right back down on the floor. It didn’t seem to make sense to her, so she would jump right back up on me again. We went through this routine for a few minutes until it hit me… this was one of those God moments and I was about to miss it. I don’t want to be one of those cat lovers that is talking about their pet like it is their kid but this moment hit me.

Lil kitty wanted my attention desperately. I didn’t want her to get on me because she would shed hair all over me and I didn’t have anything to clean it off… but she still wanted my attention. She didn’t understand why I didn’t want her to sit with me like she always had.. she’s a cat.. she understands mouse toy and food. But this started to make me think about God and me. I know there have been so many times I have shed my junk on him… but he always welcomes me back. He evens tells me to caste my burdens on him…

God knows we shed a lot… but like the prodigal son He waits for us to come to him as we are. The thing I learned from this little cat was persistence. Jesus taught us to knock and keep on knocking, ask and keep on asking, seek and keep on seeking and we will find what we need, the doors will be opened to us. God likes us to be persistent with him… not arrogant… but lovingly persistent in coming to him with our needs… just how we are. Max Lucado I think said it best when he wrote “God loves us exactly how we are but he is unwilling to leave us there.” I’m glad that God is not worried about having a lint roller to show his love to me. He took care of all that already, all he wants from me is persistence in coming to him.

It took a small cat to remind me about pursuing God.

So, what did I do in all this? I picked up lil kitty and we worked on the computer like we always do… except this time I did not have a lint roller. I had hair all over me, but that was ok…. Lint roller… I didn’t need no stinking link roller.