SexGod

So, a year ago I discovered this genius man named Rob Bell. He pastors a church in Michigan. He has those short videos called "Nooma" as well as one of my most beloved of books, "Velvet Elvis". He's made me want to see God in new perspectives. Anyways, Chris told me he is writing a new book called "SexGod" and I found his first chapter excerpt and its amazing. Here is part of it:

Chapter 1: God wears lipstick
I have a new hero. Her name is Lil. I met her earlier this year when she introduced me to her daughter, whom she was pushing in a wheelchair. early in their marriage, Lil and her husband decided that they would adopt 2 children. As they became familiar with the family services system, they learned that there were kids in the system nobody wanted. So they went to the local adoption agency and asked for the kids with the most pronounced disabilities, the most traumatic histories and the most hopeless futures. They asked if they could have the kids nobody wanted. Over the past 30 years or so , they have raised well over 20 children.
When Lil got to this point in her story, she reached down and patted her daughter and said, "this is Crystal. She's 27 years old but will be about 6 months old developmentally forthe rest of her life. She can't talk or walk or move or feed herself or do anything on her own. She will be like this, totally dependent on us, until the day she dies. And I love her so much. My family and I, we can't imagine life without her. She makes everything so much better."

What's Lil Doing?
She's bringing heaven to earth.
She gives us a glimpse into another realm. Into a better way. The way of God.
She and her family have taken kids who were discarded b/c of their perceived lack of worth and said, "No, you are not to be rejected and turned away. We are going to love you as an equal, as a human, as one of us." They show us how God loves us. They reflect the image. And when you see it lived out like this, you're seeing heaven crash into earth.
Instead of seeing labels like "handicapped," "reject," or "invalid," Lil and her husband and her kids see only one label: "human."

-And so they have only one response: Love.
-And it makes all the difference in heaven and earth.

Which takes us back to something that happened during Colonel Gonin's stay at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp:
It was shortly after the British Red Cross arrived, though it may have no connection, that was a very large quantity of lipstick arrived. This was not alt all what we wanted, we were screaming for hundreds and thousands of other things and I don't know who asked for lipstick. I wish so much that I could discover who did it, it was the action of genius, sheer unadulterated brilliance. I believe nothing did more for these internees than the lipstick. Women lay in bed with no sheets and no nightie but with scarlet red lips, you saw them wandering about with nothing but a blanket over their shoulders, but with scarlet red lips. I saw a woman dead on the postmortem table and clutched in her hand was a piece of lip-stick. At last someone had done something to make them individuals again, they were someone, no longer merely the number tattooed on the arm. At last they could take an interest in their appearance.That lipstick started to give them back their humanity.
Because sometimes, the difference between heaven and hell may be a bit of lipstick.