Second Timothy 3:1-17 seems like an odd passage for Good Friday. The cross is not mentioned at all. Jesus is only mentioned twice and almost in passing. The focus is on last days spiritual conditions and the call to faithfulness to the word of God. So, why choose this text for this day? This text does...
Maundy Thursday marks the day before Christ is crucified. It is the night Jesus institutes the "Lord's Supper" and sets an example for His disciples when he washes their feet. The name, "Maundy Thursday," comes from a corrupted form of a Latin word from which we get our English word "mandate." You could say this...
John, in his inspired effort to derail false teachers and prevent his congregation from following them into the worship of idols (as if Christ were somehow insufficient for their faith and life), consistently holds Christ up to their examination and requires them to consider what spiritual condition they have already achieved and is already true...
This meditation comes from the memorial service for a federal law enforcement officer in our community: If there remains one passage from the Christian scriptures, the Bible, that is still widely recognized in our day, it is probably this passage from the book of Psalms: Psalm 23. The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want. He...
My sleep was filled with ghoulish nightmares last night, dreams of sealed coffins and relentless zombies and crying out for deliverance in the name of Jesus. I have no idea where those ideas came from, or why, since I never indulge in those story lines or images in any recreational or research format. Perhaps it...
A friend posted this on her Facebook page yesterday: "I just got done putting wood in our wood boiler and got in the car to drive the boys to the library. One son said, 'Oh mom, you smell just like smoked salmon . . . no, more like smoked lake trout.' I responded, 'Is that...
When God created the world, and added human kind into the mix, he started with just one then completed His work by adding the second, making the family the personal human context for knowing God and exploring His purpose for our lives in the world. The life that Adam lived, identifying and naming animals, bringing...
On more than one occasion over the years someone I'm talking with will say, "Pastor, I feel invisible. No one seems to really see me unless they need something, and then they don't see me, they just see a dispenser for their need." Have you ever felt that way, as if you don't really matter,...
The words come from Bilbo Baggins like molasses on a cold winter day, slow, heavy, reluctant. Gandalf the Gray inquires as to his well-being and Bilbo describes a "thinness, like butter over too much bread." I have to confess, more often these days as I encounter the anxiety and fear so many live with and...
Recently I asked my Facebook friends of they could identify the single most dismissed, ignored, and disobeyed verse in the Bible. First out of the gate was, "Judge not." Others offered "love one another," or "love your neighbor as yourself." One friend offered, "Pray without ceasing," as the most ignored verse, which was a pretty...
