Life In Greencastle

This was several years ago - still in Greencastle, but several years ago.  It must have been my junior year of college, for I remember taking my mail up to my room on the third floor of the Delta Upsilon fraternity house at 626 Seminary Street and sitting down on the horribly over-used and wonderfully comfortable sofa my mother gladly let me unearth from our basement back in Zionsville.  The semester had just begun just like it is beginning all over again for a new generation of DePauw students.  Like any serious, dedicated college student, I had taken care to set up a wonderful entertainment and sound system in our room.   I had my roommate, Andrew Smith, to thank for this luxurious arrangement.  Andrew was a great friend ever since my elementary school days, and back in the summer when we were deciding what each of us would bring to enhance the quality of our little room in that old fraternity house Andrew offered up some high quality speakers his dad no longe...

Yesterday was a full day after a few weeks off for vacation and refreshment, and it was also a good day.  It began by gathering for our Sunday morning Bible Study in the parlor, as we continued to explore the Book of Acts together.  I'm really grateful that over the years we've grown closer as a group, and I was particularly grateful for the honesty we brought to the conversation yesterday.  To be sure, just like every other Bible Study I've ever participated in, we continue to find all sorts of things to talk about, but - to me - the good sign of really wrestling with and engaging God's Word is when we truly consider for ourselves what this text may be saying to us.  With the Book of Acts , that requires a great deal of openness, courage and even trust.  So much of the story in Acts is about God's sovereignty, power and freedom - how God can and does blow into the reality of our world, and how God's Spirit always brings about beautiful new realities for those...