Rendered Silent

In college when I moved into an apartment for the first time, one of the things I was most excited about was having a kitchen. What I quickly learned was that cooking was much easier for me than baking. With cooking, you could ad lib, play with ingredients, make replacements easily, but with baking, every time I tried to play or experiment, it completely flopped.

What I learned was that it was rarely about what I would add to a recipe, but what was missing. What was absent was just as important as what was present. Isn't this true with so much of life? Whether it's the absence of a person in our lives, the words someone fails to say when we need them most, or the absence of resources to thrive or even survive. 

Sometimes it is this way with Scripture too. This week as we explore the story of Lazarus and the rich man, along with exploring the text that is present, we'll explore what is missing and what we might have to learn from that.