Relationship Project

Imagine a runner, deep into a marathon, who, instead of catching much-needed water bottles generously tossed by the crowd, throws into the crowd toxicity balloons that burst on impact. This scenario pictures the damaging offload that selfishness dumps into relationships. Scripture calls this selfishness "the flesh," and this book will show how repentance-a vital change of heart-drains the toxicity from relationships and fosters a joyous self-giving otherwise known as love. The exhaustion of defensiveness begins to lift. When love enters the bloodstream of relationships, our frantic striving for safety and control gives way to fresh air, the hope of knowing and being known.

We live in a vast social wordscape made up almost entirely of chit-chat, or we're being talked at rather than with. Often, we feel targeted by others' words rather than invited into a mutual conversation. It can be hard to find a relationship that involves solid words on which to rest our tattered souls. In your hands, you hold a book with pages dusted by the Word, Jesus Christ. It assumes that since Jesus is still alive and still hears and speaks, there really is hope that humans can do the same. In fact, we're designed to do the same, we've just lost the skill. This object you have found, this book, invites you to engage in spiritual conversations, those that the Spirit of Christ, our helper, has always hoped we could have with each other. In spiritual conversations, chit-chat and targeting give way to real talk in which to rest, heal, repent, and grow.

It seems that the only time we're not hurrying is when we're rushing. By the time we heed the calls of smartphones, iPods, iPads, emails, podcasts, downloads, app shopping, YouTubing, web browsing, posting, and responding to posts, we've ridden the amped-up hurry-train so far that we're lost. In fact, the last items in our list ("posting and responding to posts") sound so much like "marrying and giving in marriage" that we might well conclude that we are wedded to whipped-up drivenness. We need a fast from going fast. The gospel of Christ calls us to rest, but learning how takes time. We're invited to ease off the hurry-train and learn the pace of waiting. But waiting for what? To become a bit more like Jesus, who lived at a breathtakingly still point before the one who sent him.