“16 Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. She had a female Egyptian servant whose name was Hagar. 2 And Sarai said to Abram, “Behold now, the Lord has prevented me from bearing children. Go in to my servant; it may be that I shall obtain children by her.” And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. 3 So, after Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, Sarai, Abram’s wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her servant, and gave her to Abram her husband as a wife. 4 And he went in to Hagar, and she conceived. And when she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress. 5 And Sarai said to Abram, “May the wrong done to me be on you! I gave my servant to your embrace, and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked on me with contempt. May the Lord judge between you and me!” 6 But Abram said to Sarai, “Behold, your servant is in your power; do to her as you please.” Then Sarai dealt harshly with her, and she fled from her. 7 The angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur. 8 And he said, “Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?” She said, “I am fleeing from my mistress Sarai.” 9 The angel of the Lord said to her, “Return to your mistress and submit to her.” 10 The angel of the Lord also said to her, “I will surely multiply your offspring so that they cannot be numbered for multitude.” 11 And the angel of the Lord said to her, “Behold, you are pregnant and shall bear a son. You shall call his name Ishmael, because the Lord has listened to your affliction. 12  He shall be a wild donkey of a man, his hand against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he shall dwell over against all his kinsmen.” 13 So she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, “You are a God of seeing,” for she said, “Truly here I have seen him who looks after me.” 14 Therefore the well was called Beer-lahai-roi; it lies between Kadesh and Bered. 15 And Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram called the name of his son, whom Hagar bore, Ishmael. 16 Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to Abram.” (Ge 16:1–16 ESV)

International as in networked, no fugitive but Traveler, the plea all just to get along meets the cool reality of a ping, a wildly rampant tear and loss, theft, scourge, vacuum as Mint goes ghost. Goes absent. Goes stolen. Two people earn each other’s trust, yet in the peace, backs together facing outwards to the bleary-eyed start of day, a villain side effect of monetary policy or fiscal negotiables, Thieves and Steals and Destroys: cause for war. Cause, we might reflect, to go Peace instead. To steadily gaze into the morning’s horizon, the sun’s course limping out of nightfall and into the Normed Morning with gusto.

Because we are the Harbingers and Pinnacles of thought. We are not phased, blink and shake the speck out of the eye and Resume Eye Contact, peace and Certainty, unspooked, we are Doing Business ‘round here. We are cultivating a Cultural Artifact called Christian Encounter, an Experience birthed in just the largely innocent desire to know more about our city, about her people, about the gamers and players and Gigs gotten up to. About a not-any-more-Jewish faith, but not either a “Broad Church” faith: Evangelical Digs, the Lordship supreme and all that, of Jesus Christ, who is Lord and Savior. Insert your superlatives here. Insert your Prophet here. Insert your Child-Who-Leads here.

Gameday rogue style takes the Supreme Call to heart: you fool, you loser, if I had what you had, I’d be talking trash and bossing people about around here! Maybe they don’t call it trash talking. Maybe they don’t have experience with such Verbal Encounter, to speak euphemistically. But to trash talk… it ain’t all gangs and crimes, it is just a bit of Love, minus the murder, minus the Abuse, minus the Legal Antics.

Because we are tearing through carp and junk and fill, to Share the Good News in tones Benign and tones motoring, zooming through the Thoughtsphere, no this is not me making trash talk, but rather me Evangelizing your community and yours, “Go forth and make disciples of all people, blessing them in the name of the Lord”. We talk up the Game: that Christ is friend of Sinners; that Christ He taught and listened and retreated and left in order Alone to Die.

To Pray, it is to wonder if we share things like “Praise the Lord”. Is that “pan-religious”, dually Theological, to wonder as guns and jihadists of all religious stripes, do raise up a generation, with chip on shoulder Reminder: “These are the Christians, Americans, who killed your parents”. Sometimes the impact crater potency of One Act of forgiveness, one querying instance of, “Hey, I’d like to know a little more about you”, is blanket and Rogue Idea, heals the community and the Nation. Ideas have Power, and to pray through the peace pipe or incense sticks passed around, is to Recover the fact: easy-peasy to react and critique or show the faultlines of someone’s actions, but to make a storyline Redemptive, to make a storyline that Labors to be Christlike, this is High Art and Requisite but Rare. Stop being snarky, we say to so many screenplays. Start being Plus, Ultra, Reward-Driven with the reward of wholesome pictures of family and friendships, of restaurants and backrooms. And know Christ had this Spirit in Him, that He was already edumacated and Prepped, prep school and all that of carpentry, a bit more fancy or forward or sophisticated than even yours truly, the Christian reflects, but all of us at day’s end in this Together.