Breakfast with Rick

This morning I had breakfast with Rick. He is a good friend who lives north of Boston so we meet at a half-way point, the IHOP restaurant on route 9 east of Worcester. He is a brother in the Lord and we have similar outlooks and interests about living the Christian life. Discussing what the Lord is doing in our lives is fun and interesting- well worth the drive.

His daughter recently came from California, where she's a college student, to visit him. He is busy planning an outdoor baptism for his house church, to take place at Walden Pond (yes, Thoreau's Walden Pond) next Saturday. And he's helping with wedding arrangements for a close friend who's being married the Saturday after that.

We talked also about Jesus's teaching that we need to remove the plank from our eyes before we can remove the speck from a brother's eye. We discussed the passage from Matthew 7 where Jesus says that we should settle accounts with our adversaries. Rick's perspective is that we need to be willing to humble ourselves and give up our "rights" as Jesus gave up his. We also discussed the "burning coals" idea from Romans 12.