In the Beginning...

The Bible starts off with the words, "In the beginning..." Honestly we figured that these words provided a good place to start. However, this blog supporting our podcast We Used to be Friends won't be as profound as the Bible. We would love for it to help and entertain people, but there is a clear realization that we can only do so much.

Tracy met BJ and Josh in the 9th grade (actually he met BJ one day during a short-lived stint at Osage Beach Elementary in 6th, but that's a story for another time). BJ and Josh had been friends for awhile, and then Tracy crashed the party. These three clowns fit nicely into a friendship group consisting of six boys at Camdenton High School in the flannel-ridden, grunge blaring mid-90s. We started off as high school friends but over the many years since (three decades, actually, but who's counting?), we have grown into being brothers. It isn't legal, nobody is related by blood or marriage, but it's much deeper than that, there is something spiritual and emotional about it. Proverbs 27:17 states "As Iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another." Being accountability partners in Christ does something special, it's an agreement where you have these friends where you can go for advice and guidance, request prayer, vent, and importantly - keep each other in check. In the popular television show Rescue Me they called it "busting each other's balls." Please forgive the mild inappropriateness, but it's a humnorous way of describing the idea of "keeping each other in check." The three of us have provided that for each other through death, divorce, babies, adoption, more babies, marriage, and all of the things that this world has thrown at us. It describes life in general for most people, does it not? 

This particular friendship focuses on the belief that the Bible is something more than just a bunch of old stories featuring big beards, bath robes, and Charlton Heston parting the Red Sea (it was Moses, but you get the idea). It's so much more than that. Most importantly, the promise of Jesus. You see, there is a ton of really supernatural stuff in the Bible, most notably, the idea that God entered into our story through a human life: Jesus. He lived a fairly short, but wildly influential life. We believe that he was the Son of God, capital S and capital G for that matter. We believe he died a pretty horrific death (typical of the time and place) and then the part that many people find hard to accept. After three days, the dude (should it be a capital D or is that Jeff Bridges?) rose from the dead. He came back to life, was seen by hundreds of people before heading home, to his Father, in Heaven. Supernatural, weird, interesting, and almost... unbelievable.

This blog will support our podcast We Used to be Friends.  The three of us will take things from our show into a deeper level here and provide insite into things we are wrestling with, thinking about, struggling with, and maybe even new understandings. It will show you a step in our individual journeys. We may not always be right, or even on the right track (have you ever been there?) but we want to be open, as honest as we can be, and show you our imperfections. You may smile at these imperfections as well as laugh, cry, get angry at us, or maybe even with us. We are doing the best we can, striving to improve our relationship with God and each other. We invite you to do the same. 

Blessings,

We Used to be Friends