One change that the message "Brevity" effected in my life this week was I finally wrote that Compassion Int'l. sponsor letter to a little girl name Jinisha who lives in India. I have had good intentions of doing this for a while but just hadn't put pen to paper. I was remembered this afternoon the anecdote about the letter Branson wrote to the family of his deceased neighbor. I'm glad you told that story and thanks Branson for giving your best last Sunday. I wrote the letter I needed to and I don't regret it at all.

This is indeed exciting and as Wright has said before the eucharist is God's way of saying that the world and its systems and divisions have met their match. In the body of Christ their are no divisions and "table fellowship" is to be enjoyed by the whole family regardless of the typical labels we place on them (race, creed, nationality, ethinicity, gender, education, etc., etc..). No system or organization devised by man or the "principalities and powers" has been able to comletely erase the lines of division between human beings. When these "powers" in this fallen world observe the family of God enjoying true fellowship and unity then they know that their time is up and they have been trumped by the power of God's plan, his covenant. Only God can really bring us all together, in his body. That is a mystery but a fact.

It is also good to keep in mind when partaking of the eucharist that it is the New Testament form of the Old Testament passover meal which has now been redefined around Jesus himself, his broken body and his blood. And just as the Israelites would be thinking of liberation from slavery (Egypt) and "return from exile" (the Kingdom) when eating the passover so we too as the body of Christ should look both back in time to Jesus' death and resurrection and forward to that ultimate liberation of God's people with his second appearance and liberation of all of creation itself from it's "bondage to decay" as in Romans 8. So the eucharist points us to that ultimate Exodus which awaits.

Yeah, this is exciting stuff.....