Fall is my favorite season except for every four years. There are some political seasons that I wish we could just skip and go straight to winter. But this morning, God met me in a quiet moment as I was reading an obscure corner of the book of Daniel. Daniel is offering a confession to…
Doldrums is a word that is used to describe a strip of ocean about 300 miles wide to the north of the equator where there is little to no wind. Sailors in more wind dependent times knew to avoid navigating into this area of the globe. Ships that wandered into the doldrums ran the risk…
Jesus will win. His love will triumph over hate. His healing will triumph over the Rona. His kingdom will not be shaken. His throne will not be challenged. His Father will make his enemies His footstool. His justice will prevail. His bride will flourish for eternity. Jesus will win.
Nothing seems stable. How can a person plan in times like these? Our governor may open things wide open based on the data or she may close everything back down next week based on the same data. There are charts and graphs that support every opinion and course of action. And I don’t know if…
We need good news. Every direction I turn, there is negativity, division, fear, and worry. And for this reason I continue to point to Jesus. I cannot think of a more stereotypical Christian cliche than “Jesus is the answer.” Whenever I hear that phrase, my mind hopes that the question wasn’t “what is 8×4?” But…
Quarantine has caused us to redefine many things. For example ‘social’ in the phrase “social distance” means something like “unsocial.” And the ‘distance’ in that same phrase means 6 feet. But there is one word that is close to my heart and close to my area of expertise that I have seen shifting over the…
As I sit here at the local coffee shop, I have the privilege of having my daughter sitting beside me. She is listening to music on her phone and texting friends while I have been studying and writing this blog. She is now in high school. She is a freshman. Every glance in the proverbial,…
I could never imagine when I became a pastor, that I would be called upon to declare my personal stance on murder. Nor could I conceive of a cultural climate in which I would be pressed to verbalize my opposition to racism. These are two things that have felt so self-evident to me that I…
I must confess that I keep up with social media. And over the course of this lock-down I have observed phases of online content. There was the initial light-hearted phase where every other post had something to do with Corona Beer. Staying humorous, but getting more serious we went through the shopping and acquiring toilet…
A glance over the headlines calls it COVID-19. Colloquially it is called Coronavirus. And it seems to be spreading. I have looked up the words pandemic and epidemic and neither word is entirely accurate yet. And further from reality are the words ‘plague’ and ‘pestilence’. I cannot imagine the latter word being employed by anyone…
I watched enough of the democratic national debate yesterday to know that it wasn’t anything new. I confess that I enjoy political debates and have an interest in the direction of our government. If I had to guess, I would say that I follow politics more than the average person. But from what I see…
We can tend to think that Jesus only ever came to give encouragement. He would always leave his people with gladness and joy. Many churches have turned the church service into a pep talk. The implication would be that if we have connected with God and Jesus we would surely leave with good feelings. But…
