Church this morning was really good. I went to Blairsville, GA with a couple of my friends for the day… just to see a new church, have a good home-cooked meal, and see a friend I don’t usually get to see. It was a beautiful day.

We went to a church called Grace Community Presbyterian. It’s a small church with a congregation of maybe… 200 people? That’s just a guess from sitting in the church and observing. :) It sits on the side of a mountain and is a beautifully constructed wood church, with big windows that overlook the mountains and trees.

I walked in with my friends, sat down on the back pew (which was only about seven pews from the front of the church), and just contemplated on how hard it was going to be for me to stay awake. It was the weekend …the time I usually use to catch up on missed sleep the week before. But not this weekend – I got 5 hours of sleep Friday night and a mere 6 1/2 on Saturday night. I was tired, at a church I had never been to, and I didn’t feel like concentrating on the Bible.

As the service began, I quietly asked God to keep me awake, attentive, and able to learn something from the message. I didn’t want this to be another one of those Sundays where I was present in body but not in mind.  

The pastor started reading from Luke 24:13-35, “On the Road to Emmaus.” After he read it, he began to walk through it… word by word, verse by verse.

“Jesus himself came up and walked along with them… He asked them, ‘What are you discussing together as you walk along?’ ‘About Jesus of Nazareth,’ they replied. ‘He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people.’ ” Click to continue »