In a church-related college, a philosophy professor was giving a lecture on some of the traditional Christian doctrines. After he had concluded, he asked if there were any questions. One student lifted her hand and said, “I have a question. You have talked a lot about sin in your lecture. What I would like to know is: what the heck is sin?” I. SIN IS NOT A VERY POPULAR WORD THESE DAYS. Awhile back psychiatrist Karl Menninger wrote a book titled Whatever Became of Sin? bemoaning the fact that people don’t ...
In the movie Dances With Wolves, there is a scene in which Kevin Costner, known as Lt. Dunbar, awakens because he hears the sound and thunder of buffalo. He has come to know many of the Sioux Indians, since he lives near the reservation. He learns that they are starving to death. He jumps on his horse and rides out to the Sioux village. However, he does not know the word for buffalo in the Sioux language. He has good news for the Sioux tribe, but he cannot express it. So one of the braves cries out, "Tow- ...
Honor Bound. Those words “honor bound” have deep resonance. *Cub Scouts declare, “On my honor as a Scout...” *Soldiers pledge themselves to “Duty. Honor. Country.” *The fifth commandment (depending on how you count) says “Honor thy father and thy mother.” *Husbands and wives promise to “Love. Honor. Cherish.” A point of honor is a good thing. Honor points us beyond ourselves and our little orbits. Honor connects us to others. A shared sense of honor creates a common culture. But when the wrong things ...
Honor Bound. Those words “honor bound” have deep resonance. *Cub Scouts declare, “On my honor as a Scout...” *Soldiers pledge themselves to “Duty. Honor. Country.” *The fifth commandment (depending on how you count) says “Honor thy father and thy mother.” *Husbands and wives promise to “Love. Honor. Cherish.” A point of honor is a good thing. Honor points us beyond ourselves and our little orbits. Honor connects us to others. A shared sense of honor creates a common culture. But when the wrong things ...
Names are fun. We all like to play with names. We get excited about naming our babies. We give each other nicknames. We call each other names –sometimes for fun, sometimes not in the best spirit! We give our children ancestral names, biblical names, and sometimes, off-the-wall names! We name our animals according to what they look like, or what they mean to us. Names are identity markers. They reveal something about how we see the world around us and the people in it. They reveal something about our ...
The Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon's obsession with discovering the fountain of eternal youth led him eventually to the land of flowers, or as we know it, Florida. Even now, there are those who claim that the bold adventurer did, in fact, discover such a fountain and that its perpetual waters contain the treasure of agelessness, or the much pursued "ever young" potion. Several years ago, somewhere in Florida, I took a drink from a fountain which was allegedly the genuine source designated by Ponce de Leon ...
When I discussed the third Commandment, "Remember the Sabbath," I said that it was perhaps the most ignored and least thought about "Word" in the lot. In sharp contrast to it this guide for living, along with the one that follows it, is among the most thought about, discussed, and argued over of our time. For killing is going on around us continually, or so it seems. Just look at the newspapers, the television screen, or listen to the radio any day, and there killing is front and center. Who isn’t aware of ...
The story of Job is familiar to all of us - a man whose world was spinning merrily along with everything falling into place suddenly confronted with one misery after another... disaster, death, disease, despair. In some of the most moving poetry ever written, chapter after chapter attempts to deal with the age-old question of why, so often, life is so unfair. People still wrestle with the issue. Did you happen to catch the season finale of "The West Wing" last week?(1) Great show! The scene was the ...
Children. Several years ago a couple of books were published entitled Children's Letters to God and More Children's Letters to God(1) which collected some rather clever (and occasionally insightful) letters from youngsters to the Almighty. Listen to a few of them: • Dear GOD, In school they told us what You do. Who does it when You are on vacation? * Jane • Dear GOD, Is it true my father won't get in Heaven if he uses his bowling words in the house? * Anita • Dear GOD, Did you mean for the giraffe to look ...
The soloist had laryngitis. The flower girl was ill with pneumonia. The ring bearer had an accident in his blue-velvet pants just before the ceremony, and the mother-of-the-bride left her dress at home by mistake. Things continued to go downhill after the ceremony. It was the coldest day in Maryland in 20 years The newlyweds, Melissa and Tim Donnelly, had borrowed a 1941 Cadillac to ride away in. It got stuck in the ice in the church parking lot, so Melissa stuffed her gown into the back seat of a two-door ...
I have often shared with congregations that the key sometimes to unlocking the meaning of a certain Biblical passage is to read what has happened in the book before the particular passage we are reading, and what is going to take place after the passage we are studying. No where is this principle more apparent than in our reading about the mysterious but marvelous story of the TRANSFIGURATION OF OUR LORD. Another key to understanding this passage and other sacred writings is to look not only at the story, ...
Loren Isley is one of my favorite writers. He is a distinguished anthropologist and essayist. What makes his writing so gripping to me is that he has the eye of an artist and the soul of a poet. He sees beyond the surface and he has that rare double gift which enables him to enter deeply into an experience and then share that experience with us in the kind of way that enables us to vicariously experience what he himself has experienced. In one of his poignant vignettes from boyhood, he shared a moment of ...
Along the worn, dreary streets of well-used, run-down neighborhoods you can usually find a window with an outstretched palm painted on it, advertising expert palmistry or palm reading-services. In some cities, such stores have gone upscale: they're now even found on Main Street (e.g. Gettysburg, Pa.). Reading the spidery signature of lines, swirls, and creases that crisscross the palms of the hands has an ancient history. People seek answers to such questions as "Where are we going?" "What lies in the ...
I wonder how many of us here are named after someone. Chances are that a good many of us carry family names. We are named for a parent, a grandparent, an uncle, or an aunt somewhere on the family tree. Others of us had parents who named us after a character in the Bible, or perhaps some other significant character from history. All told, I expect a pretty fair number of us are named after someone else. When Isaac and Rebecca had their twin boys, they took an unusual approach to naming their babies. They ...
Anyone here like criticism? How do you respond to criticism? Does being criticized bring you down or fire you up? Do you want to hunker in your bunker or lob your own volley of vitriol back at your critics? Learning how to respond to criticism is a lifetime journey. That’s because critics will be accompanying you from cradle to grave! In every election year there is no shortage of negative, critical remarks flying around the airwaves. Of course all politicians virtuously claim they hate “negative” ads. And ...
If you could ask Jesus a question, any question, and be promised a plain answer, what would you ask? There are a lot of big ones that have never been answered. Wouldn't it be great if you could just go up to Jesus and ask him one of life's big, profound eternal mysteries? "Why is there evil?" "What happens when we die?" "Why are we here?" Jesus was asked a lot of questions during the time he was walking around the near east some 2,000 years ago. Some of them were pretty good questions: "What must I do to ...
A well-to-do man and his family of five lived in a plush, gated neighborhood in a wealthy urban community. He was a righteous man, by all accounts. A volunteer worker in the student, faithful to his wife, never missed one of his son’s baseball games. “I’ve never met a better man than that one,” someone was overheard saying of him at church. “It’s amazing how the Lord has blessed him.” At night, when the man turned into his neighborhood, he would always catch a glimpse of a young lady on the far street ...
Big Idea: The Lord ensures that justice is satisfied, sometimes by allowing one’s children to repeat the parent’s sins. Understanding the Text The Lord confronted David with his sin and announced that he would severely punish him. Through Nathan’s entrapment technique, he even maneuvered David into imposing his own penalty. David must pay fourfold for his theft of Uriah’s wife (2 Sam. 12:6). The first installment of this payment came almost immediately, as the first baby born to Bathsheba and David died. ...
Faith is a journey you don’t do alone. This is one of the most important distinctions about the Christian faith. If you are Buddhist, you can and must pursue your personal enlightenment alone. If you are a Hindu, you can make your personal sacrifices, carry out your personal rituals, and attempt to attain “nirvana” alone. If you are of one of the other Abrahamic religions, you try to live morally by the laws and teachings set before you. It’s a personal journey. But if you are a Christian, you cannot live ...
These are Ten Commandments that little children know to be true: 1. When your mom is mad at your dad, don't let her brush your hair. 2. No matter how hard you try, you can't baptize cats. 3. You can't trust dogs to watch your food. 4. Never hold a dustbuster and a cat at the same time. 5. You can't hide a piece of broccoli in a glass of milk. 6. Puppies still have bad breath even after eating a tic-tac. 7. When your sister hits you, don't hit her back. They always catch the second person. 8. Don't sneeze ...
Here we're dealing with the story of Jacob at the Jabbok River Crossing, an incident in which he wrestles all night and secures a blessing. It's a strange incident, isn't it? We've got something which occurred a thousand or more years before Jesus' time, something reminiscent of superstitions and primitive religions: a man wrestling for a blessing with a creature that must escape before the light of day, like a vampire or a werewolf. This is a strange portion of the Bible to have to deal with. Maybe it ...
One of the multitude said to him, "Teacher, bid my brother divide the inheritance with me." But he said to him, "Man, who made me a judge or divider over you?" And he said to them, "Take heed, and beware of all covetousness; for a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions." And he told them a parable, saying, "The land of a rich man brought forth plentifully; and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ And he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down ...
Lent is the traditional period of spiritual introspection and abstinence observed by Christians in remembrance of the passion, death, and resurrection of Christ. Beginning on Ash Wednesday, it includes the forty days, excluding Sundays, preceding Easter and is also symbolic of the forty days Christ fasted in the wilderness. Consequently, we have come today not to the first Sunday "of" Lent, but the first Sunday "in" Lent. The word "Lent" is quite beyond the Hebrew or Greek vocabulary, which is to say, it ...
Charles Killian, a Professor at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky has described a mythical modern worship service like this: Pastor: “Praise the Lord!” Congregation: “Hallelujah!” Pastor: “Will everyone please turn on their tablet, PC, iPad, smart phone, and Kindle Bibles to First Corinthians 13:13. And please switch on your Bluetooth to download the sermon.” [There is a pause.] “Now, let us pray committing this week into God’s hands. Open your Apps, BBM, Twitter and Facebook, and chat with ...
What is it that constitutes an emergency when it comes to your health? I ask that question because researchers at Children's Hospital in Boston found that emergency room visits at hospitals in Boston slowed significantly when the Red Sox were in the World Series in 2004. During especially crucial match ups, such as Game 7 of the league championship series and the final game of the World Series, emergency-room traffic fell by up to 20 percent, as fans stayed glued to their TV sets. "It's as if when they ...