What Hail's Got (page 7)

By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his son to be the Savior of the world.  Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, abides in him, and he in God.  So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us.  God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected in us...(1 John 4:14-7)

And this is where I must leave you with the verse. "By this love is perfected in us..."

THING II that is funny about my talking of someone else's salvation. (If you can even remember that I was bulleting such humor/irony/whatever.)

I am now 24 years old.  I have grown up in church. Moved from 8 o'clock Mass to 10 o'clock Service, from Sunday School to First Communion, to a seat I've sat in for the last ten years.

I've watched a 4-year old girl dance in the middle of a tin-roofed church aisle, as the rains leaked and ankle-deluged into the sanctuary during a revival service in Haiti.  God is beautiful.

And on the following summer's trip I kept my quiet time on a hillside overlooking roaming fields and snaking rivers.  It was God and me thousands of miles south of my comfort.

Out of God's grace and anointing - to quote another typical Christian word  that doesn't quite make you want to gag, but it definitely does a number on your clean Right Guard feeling with its greasy-oily-salad-dressing implication - I've led ministries at the high school level, the university level, and now at a proper church.

From the thousands of services I've been to, from the books I've read, the Noomas I've watched, and the Christian mags I've ordered, have I never - in all my life! - questioned salvation or been taught salvation or read about salvation in quite the way I am discovering Jesus' propitiation for our sins right now.  It is crazy.

I may even be lack for words to explain this way of salvation to you.  If I could grab Hayley, put her in book form - maybe a stick figure would do, but I have a feeling that if she had a say in this cartooning her, then she'd say she wants to be a magical speaking blue whale who could explain all of this freedom to you and why she wants to be a blue whale. If she was cartooned she could show you right here on this page the salvation-type I am discovering. Because this God-saving-us-type is not done justice with mere words alone.  I'd be hard pressed to even say these words could be a catalyst to your own discovery of this constantly-saving-us-Love-type.

So...