Last week we continued talking about having margin in our lives.  We’ve narrowed the idea of margin to being the amount available beyond what is necessary.  We’re putting our lives under the microscope and asking the question, “Do we have margin?”  This could include financial margin, relational margin, margin with our time, and everything else that takes something from us.

When we live our lives with margin and aren’t constantly stretched to the limits, we can more open to responding to God’s will.  For example, someone came to me last week and wanted to give money to our mission in Haiti.  Unfortunately, because of some poor decisions in their past (we all know how that happens, right!), this person had no financial margin to give to something that they sincerely felt led to be giving to.  It really comes down to re-prioritizing and re-orientating your life and having margin enough to respond to God’s calling.  As the writer of the book of Romans so aptly put it,

“Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is — his good, pleasing and perfect will.”  Romans 12:2

In other State Street news, we continue to see some neighbors visiting us on the weekend.  It’s always been our goal to be a neighborhood church (hence the name chosen).  This weekend two children found their way over to State Street.  This is what Lynn Weiler said about it:

Two small children came in and walked through the building. They found the Sunday School room.

They came with out parents. A brother and sister. A little blond girl dressing in a striped skirt. A boy with brown hair. They asked the teacher..May we stay for 2nd service too? We had cupcakes in the kitchen. The two were hungry. The cupcakes were offered to them by the teacher. The boy ran them home to his mother.   He came back.

The last four months I have spent almost every  Tuesday, Saturday and many other  days and evenings, at State Street community church with many wonderful people.

Demolishing walls, hauling out trash, Sanding drywall, painting and scrubbing, sweeping, cleaning,setting up a sound system that hopefully will be pleasing to all who enter. Those two small children were Jesus today. He was checking us out.

Mark Bublitz (our discipleship director guru czar) and I are working on some discipleship stuff that we’re excited about.  We’re hoping to kick off a few group opportunities in a few weeks.  More information about those will be coming soon.