Sunday

I went to the church in the Hadian district today, you can see a picture of it below. It is quite an excellent place, completely legal and registered with the Chinese government. The senior pastor, Pastor Wu, was even tapped to be the official chaplain for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Imagine leading a church and the government comes to you asking you to be the spiritual head of the Olympics! I've been to the English service here many times but today's sermon was particularly good and so I thought I'd share a few of the points with you.
The text was from Luke 15 and the subject was the Prodigal Son. The title was "Swine Flu."

Briefly recapping the story, the young man who left his father to squander his money was soon starving and found himself desperate for food and living among the pigs. When he came to his senses, he returned home begging for forgiveness but his father threw his arms around him. Notice he didn't say "Yuck, get away from me. You've been living and eating among swine! You could have the flu!" He pressed him closer because he was his son. He also didn't care what the neighbors thought and in this time period, it would have been very shameful, but he didn't care, because he was his son and all was forgiven. He only wanted him home again!


On May 5, 2009, a private plane chartered by the Chinese government landed in Mexico City to rescue nearly 100 Chinese nationals stranded in Mexico due to the recent Swine Flu epidemic, particularly hard hitting in Mexico, and return them home. God sent his own way of coming home for us to rescue us out of the epidemic of sin. Like the father in the parable, God doesn't care what condition we are in when we come, He only wants us home again and He will take care of the rest!