can't you see, you belong to me

it's hard to not be so sad when you leave those individuals with whom you have shared so many memories. my family and i had the amazing opportunity to return to the states and connect and reconnect with loved ones this past week and a half. my reflection on such relationships continues to press on my mind.

what would i do without these individuals?

as i sit here at 4 in the morning, suffering from jetlag just finishing a bowl of oatmeal (the only food in the pantry) and sipping on amazing nespresso coffee, i can't help but sing the police over and over again in my mind...every breath you take, yeah, i'll be watching you. nostalgia and technology make it impossible to forget the memories that keep the conversations entertaining and absolutely boundless on forging new ones.

this time was not any different in my joy upon returning and embracing my parents and friends. so many of you who are the reason i am what i am today. i constantly feel the debt and it is a good debt, if dave ramsey would allow me to describe it as such using those terms.

this time, when i prepared to return to belgium, i realized how much easier it is now becoming. my greatest hope was the bond between my two sons and my parents would grow stronger. i was praying that they would not have skipped a beat. and as good as god is today i tell you it was as if they had never been separated. my sons and my parents picked it right up where they left it on november 23rd 2010. and witnessing this, the reconnection of grandparents and grandsons made the trip back here to waterloo, belgium much, much easier.

as an individual who strongly desires the family unit to operate functionally, as a divine unit, as a kingdom of heaven unit, this brings me peace.

please, please make these kinds of relationships. the kind of relationships that you could be physically separated for months and months and upon seeing each other again it would be as if you had never even noticed the gap. just as you go to sleep and the hours that pass in darkness are only but a restful nights sleep away from the morning sun that will rise just as it has done from the beginning of your existence.

what say you?

i absolutely love this:

how do you account for jesus?

how is this concert and antiquity to be explained? did some unknown creative genius take an ordinary man, jesus, and invent his deeds of power and his words of love and authority and authenticity, then present this invented jesus to a church with such deceptive power that many people were willing from the outset to die for this fictional christ? further, must we believe that all the gospel writers swallowed the invention-and in the space of several decades while many who knew the real jesus were still living? is that a more reasonable or well-founded guess than the plain assertion that a real man, jesus christ, did in fact say and do the sorts of things the biblical witnesses said he did?

you must decide for yourself. to my mind, an unknown inventor of this jesus is more incredible than the possibility of jesus' reality. so for me the question becomes: "how do we account for a man who leaves a legacy like this?

i cannot morally reckon him among the poor deluded souls who suffer from pathological delusions of grandeur. nor can i reckon him among the great con men of history, a deceiver who planned and orchestrated a worldwide movement of mission on the basis of a hoax. instead, i am constrained to acknowledge his truth. both my mind and my heart find themselves drawn to yield allegiance to this man. he has won my confidence.

j. piper

-desiring god