A Marathon and Blog Posts

Posted by Alan Knox on Mar 18, 2013 in blog links, personal | 4 comments

Yesterday, I ran a marathon for the first time ever! In fact, before yesterday, the longest distance I’d ever run was 18 miles. Now, I won’t lie to you and say that everything was wonderful during the marathon. It wasn’t. The first half went great, but the last half was a real struggle. While all marathons are difficult, I think I struggled with the last half of this one because my training routine has been hampered the last few weeks because of sickness and a few other things.

But, I did finish, which is a huge accomplishment for me. I still prefer the half marathon distance, and I’ve already registered for another half marathon next month. But, for now, I’m not counting out the possibility of running another marathon sometime in the future.

There were some really good blog posts last week that I’d like to highlight…

Christopher at “Life With Da Man CD” wrote a great post called “Enjoying the Lord’s Supper.” After describing some of the diverse people who had gathered together, he writes:

Here we all were around the table, talking about what it was like for Jesus to wash the feet of his disciples and what the modern equivalent would be. The beauty of this conversation was how everyone contributed something profound, even if Kat and Jo still barely knew their way round the Bible and Kat in particularly was still finding reading difficult. Her insights were just as welcome and profound as anything Rob or I came up with.

How awesome it is when brothers and sisters gather together to share a meal and to encourage one another in Jesus Christ!

On a somewhat related note, Eric at “A Pilgrim’s Progress” wrote a great post called “Expository Discussion.” Here is a small part of Eric’s post:

Expository discussion is based in the idea that the church is a fully functioning priesthood of all believers. All Christians have the ability to read and understand what God has said. Some may be more experienced at this process, but all can and should participate.

Since all have the ability to read (or at least listen to) scripture and discuss it, the group dynamic is often a fascinating one. In a room with, for example, twelve people, the group can benefit greatly by what the Holy Spirit has to add through all twelve people. While the biblical text means one thing, the group has a way of seeing and describing that one thing is different ways. This helps all involved better comprehend both what God means and how they should respond to this.

Eric is describing something that I call a “community hermeneutic” or “community interpretation.” Like he says, it is quite fascinating to participate in and extremely edifying.

Finally, Chuck at “Being Filled” wrote a post called “Consider Others Better Than Yourself.” Chuck wrote this as part of a “chain blog” on the topic of “One Another” that we started back in October 2012.

Here is a snippet of Chuck’s post:

[T]his means that we should be very slow to judge intentions.

When someone does something we don’t like, it is easy to imagine a malicious intent behind their actions. We ought rather to always give the benefit of the doubt. Assume a person’s intentions are pure unless proven otherwise.

Wow… the church and the world would be so much different if Christians actually considered others better than themselves…

So, that’s all the news for now. I’m resting my legs after running 26.2 miles yesterday, and enjoying even more of the wonderful blog posts out there that encourage the church of Jesus Christ to build up one another in love, faith, and unity.