Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Blog”
Where does peace begin? Is it about nations and treaties? It is a religious movement? If it’s only external, how can I ever experience it? We’ve just passed another Memorial Day. A time when Americans pause to remember those who have died in military service. Coincidentally, the scripture passage for the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend was from the Gospel …
But It Was An Invitation to Love Differently The most famous betrayal in the Bible comes when Judas Iscariot turns Jesus over to a group of religious leaders to be crucified (John 18:3-12). Earlier that evening, Jesus, with full knowledge of the coming betrayal, washed Judas’s feet in act of love and service (John 13:2-12). When Judas left to get …
Psalm 23 is well-known and beloved by many people. This beautiful Old Testament poem is meaningful to people of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim faith. It’s a poem that helps preserve language from a bygone era. Its six verses are often memorized and recited from the King James Version of the Bible: 1The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. 2 He maketh …
I want to tell you something that might be hard to hear. I’ll try to say it in the nicest way possible. Please know, I say it with the best of intentions. Here it is. Are you ready? You are not perfect. God does not expect you to be perfect. You might think being “barely good enough” is the same …
The Easter season has begun! Yes, that’s right, Easter is more than just one day on the church calendar. In fact, Easter is a season that lasts for fifty days (7 Sundays) and culminates in the celebration of Pentecost. Have you ever noticed that all four Gospel accounts tell us that women were the first to discover the empty tomb …
A few years ago, a church in my town built a huge new building. HUGE. I scoffed at their extravagance and complained about the expense. To make matters worse, I only agreed with 95% of this church’s theology. Until we were seeing eye-to-eye on all things theological, I felt free to judge how they spent their money. In hindsight, I …
I try not to be wasteful. I try not to buy too much food at the grocery store and I take leftovers home from restaurants. We have a section of our laundry room dedicated to “give-aways,” the clothes and other things we can’t use any more, but which might be useful to our favorite charity’s thrift shop. Although I love …
The question of why people suffer is a longstanding existential question. It is a question that brings people to God and it’s a question that makes some people doubt God’s very existence. Why do bad things happen to good people? The Bible approaches this from several angles. That frustrates some people, but I find it encouraging. I like that the …
What if repentance is an invitation, not a curse? Sometimes it feels like “REPENT” is almost a four-letter word. As if it’s a curse word, intended to bring out the worst in me. Growing up, this was the message of the street-corner preachers yelling at cars as they passed by. (Presumably they were yelling at the people in the cars, …
Lent can, and should be, a season of transformation. It bridges the turn on the calendar from winter to spring and it can bridge the turn in us from the wilderness of self-sufficiency to reliance on God. Along the way, however, we may feel things get a little twisted. The scripture readings that launched us into the season of Lent …