Today ought to be interesting... I'm playing golf! I can't even remember the last time I played a round of golf, but I'm pretty sure it was well over a year ago. For that reason alone it will be interesting. Golf is not the type of game that goes well without practice. For me it is also a flashback to a former life of mine. There was a time when golf was how I made a living. Not as a player, but as a working professional. A club pro. It's interesting how life changes when we come in contact with Jesus. Things change so drastically..... or not! I think of characters in scripture like Paul who went from being a persecutor of those following "the way" to an encounter with Jesus to a man who brought the gospel to the gentile world. Zaccheus went from a dishonest tax collector to an encounter with Jesus to a man paying people back four times what he owed them (wouldn't we all like to see the IRS have an encounter with Jesus?). Encounters with the living God bring about radical change. We also see those like the rich young ruler who went away sad from an encounter with Jesus because he was called to a radical change that he was unwilling to make. My own dreams and aspirations are radically different then they were when I was working in the golf business and it is directly tied to my own encounter with Jesus. I wonder what it is that causes us to react to knowing Christ the way that we do. I know many who have come to know him and there appears to be no appreciable difference in their day to day and yet others make radical shifts. Paul and Zaccheus had brief encounters and made radical shifts and the rich guy just couldn't. Judas Iscariot spent three years hanging with Jesus and when it came right down to it, he turned him over to be killed. Go figure.