I don't know if teachers still do this, but there was a time when teachers would threaten misbehaving or underachieving students with the words, "Be careful, young man (or woman), because some day this may go on your Permanent Record." This threat was enough to strike fear in the hearts of conscientious students everywhere. But has anyone ever seen their Permanent Record? Has anyone ever suffer…

One of the disadvantages of growing up in a very religious home like I did was that you never knew the end of Sunday night TV movies. When the annual showing of The Wizard Oz came on television every year, I sat through the tornado, saw the house that smashed the wicked witch of the East, and heard the munchkins sing about the yellow brick road. But then just as it got to the exciting parts, my parents announced that it was time for Training Union and Sunday night worship. In spite of all my protests, my parents packed me off to church. I didn't get to see the wizard or learn how Dorothy managed to get back home un…

In a cartoon, Frank and Ernest are standing in front of row after row of shelves of books. On top of one of the shelves is a sign, which reads, "Law Library." Franks turns and says to Ernest: "It's frightening when you think that we started out with just Ten Commandments."

It is sort of frightening isn't it? We started out with 10 and now we have an estimated 35 million laws on the books in the United States alone. Some of them are very good and deeply needed. But there are some that pr…

An ancient rabbi once asked his pupils how they could tell when the night had ended and the day was on its way back.

"When you see an animal in the distance and can tell what kind of animal it is" answered one pupil.

"No" replied the rabbi.

"When you see a tree in the distance and can …

In the days of the circuit riders a minister was out riding one afternoon and came upon a man out working in his field.

"Fine day isn't it?" the minister called out.

"Its fine for you", the man replied, "All you have to do is ride around on that horse thinking about God …

Jesus wants us to love God and others with our soul. The soul is that part of us that denies logic. It is a mystery. Loving with our souls goes beyond what people would consider as normal. We give forth our love because we want to and it probably makes no sense to outsiders.

During the course of earning her master's degree, a woman found it necessary to commute several times a week from Victory, Vermont to the state university in Burlington, a good hundred miles away. Coming home late at nig…

G. K. Chesterton once said that the really great lesson of the story of "Beauty and the Beast" is that a thing must be loved before it is loveable. A person must be loved before that person can be loveable. Some of the most unlovely people I have known got that way because…

Today as much as ever, people need to know that this kingdom is real and available. They need to see the joy and the possibilities of that kingdom in us. Because often people are too easily satisfied just to make do with what is quick and easy and cheap. People settle for sex or liquor or a rock band or the distractions provided by entertainment. They look to these things to save them, or at least to help them move forward in a grim world. But, as C.S. Lewis once wrote, we are far too easily satisfied. We're like a child who turns down an invitation for a day at the beach and chooses instead to stay sitting in a slum alley making mud pies just because the child really can't imagine how much better a day at the shore can be. "What could be better than making these slimy mud pies?" the child…

A rabbi was asked, "Which act of charity is higher - giving out of obligation or giving from the heart?"

All in the class were inclined to respond that giving from the heart had something more in it, but they knew the rabbi was going to say just the opposite, because in spiritual teaching nothing is logical. They were not disappointed.

"Giving from the heart is a wonderful thing," the rabbi said, "It i…

Legend has it that a wealthy merchant traveling through the Mediterranean world looking for the distinguished Pharisee, Paul, encountered Timothy, who arranged a visit. Paul was, at the time, a prisoner in Rome. Stepping inside the cell, the merchant was surprised to find a rather ol…

I think it was Charlie Brown who said, "I love humanity! It is people I can't stand!" Yet the costly love that Jesus embodies involves an intimate encounter with God's fierce and holy love. It involves pouring out self for real people, sinners all, with all their real-life quirks, faults, smells, and flesh-and-blood sins. 

That harried young mother in the doctor's waiting room (or maybe the next pew): perhaps loving her as yourself means offering to…

The Quaker philosopher Rufus Jones, in his autobiography, relates a childhood incident that seems trivial in itself, but, seen in the light of what he eventually became, it was probably the turning point in his life that made him the great man he was. One day his parents told him to stay home and weed the turnip patch while they were gone. He had just begun when some friends came along and persuaded him to go fishing with them, promising to …

All around us are forces at work to distract, delude, and deter us from experiencing God's plan and vision for us as individual believers and as the body of Christ as a whole. We see people shattered on the rocks of delusion and despair. We see a skyrocketing divorce rate, abuse in the home, disease, crime, abortion, gangs, suicide, incest, child abuse, rape, drive-by shoo…

Wouldn't it be great if I won a million dollars? Well, maybe it wouldn't be so great. Not everyone has the same idea of a great time. One person's wish may be another's nightmare. Take, for example, the story of three men who were sailing together in the Pacific Ocean. Their vessel was wrecked and they found themselves on an island. They had plenty of food, but their existence was in every way different from what their lives had been in the past. The men were walking by the seashore one day after they had been there for some months and found an ancient lantern. One man picked it up. As…

A story is told of an easterner who walked into a western saloon. He was amazed to find a dog sitting at a table playing cards with three men…

Edgar Guest, a renowned American poet at the turn of the century, tells of a neighbor by the name of Jim Potter. Mr. Potter ran the drug store in the small town where Edgar Guest lived. Guest recalled that daily he would pass his neighbor and how they would smile and exchange greetings. But it was a mere casual relationship.

Then came that tragic night in the life of Edgar Guest when his first born child died. He felt lonely and defeated. These were grim days for him and he was overcome with grief. Several days later Guest had reason to go to the drug store run by his neighbor, and when he entered Jim Potter motioned for him to come behind the coun…

A man once observed a young boy out in a field flying a kite. He noticed that there was something odd about the way the boy was standing and holding on to the string. He walked up to the boy and then learned t…

A six year old boy was assisting his mother with some spring gardening. The mother was absorbed in her work while the little boy explored the miracle of growing things exploding everywhere. All at once the boy picked up a daffodil bud, and sat down on the ground, and studied it. Then with his two little han…

Dick Hyman is a newspaper feature columnist who writes humorously about laws that are still on the books but outrageously irrelevant.  For instance, did you know that in Waterloo, Nebraska, barbers are forbidden by law to eat onions between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m.?  In Kentucky, …

The love for equals is a human thing--of friend for friend, brother for brother. It is to love what is loving and lovely. The world smiles.

The love for the less fortunate is a beautiful thing--the love for those who suffer, for those who are poor, the sick, the fail…

A seven-year-old girl wrote Dr. Michael DeBakey, the famed heart surgeon in Houston, Texas, a note that asked this question, “Does a plastic heart have love in it?”

Dr. DeBakey replied: “Yes,…

The parable of the Good Samaritan arises out of a discussion between Jesus and a Pharisee. Here is a religious lawyer and he is asking a question on the nature of the law. The stage is set by Luke with these words: "Behold a lawyer stood up to put him to the test." Well, it's not the first time and probably won't be the last time that a lawyer phrased a trick question. It was the kind of question in which any kind of an answer would pose still further problems. It was a test question: "Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life." Now right away we know that this man was a Pharisee, because the Pharisees believed in eternal life and the Sadducees did not. Jesus could tell that this man was an astute student of the law so he asked him: "What is written?" In other words, use your own min…

Jesus often taught by telling parables. These were simple, down-to-earth stories which expressed spiritual truth. Today, on this third weekend of Advent, I want to use a favorite Christmas story as a modern parable. This is a true story, told to me some ten years ago by Dr. Edward Bauman of Washington, D.C.

About 30 years ago a boy named Tony was born into a family in a Midwestern state. He was blind at birth. He suffered from an extremely rare eye problem for which there was no known cure. When the little fellow was about seven years old, his doctor read in the New England Journal of Medicine of a new surgical procedure that showed some promise for correcting this particular problem. A young surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston had developed it. The local doctor and the su…

In the movie Good Will Hunting, Will Hunting is a genius. He knows about everything with his head, but he uses that knowledge to hide from pain in his heart. He meets a counselor (played by Robin Williams) and guards his heart from the counselor by dissecting the counselor with his knowledge and crucifying the counselor's passions for art and his bride on his own knowledge. The counselor confronts him in a garden and says this:

You've never been out of Boston. So if I asked you about art, you could give me the skinny on every art book ever written. Michelangelo? - You know a lot about him . . . life's work, political aspirations, him and the Pope, sexual orientation, the whole works, right? But you couldn't tell me wh…

If your kids see you putting other things ahead of God, they will become discouraged and disillusioned, like a young Jewish boy who once lived in Germany.

His father was a successful merchant, and the family practiced their Jewish faith. But then they moved to another German city, and the boy's father announced that they would no longer attend synagogue. They were going to join the Lutheran church.

The boy was very surprised and asked his father why the family was joining the Lutheran church. His father's answer was something like, "For business reasons. There …

"What, positively, is the will of God? The demand for love. "You shall love your neighbor as yourself!" as the second greatest commandment belongs together with the first: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your m…

It's very human to begin looking for something and then forget what you're looking for. Tennessee Williams tells a story of someone who forgot. It's the story of Jacob Brodzky, a shy Russian Jew whose father owned a bookstore. The older Brodzky wanted his son to go to college. The boy, on the other hand, desired nothing but to marry Lila, his childhood sweetheart a French girl as effusive, vital, and ambitious as he was contemplative and retiring. A couple of months after young Brodzky went to college, his father fell ill and died. The son returned home, buried his father, and married his love. Then the couple moved into the apartment above the bookstore, and Brodzky took over its management. The life of books fit him perfectly, but it cramped her. She wanted more adventure and she found i…

A man and a woman who had been corresponding solely by mail fell in love with one another. They agreed to meet at the airport. Since they had never seen each other, they devised a plan that would help them recognize each other. She was to wear a green scarf and a green hat and have a green carnation pinned to her coat.

When the man got off his plane, he immediately began looking for her. Suddenly he sa…

A cynical young medical student confronted a pastor: "I have dissected the human body," he announced, "and I found no soul."

The pastor said, "That's interesting. When you dissected the brain did you find a thought? When you dissected the eye did you find vision? When you dissected the heart did you find love?"

The …

Rufus Jones lost a son of eleven years who was all the world to him. He wrote many years later about the experience, concluding with this luminous parable of how his own heart was opened to God's love:

"When my sorrow was at its most acute I was walking along a great city highway, when suddenly I saw a little…

Archbishop William Temple once noted that spiritually minded people differ from materially minded people not in that they think about different things but in that they think about the same things differently.

Now that’s a profound observation.  I wonder how many persons these days are even thinking…

I believe that most of us are experiencing the crunch - the crunch of living - of doing business on the planet called Earth. The simple life has somehow eluded our grasp - even things that we could once take for granted like enough gas for our cars, sufficient oil for our homes, uninterrupted education for our children, and the prospect for a raise that would provide us a little higher standard of living - these things are no longer commonplace.

Often we are tempted to ask the question, "Where is God in this whole mess of living?" And the answer, I believe, is that God is the still point in a turning, increasingly chaotic world. God can still bring calm to chaos; he is still a source of hope in the face of despair; with him we can even snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Yes, God is t…

On the first day of ninth-grade health class, one blackboard was covered with the names and locations of the major bones and muscles of the human body. The diagram stayed on the board throughout the term, although the teacher never referred to it. Th…

A teacher gave her class of second graders a lesson on the magnet and what it does. The next day in a written test, she includ…

Shortly after the turn of the century, Japan invaded, conquered, and occupied Korea. Of all of their oppressors, Japan was the most ruthless. They overwhelmed the Koreans with a brutality that would sicken the strongest of stomachs. Their crimes against women and children were inhuman. Many Koreans live today with the physical and emotional scars from the Japanese occupation.

One group singled out for concentrated oppression was the Christians. When the Japanese army overpowered Korea one of the first things they did was board up the evangelical churches and eject most foreign missionaries. It has always fascinated me how people fail to learn from history. Conquering nations have consistently felt that shutting up churches would shut down Christianity. It didn't work in Rome when the chur…

After the tomb was found empty and Jesus appeared to the early church on many occasions, doubt disappeared, and the early church had overwhelming confidence in the Lord. The church today must live and be about its ministry with the same Easter confidence. We say we rely on God’s mercy for our salvation; we need to give over all areas of our lives to God’s control. What aspects of ourselves are outside God’s control? Our temper? Our money? Our time? We need join the psalmist and say, "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me." Our trust in the Lord must be complete. We are no longer defeated people but powerful Easter people. Little children in danger or in despair literally run and throw themselves into the arms of their mother. This is confident faith. When wa…

In 1636, amid the darkness of the Thirty Years' War, a German pastor, Martin Rinkart, is said to have buried five thousand of his parishioners in one year, an average of fifteen a day. His parish was ravaged by war, death, and econom…

It is generally thought that their name came from Zadok, who was the high priest under David, or possibly a later Zadok. The group by this name first appeared in the 2nd century BC and disappeared in the 1st century AD after the destruction of the temple in 70. There would be no need for temple priests if there were no temple.

According to Josephus as reported by the Harper's Dictionary of the Bible, "the Sadducees are said to reject the immorta…

It may come as a surprise to Christian listeners, who are used to thinking of Pharisees as hypocrites and enemies of Jesus, that in this passage it is Pharisees who warn Jesus to flee from Galilee because Herod wants to kill him. Not all Pharisees were hostile to Jesus. While Jesus and the Pharisees did not see things eye to eye, we find in Luke and Acts that Pharis…

Marilyn vos Savant, the brilliant woman who reportedly has the highest I.Q. ever recorded, writes a syndicated column in which she answers tricky questions from people who want the benefit of her intelligence. Someone wrote to ask what she thought is the most powerful idea. Marilyn vos Savant replied that "truth" was the most powerful idea she knew of, because it is not affected by how we relate to it. Whether or not we know it, or whether or not we agree with it, doesn't matter, because truth is still true.…

The wilderness is silence and quiet.  It is the elimination of the sounds of television, the radio, the stereo, the iPod, the cell phone. It is the elimination of the voices of mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, friends. It is the elimination of the racing tape of your own mind that absorbs your thoughts. The wilderness is quiet. It is utter stillness. It is being alone with God. It is for a moment, for a minute, for a month, being still - absolutely still - …and listening. …

In the children's classic, THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH, Milo, Tock and Humbug are traveling to the Lands Beyond. They are greeted by the twelve-faced Dodecahedron who is a specialist in problems.

"I'm not very good at problems," admits Milo.

"What a shame," sighs the Dodecahedron. "They're so very useful. Why, did you know that if a beaver two feet long with a tail a foot and a half long can build a d…

The Pharisees and other leaders closely watched Jesus but they could not see his meaning. They could not see the issues as Jesus saw them, so they set themselves against him rather than making an alliance with him. They were so hung up on rules, laws and ceremonies, that they missed the heart of faith: God's forgiving love that frees one to live as son or daughter of God.

It's similar to the musical genius of Johann Sebastian Bach. We know him to be among the musical masters of all time. But it was not so for his contemporaries. The …

When Jewish psychiatrist Victor Frankl was arrested by the Nazis in World War II, he was stripped of everything property, family, possessions. He had spent years researching and writing a book on the importance of finding meaning in life concepts that later would be known as logotherapy. When he arrived in Auschwitz, the infamous death camp, even his manuscript, which he had hidden in the lining of his coat, was taken away.

"I had to undergo and overcome the loss of my spiritual child," Frankl wrote. "Now it seemed as if nothing and no one would survive me; neither a physical nor a spiritual …

A few years ago, a radio station ran a contest. Disc jockeys invited their listeners to tune in their clock radios. "Just for fun," they said, "when you wake up to the sound of FM-106, call and tell us the first words you spoke when you rolled out of bed. If you're the third caller, you'll win $106."

It didn't take long for the contest to grow in enthusiasm. The first morning, a buoyant disc jockey said, "Caller number three, what did you say when you rolled out of bed this morning?" A groggy voice said, "Do I smell coffee burning?" Another day, a sleepy clerical worker said, "Oh no, I'm late for work." Somebody else said her first words were, "Honey, did …

You can even be thankful during the most difficult of circumstances in life. It's true! We see an especially inspiring example of a brave and thankful heart in the story behind one of the church's most popular hymns, "Now Thank We All Our God." This particularly hymn was written during the Thirty Years War in Germany, in the early 1600s. Its author was Martin Rinkart, a Lutheran pastor in the town of Eilenburg in Saxony.

Now, Eilenburg was a walled city, so it became a haven for refugees seeking safety from the fighting. But s…

Nearly every couple who graces my office for premarital counseling is asked, "What do you especially love about him/her; what is their extra special quality?" More often than not my question is greeted with embarrassed silence. Those that venture forth with an answer are often very general or vague like, "I feel good when we are together." Sometimes there is the diplomatic answer, "I like everything about her, she is so perfect." It is hard to keep a straight face as I wonder how such a response will hold up in six months.

In general, much of our contemporary concept of love is unbiblical and unhelpful. Too much of what passes itself off for love today is s…

Father Henri Nouwen found a sculpture of Jesus on a donkey in the Augustiner Museum in Frieburg. He calls it one of the most moving Christ figures he knows. The fourteenth-century sculpture originally came from a small town close to Breisach on the Rhine. The sculpture was made to be pulled on a cart for the Palm Sunday procession.

Nouw…

This week's text challenges individuals and your church community to examine how they respond to the persistent voice of God in their lives.

From Presbyterian author and editor John C. Purdy comes the title and story that inspired this week's sermon ideas. Purdy recalls that in The Blue Mountains of China (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970), Canadian Mennonite/English Professor/author Rudy Wiebe tells the story of a Mennonite farmer named Sam Reimer. One night Sam hears a voice saying to him, "Samuel, Samuel ... I am the God of your fathers, the Lord your God. Go and proclaim peace in Vietnam." In perplexity, Sam goes to his pastor, who tells him to listen for the voice a second time. The next night the call comes again, but Sam cannot get anyone to believe that he has truly heard God's voi…