pat loughery

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SEATTLE – His back broken, his body burned and the ordeal of surviving a plane crash just two days behind him, Forest Service worker Matthew Ramige was already joking with nurses and calling for milkshakes.

For his mother — who was first told he was dead, only to learn the next day that he had emerged from the wilderness with a fellow survivor — Ramige’s surfacing sense of humor was helping the joyous news to finally sink in.

News article source

We have a home group studying the book of Romans. If you haven’t been through this book lately, give it a read – it’s Paul’s best-developed theology of the Gospel. Digging into this book is a treasure trove.

One couple in the group, the couple about whom I’ve wrote frequently in this blog, is struggling to understand the whole idea of God’s wrath against sin, and of Christians’ typical response as seeing themselves as better than non-Christians.

I’m not too worried about this dynamic, as the Lord is clearly calling this couple to Him, and our job is simply to not do anything too stupid and make friends along the way.

Last weekend, Terry made an off-handed comment, fairly sarcastic, based on the discussion we had during sermon time. I can’t remember the specifics, but one of the folks in the group talked about how wonderful it feels to know that his past, his BC era days, were forgiven and gone. Terry’s reaction was something like, “it’s so good to know that what accomplish before Christianity doesn’t matter”.

This weekend, I’ll point him at the article above, and ask him how the people in this story are likely to feel, looking back at a near-death experience. I think that Christians tend to view their lives in this type of dynamic – especially those who have made radical conversion commitments. For others of us, the process is much less dramatic, but no less wondrous.