photo © 2009 Melissa Gray | more info (via: Wylio)
Most of my life, religion has existed in my head. A list of things to know, facts to get straight, specific opinions to hold about life and politics and morality.

The last few years, God has opened my eyes to the story wrapped around the bare bones facts. God reveals Truth to us through stories, through the lives of real people and ultimately in Jesus, a person who walked and talked and lived among us. Meeting the One who restores and redeems and forgives isn’t supposed to turn us into catalogs of facts. We’re supposed to become God’s hands and feet, the Good News with skin on.

Jesus turns the world upside down. He taught that the things we cast aside as insignificant are, in fact, the most important in God’s world. He said that helping the needy is so significant that it’s as if helping Jesus.

I’ve been reading the book of Isaiah, and instead of depressing me with gloom and doom, it has knocked the wind out of me with its relevance. As I wrote on my blog last week, God nailed me in chapter one where it says that being “church-busy” is sin if we’re not also defending the homeless and defenseless. Ouch.

Then I got to Isaiah 58, where I found myself again…

Click here to read the rest on Deeper Story, where I will post some of my reactions from Bolivia.