He said optimistically.

I say that because once again I foolishly gave up coffee. You would think I would learn! (Actually, my wife has joined me in this foolishness!)

And now there is a brand new, very stylish, coffee maker sitting in our kitchen (the old one went up in a puff of very smelly smoke the other day)... and me with still a couple of weeks before I can use it!

And once again I began this Lenten season with my usual best of intentions to make it deeply meaningful and spiritual.

Clearly what I need is for some guy to knock on the door and come in with a good heavy 2x4 and hit me upside the head. And then leave a set of "Life Instructions" pinned to my chest (for me to discover when I come to).

I just keep falling back into my same old rut.

I need a new rut!

A more helpful, constructive rut!

(Which isn't a bad idea, now that I put it that way. Maybe a good strategy would be to visualize this new rut I want to fall into as concretely as I can – and then fall into it!)

Anyway!

Dani and I decided to do a study for this season on what it means to be a disciple. She gets up for work around 1:30 in the morning (she ought to do a study on better sleep patterns!) and I join her for coffee. Except, of course, now it is tea. For two more weeks. I will surely have lost my mind by then.

I found a couple articles on Discipleship on the internet and we have been reading and discussing those. Mostly they seem to be yelling at us for not being true disciples! And how the church is doing a lousy job of following Jesus' command to "Go, make disciples!"

I am thinking if that were true – there wouldn't be much of a church around to be reading articles about discipleship! When the reality is – there are LOTS of us who have come to know Jesus and are doing our best to follow him.

So maybe it's not that we aren't true disciples – but maybe that we just aren't very good ones. Or at least, we could be doing a much better job.

But that is the issue.

Jesus has called us to make disciples.

So our questions are...

Are we???

And what exactly does it mean to BE a disciple?