No matter how cheesy and irrelevant this question is, reading a friends e-mail struck me in such a profane way. As I often query to how things are going back home - what the boys are reading, learning, and wrestling with - my friend Dave commented about the aforementioned question. Now understand, usually my contrarian personality scoffs at these attempts at profundity with the Joel-typical, negative, tactless, arrogant response. However, knowing these gents and their process of dissection, I bit. But it was my friends response to my three that made me realize how fruitful and necessary this journey has been. This is what he wrote:

Every time I think about this, my brain just starts
going over things I would ask each. You know, I think there were some
points in my life where I would have only said Jesus because that is the
"correct" answer. I believe right now, with what He has taught me, I think
I definitely would choose him.

Yes!! He is so right. For eons i would have declared Jesus a dinner guest simply as a verbal, empirical attempt at piety - 'Let my friends and family gain first hand knowledge of just how righteous I be.' However, through the last couple of years, experiencing heavy doses of humility and pain, His gentle provision has been exactly what I needed; subsequently pushing Joel aside, allowing me to truly want Him over for dinner. Now, the technological capabilities are not available to x-ray my heart, transposing it into a pie chart of percentage representations, but I'm pretty certain His portion of my heart has increased.

So, in solidarity with Dave (from the east) Wilhite, and maybe for the first time, I too would love to have Jesus over for dinner. As for the questions, well, right now, I think I need to just listen. It's not often I become so malleable.