A 28 year old man was pulled from out of the rubble in Haiti today, four weeks after the earthquake. Doctors are confused a little about his situation because it is humanly impossible to stay alive for this long without water.

From CNN:
“The man told doctors that someone was bringing him water while he was trapped, but doctors told CNN that he sounded confused and at times appeared to believe he was still under the rubble.  Connelly said the man must have had some water during the past month to have survived, but Connelly wasn’t sure how he would have had access to it.”

“Reporter Dr. Sanjay Gupta said the 28-year-old man was severely dehydrated but that he survived because a man in a white coat brought him water time to time. Officials are checking the veracity of the man’s story.  Gupta said the man “must have had water” to survive for nearly four weeks pinned in the rubble.”

Uh….does this remind anyone of 1 Kings 19:5-13?

⁵ Then he lay down under the tree and fell asleep.  All at once an angel touched him and said, “Get up and eat.” ⁶ He looked around, and there by his head was a cake of bread baked over hot coals, and a jar of water. He ate and drank and then lay down again. ⁷ The angel of the LORD came back a second time and touched him and said, “Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you.” ⁸ So he got up and ate and drank. Strengthened by that food, he traveled forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God. ⁹ There he went into a cave and spent the night.

And the word of the LORD came to him: “What are you doing here, Elijah?” ¹⁰ He replied, “I have been very zealous for the LORD God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, broken down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.”¹¹ The LORD said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by.” Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. ¹² After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. ¹³ When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.  Then a voice said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

CNN Article

Sunday’s message was one of those messages that’s not fun hear or experience, but it’s one that we all need. It forced us to confront the reality of life and death. My hope was that it helped you confront this reality at a time in your life where you can really take “things to heart” as Ecclesiastes 7:2 puts it. I know for me personally, thinking about life’s brevity and fragility has changed the way I view life, family, friends, and what I give my time and energy to.

Many of you have asked me for more information on Matt’s story. The following are some links that you might be interested in:

• AP Article on Matt’s Story that he mentioned in the video I showed.
• Matt’s Blog where you can see video updates as they are posted.
• This past week’s message can be found here.

Materials from this past week’s message can be found below

Opening Video

First Video Update from Matt Chandler

Second Video Update from Matt Chandler

Audio Clip from Matt Chandler’s Sermon on Ecclesiastes 7 from September 17, 2006

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

So we’ve been in a series called “The Search” in which we are looking at the book of Ecclesiastes. The writer was a guy who had more money, power, sex, success, and education than any of us will ever have in our life time. And when he looks at all the stuff people are chasing after he says, “It’s all meaningless and it doesn’t satisfy”.

Well in case you thought that all that biblical stuff was outdated and doesn’t still apply any more, well read the following article posted today in London’s Telegraph Newspaper by Henry Samuel.

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Millionaire gives away fortune which made him miserable

Mr Rabeder, 47, a businessman from Telfs is in the process of selling his luxury 3,455 sq ft villa with lake, sauna and spectacular mountain views over the Alps, valued at £1.4 million.

Also for sale is his beautiful old stone farmhouse in Provence with its 17 hectares overlooking the arrière-pays, on the market for £613,000. Already gone is his collection of six gliders valued at £350,000, and a luxury Audi A8, worth around £44,000.

Mr Rabeder has also sold the interior furnishings and accessories business – from vases to artificial flowers – that made his fortune.

“My idea is to have nothing left. Absolutely nothing,” he told The Daily Telegraph. “Money is counterproductive – it prevents happiness to come.”

Instead, he will move out of his luxury Alpine retreat into a small wooden hut in the mountains or a simple bedsit in Innsbruck.

His entire proceeds are going to charities he set up in Central and Latin America, but he will not even take a salary from these.

“For a long time I believed that more wealth and luxury automatically meant more happiness,” he said. “I come from a very poor family where the rules were to work more to achieve more material things, and I applied this for many years,” said Mr Rabeder.

But over time, he had another, conflicting feeling.

“More and more I heard the words: ‘Stop what you are doing now – all this luxury and consumerism – and start your real life’,” he said. “I had the feeling I was working as a slave for things that I did not wish for or need.

I have the feeling that there are lot of people doing the same thing.”

However, for many years he said he was simply not “brave” enough to give up all the trappings of his comfortable existence.

The tipping point came while he was on a three-week holiday with his wife to islands of Hawaii.

“It was the biggest shock in my life, when I realised how horrible, soulless and without feeling the five star lifestyle is,” he said. “In those three weeks, we spent all the money you could possibly spend. But in all that time, we had the feeling we hadn’t met a single real person – that we were all just actors. The staff played the role of being friendly and the guests played the role of being important and nobody was real.”

He had similar feelings of guilt while on gliding trips in South America and Africa. “I increasingly got the sensation that there is a connection between our wealth and their poverty,” he said.

Suddenly, he realised that “if I don’t do it now I won’t do it for the rest of my life”.

Mr Rabeder decided to raffle his Alpine home, selling 21,999 lottery tickets priced at just £87 each. The Provence house in the village of Cruis is on sale at the local estate agent.

All the money will go into his microcredit charity, which offers small loans to Latin America and builds development aid strategies to self-employed people in El Salvador, Honduras, Bolivia, Peru, Argentina and Chile.

Since selling his belongings, Mr Rabeder said he felt “free, the opposite of heavy”.

But he said he did not judge those who chose to keep their wealth. “I do not have the right to give any other person advice. I was just listening to the voice of my heart and soul.”

I read a lot of blogs throughout the week. (For those of you wondering what a blog is, it’s basically a website that someone updates regularly with articles. Picture being you’re own newspaper and getting to publish your own editorials, articles, news, etc.) One of the blogs that’s on my list is maintained by one of our Essential Church family members, Karen Johnson. This past week she shared a post on her thoughts regarding heaven and what God is showing her as she moves through this season of life. It’s one of the best articles on heaven I’ve ever read and I wanted to share it with you.

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Think Heaven

by Karen Johnson on Thursday, February 04, 2010

Those words tell me that death for a believer in Christ, like my son Joey, is merely a matter of geography–alive, but in a different place. Though we are suffering loss, Joey isn’t. He simply shed a fragile skin, but he’s alive, he never died, he lives in spite of dying–however you say it, it’s good news. I think I thought I believed that before Joey departed, but then the unthinkable happened and the reality of the death of our beloved was so much more horrible than I ever imagined, I just wasn’t sure of anything anymore.

If God has done anything in me since Joey left, it’s been to re-shape my view of Heaven. Over and over again, I see and hear things that rebuild my confidence in its reality. I’m taking it personally. I believe God is on a campaign to convince me of the reality of Heaven. And it’s not just from His Word, which is ultimately powerful, but He is corroborating His Word from nature, from history, from music, from movies, from the longings of our hearts for perfection, beauty and love.

It’s safe to say it’s a conviction now. I don’t doubt it anymore. I don’t dread it anymore. It’s vivid and full of life and creation. It’s better to me than earth, this place that I used to love so well that I tried to squeeze every bit of life out of it. I confess I mistook it for heaven and counted on it too much for my happiness. I’ve had to do quite a bit of reorganizing my life around some new truth. But now I’m certain that the place of my dreams lies in my future. And now, more often than not, I’m restlessly biding my time for my Homecoming day, and instead of longing for Joey to return, I long to go there and be with him.

Related Articles by topic on Karen’s blog:  death, god, heaven

Yes, we are having church tomorrow. Perhaps we’ll be the only church in town gathering together for worship. Today in the thick of it all, our family made a trip to the grocery store. The weather didn’t keep anyone from heading out to get bread, milk, or even a Redbox movie. It’s not going to keep me from worshiping God.

If the Superbowl was going on here tomorrow, let’s be honest…we’d be there. Actually the weather would only add to the excitement. Tomorrow will be one of those mornings we will remember for a long time.

Who knows, since it looks like we’ll be the only church gathering together tomorrow, perhaps it will give us a unique opportunity to meet some people who’ve never been to Essential before.

We’ll be continuing our series “The Search”. This week we will be looking at Ecclesiastes 4 and the message title is, “The Search for Community.” There’s a great book on the decline of personal relationships called Bowling Alone. It’s centered on the statistic that although bowling has become America’s #1 participatory sport with an increase of 10% over the last 25 years, bowling leagues have dropped by 40%. In other words, more people are bowling, but their bowling alone.

In the midst of Solomon’s search for meaning and purpose in life, he devotes a whole chapter on the value of relationships. On a day when most people will be home alone, what a perfect message to have planned.

Drive slow and safe, I hope to see you there.

So far today we’ve had a great day out in the snow with the kids. we made a snow man, threw some snow balls, and made a snow angel.

As for tomorrow, yes I’m going to church. I’m going to leave early, drive slow, and go. If you’re worried about your ability to drive in the snow, then you are welcome to stay home. Nodoby is going to pressure you to go to church.

As we come up on our one year anniversary next month, I came across an article from another church celebrating their 10th anniversary. Let me share it with you:

It was ten years ago today that we nearly canceled church.
We had our first service on January 16, 2000…but the next Saturday night (January 22) a MAJOR ice storm hit the upstate. I remember sitting in front of my television with the weather channel on, begging God to let the ice storm miss us.. It didn’t!

SO…the next morning trees were falling all over the place and the entire college campus lost power. I “gave up” and decided to walk over to the building where we were meeting and post a sign on the door that said, “church canceled today.”

When I got to the door Joe and Jeen Sangl were sitting in front of the building in their little chevy car and Joe said to me, “Hey man, we aren’t canceling church, are we?”

“No way,” I said back to him as I wadded the piece of paper up and put it in my pocket. We walked into the room (which was VERY cold) and set up chairs. We didn’t have to worry about sound or anything like that…like I said, we had no power. After everything was ready we sat back and wondered whether or not anyone was going to show.

They did, mostly college students…but by the time we began our services we had around 70 people in the room. So…we played some music, I preached and then we went home. (We had church that night as well!) I remember thinking as people were leaving, “I am SO glad we did not cancel church today.”

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I’m looking forward to the memories of this weekend. See you tomorrow.

Here’s the video that I shared at the end of the service this morning. Judging by the number of people who asked me about it, I’m guessing it had the same effect on everyone else that it did on me. I added the subtitles and trimmed it up just a little, but below is the original off of YouTube. The worship leader is Carlos Whittaker. He went to downtown Atlanta, to get some footage for an upcoming album.

This past weekend was amazing. The best part for me was seeing so many people who’ve either never been to church or haven’t been to church in a while at Essential.

Well as you may have seen on Sunday, we still have a lot of work to do on the facility. This past week we reworked the lighting in the worship center. Hopefully you’ll be able to see your Bible during the message now. I think we have the glitches in the video projector worked out and tonight we’re working on the sound system. Of course there are a host of other details that need to be worked on in the coming weeks.

Speaking of which, we really need your help in finishing things up. Our schedule from this point on will be to work on Tuesday and Thursday evenings and then on Saturdays. We’ll be starting this up this Saturday from 9-3.We’ll have donuts in the morning and something for lunch. If you email Susan Mollura and let her know that you are coming it will help us plan better. Her email address is SBSue@Verizon.net.

Some of the projects that we need to finish are:

• the Kid’s Church room which is scheduled to be open this weekend
• the Youth Center which is scheduled to be open in two weeks
• Counseling Rooms which are scheduled to be open in two weeks
• Church offices which are scheduled to open in three weeks
• All the small details around the building (and there are a ton of details)

Today was a great day!!! There were 300 people at church this morning squeezed into a facility that we thought would only hold about 230 or so.  Over the past two months we’ve been working hard to make the facility a great place for people to connect with God and each other.  All this time we’ve been wondering how many people would show up when we opened the doors on January 10th.  Church is like throwing a party and inviting everyone in the city to come. It’s just impossible to know what to plan for.

Fortunately we have the best staff and volunteers a church could hope for and they were able to roll with it all like we knew what we were doing. Children’s workers that were planning on attending the service willingly went out to help with the number of children that showed up. Looking forward we now know that we need to plan for more children and make arrangements for overflow parking.

I know some of the things we have planned for this series and it’s going to be amazing. Ecclesiastes is a powerful book with a message that speaks to everyone since it talks about the meaning of life. Invite a friend next week.  We’ll find a way to accomidate everyone who shows up.

God is amazing, You are essential.