"Same Kind of Different as Me"

by Ron Hall and Denver Moore

It's been awhile since I've written about books I'm reading, but I couldn't let this one pass by. After numerous recommendations, I picked up the book "Same Kind of Different as Me" last week and read it. It was exceptional! I'm not going to tell you much of what it's about because I really want to encourage as many people as possible to read it.

I will tell you this much, it's a story about what happens when our faith in God becomes more than a Sunday event. It's about faith in action - the kind of action that leads to dirt under the fingernails and not just a nice plaque on a wall. It's about the power of Jesus to transform lives - homeless lives, wealthy lives, our lives. It's about what happens when we get truly relational and decide to love our neighbors like Jesus said.

I walked away from the book convicted and excited - not just to do more, but to do better. Do you know what I mean? I'm talking about the fact that I do a lot of stuff, but my heart isn't always in it, my motives aren't always to dig deeper and know God more, but instead to make it through. That's boring, that's meaningless (as Solomon points out repeatedly in Ecclesiastes). I want to do everything for the purpose of loving the God who made me and loving the people He loves. And that includes everything from washing dishes to preparing a message for Sunday morning. It includes talking to my neighbor across the street who lends us soy sauce when we need it and talking to the annoying people at the pool who sit in the corner and smoke.

Read the book - you might get something totally different out of it, but I promise it will be worth it.