Life is funny. A couple of weeks ago I showed my grandkids “Mork and Mindy” with Robin Williams. Yesterday morning as I drove through Keene and looked at the sign from the time of Jumanji being filmed, I thought of him. Yesterday morning, my post with the picture of “leave me alone”, I thought about him.  And yesterday I wrote about troubled places around the world and thought about Hollywood. I opened my email to see that one of my favorite comedians had gone on. Robin Williams.

A couple of my accounts at work are in Hollywood. One of them is a film production studio. Only yesterday I had a long conversation with one of them about Hollywood, actors, taxes and more. (They are a huge company.)

Hollywood. Thankful for friends like Shawn Bolz who have made the decision to live there and reach these folks.

Last night I had a dream. In the dream a minister I knew had made the decision to step down from full time ministry to open a “gas station”.  He was not quitting preaching or teaching, but he was not going to receive the money they offered him. One of his last phrases from the pulpit was “and if you want a series, please ask my wife!” People cheered. They loved him.

He had asked me to come by and see him. I arrived and his wife seemed nervous that I was there. His teenage son was there as well. He was gracious and greeted me with a hug. The father walked out and asked me into the den. I followed and moments later he was explaining his thinking. He planned to reach the “gay community” by getting to know them. He was nervous about my thoughts. I walked over to him and prayed for him and released him to what he believed he was to do.

As I left the home I walked past the end of it that was being converted to the convenience/gas station. “If you feel left out, this is the place.” There was more, but that is what I thought was important.

Yesterday I thought about the people I reach in this season. Goth, rapper, gay and demonized. Will they say “I felt left out, but you made me aware of the place”? I don’t have to agree with their lifestyle or their sin to reach out to them and share the “place”. Why a gas station? Maybe because it is a filling station. I am not really sure. But for some reason I knew it was going to be the “place”.

Yesterday I read of the church that stands about a strip joint and boycotts the place. Over the weekend the strippers showed up topless to “boycott” the church. I am pretty sure they were aware of what the church was against, but were they sure of what they were for? It does not sound like it.

I know. I have worked with madams, strippers and prostitutes who “left the business”. Was the message of Christ, “go and sin no more” or was it “come to me all of you who are heavy laden…”? (It was both. Is it a greater sin to no trust God or to take your clothes off for others?) One day a young woman, newly saved, came to church with the only clothes she probably had. (And it was not much.) Some understanding woman took here aside and wrapped her with her coat. (Is that not what the prodigal’s father did? Covered the filth of the pigs was the robe of righteousness?)

As I wrote this last night and thought of troubled places, unaware of the death of Robin Williams, I thought of the gay man I had spoken to on the phone in Hollywood. …We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoever has the world’s goods, and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him? Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.…

I have often said that the prophet is the “digestive system” of the body perhaps more than the eyes. We are to trumpet righteousness, remove the “crap” that gets into the body and point out the good and bring life.

Today let the prophets be moved with compassion as they cry out for these violence torn areas. Let them and others be moved in their inner parts with the compassion carried by Jesus.

My heart goes out to the family of Robin Williams. I understand depression. I missed the summer of 1982, hospitalized for many months from an incident initiated by depression. My incident did not end in my death, though not for lack of trying.

I get it.

There is a cry in the land for real people to engage on real levels. To reach out, as the minister in my dream planned to. Each of us has “gone through something to get here”. What we have come from and our testimony of our lives in Him are important to others. Whether it is Hollywood, the borders, Iraq or downtown Homeland USA, we have been called. Let this be a day of sharing hope and beginning change!