Well, news is spreading about my latest, more-shocking-than-any-before career move. I gave up a newly acquired position reporting and editing for my old magazine, Graphic Arts Monthly (once in New York City but recently relocated to Oak Brook), to work as a resident assistant for an elderly home on Clark and Devon.

As of tomorrow, I will be fully moved into my new tiny, tiny bedroom inside a converted two-bedroom apartment at “The Pat Crowley House” (a four-story walk-up building) that I will share with three college students, two of whom are males.

To answer the biggest question: Yes, I will share one bathroom and it’s not a very big one or a particularly nice one. It’s old and has one of those old bathtub-on-legs showers that I’ve never been fond of. Worst of all, I will now have to put on a robe over my PJs and walk down a long hallway whenever I unexpectedly wake up in the middle of the night and have to go to the toilet. Bummer!

*****

In cleaning out my stuff from my friend’s lakefront condo where I’ve been renting a room for the past two months, I came across some old VCR tapes that I had purchased for $1 at this past summer’s family Bible conference in Palatine.

Knowing that I would not have a VCR at my new place (I’m not sure I’ll even have enough room for my TV!), I popped in a tape from Shorewood’s 1991 summer Bible conference, held only a few months before I was first introduced to the church and first learned about the “grace message.”

Jordan got my attention when, in the process of explaining how he goes about preparing for his sermons—crystallizing down his main points and making notes to himself—he said, “Do you understand that one of the most living, dynamically spiritual alive things there is is real preaching?!”

He went on, “Paul says it’s through ‘the foolishness of preaching.’ Not sharing, but preaching. Not dialoguing; preaching. And some times I think folks don’t know what preaching is. What it is is the doctrine gets in your personality; you focus it through your personality and you contribute what only you can contribute to the understanding of others.”

*****

The particular sermon on the tape was on Ephesians 1:4: “According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love.”

Jordan said, “If there’s the foundation of the world and God purposed this before the foundation the world, did He purpose this before or after the Fall (of Adam and Eve)?” asks Jordan. “Did you ever wonder what God intended to do in eternity past if sin had never entered the world?

“God’s ultimate intention did not originate in the fall of Adam. Do you understand God the Father had a plan? That’s what Paul is saying! When you get to Ephesians, Paul’s already taken care of Adam in Romans. He took you back to Genesis 11 in Romans 1. He took you back to Genesis 3 in Romans 5 and he said, ‘Now, in Christ, you’re taken care of! You got your dispensational disadvantage that came up in Genesis 12 taken out of the way with the fall of Israel. You got your personal alienation in Adam taken away through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, let’s get it on with it! It’s over, so now let’s go see what God planned to do in Himself and for Himself before all that stuff got in the way!’

“Whoopee, that’s what I’m interested in! I can get out of me and get into Him now!”