Dictionary: Rest
Synonyms: relax, take a rest, ease up/off, let up, slow down, pause, have/take a break, unbend, repose, laze, idle, loaf, do nothing, take time off, slack off, unwind, recharge one's batteries, be at leisure, take it easy, sit back, sit down, stand down, lounge, luxuriate, loll, slump, flop, put one's feet up, lie down, go to bed, have/take a nap, nap, catnap, doze, have/take a siesta, drowse, sleep, lie, be laid, recline, be, be placed, be positioned, support, prop (up), steady, balance, lean, lay, set, sit, stand, position, place, put, be based on, be grounded in, be founded on, depend on, be dependent on, rely on, hinge on, turn on, hang on, pivot on, be contingent on, revolve around, centre on, relaxation, leisure, ease, inactivity, respite, time off, time out, breathing space, break, interval, interlude, intermission, base, holder, stay, prop, brace, rack, hook, frame, shelf, bracket, trestle, tripod, plinth, pedestal, foundation, bed, foot, substructure, a standstill, a halt, a stop, remainder, residue, remaining part/number/quantity, part/number/quantity (that is) left over, others, those left, remains, remnant, remnants, rump, surplus, difference, extra, excess, superfluity, overflow, overspill, additional people/material/things, extra people/material/things, remain, continue to be, keep, persist in being, carry on being, go on being
Antonyms: work, motion, movement, struggle, rage, go mad, have a fit, see red, hit the roof, toil, be active, labor, effort, agony, activity, do, blow one's stack, blow a gasket, do one's nut, go ape, go wild, lose it, drive, action, move
Showing 1576 to 1600 of 1626 results
1576. Risky Business
Acts 9:1-6 (7-20)
Sermon
David E. Leininger
High drama. The story of Paul's miraculous conversion from pious persecutor to proud preacher. We all remember it from Sunday school: the Damascus Road, the light from heaven, the voice. Some of us have had similar experiences as well, although perhaps not as dramatic. The drama in this one is heightened once Saul is brought into the city. Following a three-day pause in darkness (is there something significant about three days — echoes of the resurrection, no doubt), we hear the story of one of the most ...
Sermon
King Duncan
A man from the U.S. was on his first trip to Australia. He summoned a taxi at the airport. He was shocked when the taxi driver asked him in a strong Australian accent, “Did you come here to die?” This was unexpected and disturbing a cabbie asking him, “Did you come here to die?” What kind of ride was he in for? The man wondered. He said, “Excuse me?” The cabbie elaborated, “Did you come here to die, or yester-die?” In today’s Gospel lesson Jesus is breaking it to his disciples that he has come to die and ...
1578. Good Friday
Psalm 22:1-31, Isaiah 52:13--53:12, John 18:1-11, Hebrews 10:16-25
Bulletin Aid
Julia Ross Strope
Consider opening the sanctuary from noon until 7:00 p.m. so people can stop by on their way home from work, with fifteen- to thirty-minute “services” at noon, 3:00, and 6:00. Another option is to read one scripture and sing one hymn at the top of each hour. Deacons, Stephen Ministers, Elders, and other leaders may wish to schedule themselves to “cover” a block of time so attendees are not alone with the Good Friday experience. Have available copies of the Celtic knot from the book cover and the hands found ...
Sermon
Leonard Sweet
Before and After. Ante and Post. Each of us has moments, choices, circumstances in our lives that act as a watershed — experiences dividing our life into everything “before” and everything “after.” The event doesn’t have to be devastating or dramatic. Sometimes it is joyful and exhilarating. Sometimes it is a quiet realization. Sometimes it takes decades for us to even determine just when that moment occurred. You have a parent or a sibling die. You are the first in your family to go away to college. You ...
1580. Proper 13
Psalm 107:1-9, 43, Hosea 11:1-11, Luke 12:13-21, Colossians 3:1-11
Bulletin Aid
Julia Ross Strope
Call To Worship Leader: This is a good place to be this morning. The world goes on around us while we are in sanctuary. Here, together, we know that evil and good exist in our global village yet we choose to rest a while, giving our psyches and bodies a chance to be tranquil. People: Sometimes we feel like the philosopher in the biblical essay, “Ecclesiastes,” thinking that “everything is useless.” We work hard and have little to show for it. The sun rises and sets; the wind blows round and round; rivers ...
1581. Christmas 2
Psalm 147:12-20, Jeremiah 31:7-14, John 1:(1-9), 10-18, Ephesians 1:3-14
Bulletin Aid
Julia Ross Strope
Call To Worship Leader: Welcome to this sanctuary, this place of tranquility and celebration, this place of safety and hope. God is here; God is our source of life! People: God existed before the world and this sanctuary were made! Leader: People have walked this earth before us; their words and their lives are recorded in books around the world. People: We look to Jesus, the God-Man and teacher, to his cousin, John, and to the friends of Jesus for wisdom about relationships and decisions. Leader: In Jesus ...
Sermon
David J. Kalas
In December of every year, the Downtown Athletic Club in New York City awards the coveted Heisman Trophy. Voted on by over 800 media members, the Heisman is awarded to the most out­standing college football player during that season. Past recipients have included such notables as Roger Staubach, Marcus Allen, and Barry Sanders. It is a great honor, and it represents the broad and non-partisan recognition of a player's outstanding season. In the case of this particular young man, let us say that he has just ...
Sermon
Leonard Sweet
Every baby will keep every parent up all night, at least once. It’s a rule. Whether because they are teething or colicky, anxious or tummy-troubled, or just plain fussy, it’s part of a baby’s mission in life to keep its parents awake weeping and wailing. We parents are “hard-wired” to respond to an infant’s cries. What has kept us grieving all week, a grief that can’t be spoken? What has kept our hearts hurting all week, a pain that won’t go away? When an infant or child is in trouble, or hurt, or killed, ...
Sermon
King Duncan
Someone has made a list of what she calls “The World’s Worse Questions.” Are you ready for these? Will you promise not to get mad it I ask you something? Do you have any statistics to back up that statement? You don’t honestly expect me to believe that, do you? Haven’t you any sense of humor? You don’t remember me, do you? Have I kept you waiting? NOW what’s the matter? You asleep? So what? WHEN are you going TO GROW UP? (1) The World’s worst questions. A friend once asked Isaac Isidor Rabi, a Nobel prize ...
Sermon
King Duncan
Dr. Randy L. Hyde tells about a wealthy family from Massachusetts who used to take a month’s vacation every summer to the coast of Maine, taking their maid with them. The maid had an annual ritual at the beach. She wore an old-fashioned bathing suit, complete with a little white hat, and carried enough paraphernalia to stock Wal-Mart. She would settle herself on the beach, cover every inch of her exposed flesh and journey down to the water’s edge. There she would hesitate while taking deep breaths. Slowly ...
Sermon
Leonard Sweet
It is officially “count-down” time. The moment the red cranberry sauce is wiped off our chins and cleaned off the tablecloth, Black Friday starts. And on Black Friday comes the count-down of the diminishing days until Christmas. That tick-tock of passing time is supposed to induce us into a buying panic and jump-start our frenzied consumerism. It pretty much works. But the church has its own “countdown to Christmas.” It is called “The Season of Advent.” Instead of being a time of consumer manic panic, ...
Sermon
Leonard Sweet
Springtime is the season of uncontained optimism. As the days grow longer, and the sun grows stronger, it feels time to do something outrageous. We dig into the earth, carefully plow and pulverize hard clods into fine loam. We remove the weeds and grasses. We add extra nutrients to enrich the prepared soil. Then into that lush, fertile mixture we gently deposit . . . dried up, shriveled, little (sometimes downright tiny), seemingly completely dead bits of matter. We call them “seeds.” Nothing looks less “ ...
Sermon
Leonard Sweet
It is every parent’s dream. It goes like this . . . Your child is a guest at someone’s home. Maybe a friend or a relative. When the meal is over, your child is the one who, without being told, spontaneously rises from the table, gathers their plate and even grabs another place setting, and takes them into the kitchen and put them either in the sink or in the dishwasher. What parent doesn’t live with the eternal hope that our ten thousand nudges to our kids “pick that up” and “put that in the trash” and “ ...
Sermon
Leonard Sweet
In every elementary school class, in every high school and college course, in every job, in every church, in every denomination, on every floor of every building, there seems to be a resident “know-it-all.” You know the type. As much as we despised and resented those resident know-it-alls, we love the current universal know-it-all. It’s name is . . . . . Google. But even in a world where the phrase “Google It!” has become every parent’s answer to every question we can’t answer, we still have that ...
Sermon
Craig MacCreary
Perhaps it is the oddity that I am writing this on the Monday before Thanksgiving or it is my proclivity to identify food with each passing holiday that, as I approach these texts, I find myself thinking of an­other text from Psalm 23: “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.” Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the Fourth of July and I am dreaming dreams of sugar plum fairies, turkey legs, chocolate bunnies, and barbecues. This is definitely a job hazard for clergy. Most congregations revel ...
Sermon
King Duncan
Many of you have seen the award-winning motion picture from the 1970s, The Godfather. A chilling film, it is about an aging patriarch of an organized crime family who transfers control of his clandestine empire to his reluctant son, Michael. We see as the film goes along what this responsibility and the power that goes with it does to Michael’s soul. The closing scene of The Godfather is particularly memorable. No, it is not the horse’s head discovered by a Hollywood producer in his bed. What an awful ...
1592. No-excuse-to-stay-home Sunday
Illustration
Michael P. Green
Many believers don’t see the importance of regular church attendance. Members of Northend Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Seattle received a special announcement in the mail, listing the many things that would be done for them at church on the following “no-excuse-to-stay-home Sunday.” According to the pastor, cots would be available for those who say Sunday is their only day to sleep. Eye drops would be supplied for those who have red eyes from watching late Saturday-night TV shows. There would be ...
Understanding Series
Elizabeth Achtemeier
The Interpreting Word (1:1): 1:1 It may be that the name Joel is more than just the proper name of the prophet. In the Hebrew, “Joel” combines two words, Yah, which is an abbreviated form of Yahweh, the Hebrew name for the Lord, and ʾēl, which means god. Thus, the name “Joel” signifies “Yahweh is God,” and while many pious parents could have affirmed their faith by giving their son that name, “Joel” may also point to one of the major concerns of the book, namely, apostasy or the worship of false gods. Joel ...
Teach the Text
Preben Vang
Big Idea: Schisms and splits have no place in God’s community. Paul says, “Forget what you know from the world around you. Christians are followers not of various patrons and human leaders but of Christ alone.” Understanding the Text Paul’s introduction continues. Verse 10 is his summarizing thesis for the rest of the letter, a thesis he will return to throughout the letter (e.g., 3:1–15). Whether Paul thinks of verse 10 in formal rhetorical terms as a propositio1or simply as a strong reminder to Christian ...
Sermon
Maxie Dunnam
George died in May. He was only 37 years old. The cancer appeared seemingly out of nowhere, instantaneously, over night. It was diagnosed in January—and by May he was gone. So little time, so shocking, so devastating to his wife, Ann, and their three children. Christmas came. Ann, alone at Christmas with her three little girls, sent a card to her pastor. The familiar handwriting on the envelope brought a lump to the pastor’s throat. As he held the card, he asked himself again the same kind of questions ...
1596. Esau and Jacob
Genesis 25:19-34
One Volume
Gary M. Burge
The Life of Jacob (25:19–36:43): Like Sarah, Rebekah is unable to bear children. Isaac’s prayers reverse this situation, however (25:21). Rebekah conceives and gives birth to twins, Esau and Jacob. Unlike Sarah, Rebekah is addressed directly by God (25:23). It is Rebekah who is given the startling prophecy that of the two children she is carrying, the older (Esau) will serve the younger (Jacob). This is a departure from the normal procedure, where priority went to the firstborn. That the prophecy is made ...
One Volume
Gary M. Burge
7:14–10:29 Review · Nine plagues: The plagues are purposeful manifestations of God’s sovereign power. In response to Pharaoh’s challenge (Exod. 5:2) the plagues demonstrate to him and to Egypt the identity and power of God (7:5, 17; 9:14–16; 14:4). The “strong hand” that Pharaoh presumes to wield is Yahweh’s attribute (see 6:1 KJV). The mighty acts of God gain freedom for Israel, confirming that they are God’s people (8:22–23) and he is their God (10:1–2). These events make an indelible mark on the ...
One Volume
Gary M. Burge
Leviticus 14 outlines ritual purification of persons if they are healed (14:1–32) and of houses if fungus abates (14:33–53). The section on houses includes some diagnostic criteria, but the unit is here because the emphasis is on purification. Houses, like garments, are closely connected with their owners, so the Lord’s concern for the purity of his people extends to them. Skin disease generates such potent impurity that purification requires several stages. Repeated pronouncements that the person is pure ...
One Volume
Gary M. Burge
Some time later, Joshua gathers the tribes of Israel and their leaders at Shechem and speaks to them again (24:1–28). Because of the similarity in subject matter between the two speeches, some consider them merely different reports of the same speech. However, the two speeches likely represent two different occasions. While those present for the first speech are mainly leaders representing all Israel (23:2), 24:1 seems to suggest that all the tribes are also present for the second speech. Moreover, while ...
1600. Addressing Rulers and Governments
Jeremiah 21:1-14, Jeremiah 22:1-30
One Volume
Gary M. Burge
21:1–29:32 Review · Challenging Kings and Prophets: The preceding chapters have introduced the message of doom (2–10) and the reason for that message (11–20). Beginning with this section we are more securely locked into datable historical, though chronologically disarranged, events. We hear of kings: Josiah, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, Zedekiah. We meet prophets: Hananiah, Ahab, Zedekiah, Shemaiah. The leaders bear major responsibility for Judah’s evil condition. Prose narrative dominates, which speaks of ...
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