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I started reading a new book (finished Reinventing Jesus last weekend) called This Beautiful Mess by Rick McKinley.  He is the pastor at Imago Dei in Portland, which you may know from Donald Miller’s book, Blue Like Jazz.  It is already compelling, and will be worth it’s weight in words, I can already tell.  My favorite line thus far is “In all the tidiness, the wonder of the gospel of Jesus seemed to be disappearing.”  A lot of the book hurts when you read it, but it grows you all the same.

So life is messy, which is certainly addressed in this book, and there is a part in Chapter 6 where he goes into this story about living in a hospital while his son is sick.  It’s heart wrenching, but it leads me to share.  I beg you to pray for this boy that I know.  A friend of mine, Nate Oates, is currently pastoring a church in Lincoln called Emmaus.  A little over a week ago, his 4 year old son, Isaiah Oates, was diagnosed with Leukemia.  You can read about it here, but I challenge you to read the post, Rough Night, Encouraging Morning.  It has redefined what it means for me to have faith like a child.

side note: It also made it 10 times harder to sing ‘You give and take away, my heart will choose to say, Lord blessed be your name.’  Honesty hurts, and it is so hard to be completely honest when singing most worship songs.  Maybe some people think I shouldn’t say that, but they probably don’t think about what they are singing anyway.