Intersections

 Twelve years ago, I was reeling and recovering from my life implosion that happened only the previous year. I had been knocked down and to be honest, I was kind of bitter about it. I was angry that this is how my life was turning out. I knew I had to get out, make some new connections, friends, acquaintances - even. Fort Wayne was a very different place then. As much as we still had the Three Rivers Festival downtown, that was about the ONLY attraction, especially in the summer, that was going on and pulled people in from the suburbs and outlying regions to celebrate, or even to spend much time down there. If you would have gone downtown at any time after 5:00 on a weekday, you might have seen some misplaced tumbleweeds rolling down the street. Nothing was happening.  One thing that had started happening though, that there was a new young professionals group, called YLNI or Young Leaders of Northeast Indiana, who were under 40 and wanted to make Fort Wayne more palatable sinc...

  Last week, the scripture was out of 2nd Kings, and the story about Elisha and Naaman. Naaman had been struck with leprosy and wanted to get healed. His wife’s servant knew of a man who could do just that. He had to listen to the Spirit and go into his enemy’s land to get healed. At any point, he could have refused but he also knew that his goal of healing wouldn’t happen.  But if last week was about listening to the Spirit and follow as you’re lead, our scripture today is all about looking around and seeing who may be prophets around us. We are switching from a narrative story told more from the kings perspective to individual prophets. Before we dive too deep in, let’s zoom out for a second. This book takes place about the same time period as the stories from last week. We are talking about 8 centuries before Christ. The Israelite nation are still split into a northern kingdom (known as Israel) and the southernmost kingdom (known as Judah). Amos was from the southern kingdo...