Matt's Message 28 Feb / 1 Mar: Holy Cow!

Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novel "The Brothers Karamazov" drones on and on for roughly 412,000 pages to ask a simple though weighty question: "Is there a God?" Why it takes Fyodor 412,000 pages to get to a point is way beyond me, and why he didn't just come right out and ask the question and save two years of his life and 411,999 pages or the equivalent of 40 hillion dillion trees escapes me as well. I guess there wasn't much to do in Russia at the time.

Fyodor could have taken lessons from Matt who Sunday, thankfully, presented himself in the form of Josh Patterson. Now if Josh Patterson would have written "The Brothers Karamozov" it would have gone something like this (special thanks to Dave Barry):

Chapter 1:

"Let's kill our father" said Fyodor to Dimitri, Ivan and Alexei.

"Ok" they replied more or less collectively.

Chapter 2:

Is there a God?

Chapter 3:

Sure beats the heck out of me.

Chapter 4:

Fyodor spears a baboon.

The end.

This would have saved thousands and thousands of college students from spending countless hours in college libraries around the world trying to find a short synopsis of Fyodor's 2-year effort. I kept finding stuff like this: "Father killed, brothers share varying amounts of culpability, asks question "Is there a God?", effectively responds "don't really know. Whatever."

So Josh went to Africa following an itinerary that sounds as if he was on the run from Interpol, and frets about where he's going to spend the night each night. Then he comes home and:

* Turns the lights off and on a bunch of times
* Takes a 45 minute shower
* Eats some Mexican food

And then he asks the question: "Is Christ sufficient?" And I'm not really sure but I think he said something like "sure beats the heck out of me" but his answer was a little complicated and the two people in front of me kept texting and because my vision is not very good I had to concentrate pretty hard on trying to see what they were so intently texting about. I suspect that they were members of some competing or opposing church and they were texting Matt/Josh's sermon verbatim back to some high tech control room where it was being carefully dissected and then rebroadcast to some other universe where they have not discovered "pod cast".

In any event, I think a little closer scrutiny by the elders of the old Village Church Travel and Boondoggle Expense Fund might be in order because I think if my current or previous employers sent me to Africa and I reported that I'd spent 17 days constantly on the move, spearing baboons and yakking on a satellite phone to my wife while watching naked Africans I would have been fired. I certainly could have come back with something a little more profound or entertaining to report than:

* Watched naked Africans in a river
* Observed baboon being speared
* Talked on satellite phone to my wife
* Asked question "Is Christ sufficient?"

However, we will never know. I am guessing that Matt Josh's failure to determine whether or not Christ is sufficient portends another 17-day trip to Africa, at least. I suppose that's Ok, at least until the answer to that question leads him to Western Europe or the Summer Olympics or the Caribbean or Bora Bora. I vote we save the money and all agree that Christ is sufficient. Or as we say in recovery "Fake it 'til you make it."