Beans, Blogs, and Breadbowls

"It's a great day for soup," Sean said, as he headed the car out of my company's parking lot, where he had picked me up, and toward our favorite restaurant, where we would, as we do every Thursday, each order a breadbowl, a round loaf of bread with the middle scooped out and filled with thick, hearty soup. After you finish the soup, you eat the bowl.

Over our breadbowls we share our mutual passion for the manifest Presence of the Lord Jesus. The conversation is as hearty as the soup as we lift Him up in all His glorious aspects. Lives which have been impacted by the burning of His glory ignite when near the burning bush. We share the impact He has had on our lives, our desires for the church, our excitement in the growing world-wide night and day intercessory prayer movement, the Scriptures which He opens to our hearts as He walks beside us in The Way.

Although we both work in IT for large financial services companies, we rarely discuss work and business issues. That takes a back seat to Jesus. And although I'm usually aware of my surroundings - people, places, and points of the compass - that all becomes just a backdrop, like the wallpaper on my computer desktop, as the King of Glory takes center stage. When He is lifted up, all else becomes secondary.

After we eat our bowls, we walk across the parking lot to St. Arbucks to drink our beans (brewed into pricey designer coffee drinks) and continue sharing His life. As the time stretches past the short interval allotted us by our respective employers, we realize that we have been in real fellowship as we warm our hearts at His fire.

Church can too often put us shoulder to shoulder with people we don't know at all, even after many years, and we end up alone together. But Jesus connects us in a way that no program or exercise can.

And we blog. This keeps us connected. While our modern lifestyle separates us by concrete highways, the information highway allows us to hang together. While no substitute for fellowship in the flesh, blogging is becoming a way of ministering to each other, encouraging each other, proclaiming the wonder of our glorious King of Glory. There's a growing band of bloggers who are fulfilling their calling of "hath not each of you a psalm, a hymn, a tongue, a doctrine?"

So keep blogging, you band of bloggers. And have some soup and eat some bread. And drink your beans.