Infection

I had lunch today with a great set of friends. All are or are going to be church planters. These guys walk on the edge. They give themselves to ministry and, with God's guidance and help, they pull off impossible things. People come to faith weekly on account of these guys who endure significant loneliness, pain and loss to do ministry in their places. These guys are my heroes.

Once a month, we get together for lunch. We share stories of victories and the hurts of setbacks. We encourage, we cry, we pray, we laugh. It's always a tremendous time together.

One of the fun phenomena of lunch with these guys is catching bits of conversations from all around our 20-seated table. I love to listen in as various guys connect and share. Today, one guy shared that he's really not cut out to minister in the place where he is ministering. He thinks he'd be much better suited to a different sized church, city, demographic, whatever. In any event, he ended his conversation by simply stating: "Jesus has infected me with His love for [my current place]. That's all that really matters."

Cool.

Fast forward 2 hours. I overhear someone else who said: "I just found out that my sister is infected with swine flu. How weird is that?"

Two types of infections. For one there's no vaccine. For the other, we can be vaccined by by our own desires, our goals, our plans. We can be innoculated against the infection of Jesus by this world and what it has to offer. Sadly, lots and lots of "Christians" would love to live life without being infected by either of these things.

I've got no vaccine for either...the swine flu or the infection of Jesus's love for others. How about you?