Ephesians 5:15-20 Time is something we think about often enough. We have a popular saying: Life is too short. Too short for what? Life is too short to be sad, to hold grudges, to not celebrate. Life is too short to worry. Life is too short to be on a diet, to live on low-fat everything, to forgo cake and champagne or any of the good stuff! Life is too short to stay in a bad job, a bad relationship, or to live a lie. Life is too short for a long story, life is too short to talk slowly, life is too short to waste a minute of it. In the immortal words of Ferris Bueller, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” Clearly, there is a wide range of ideas about what life ought to be […]
Continue readingMonth: August 2018
No Longer Strangers, Part 4: Making Peace
Ephesians 4:25-5:2 On a Saturday afternoon recently, Kim and I were listening to Harry Chapin’s music while we were working around the house. When the song, Cat’s in the Cradle, came on we both stopped what we were doing and just listened. It’s one of his most famous songs. It tells the story of a father who has a son. It starts out: A child was born just the other day, He came to the world in the usual way, But there were planes to catch and bills to pay, He learned to walk while I was away. He was talking before I knew it, and as he grew he said, “I’m gonna be like you, dad. You know I’m gonna be like you. And the song goes on like that; in each verse, a different stage in the child’s development presents opportunities that are missed by this father, to […]
Continue readingNo Longer Strangers, Part 3: God’s Powerful Love
Ephesians 3:14-21 I have an app on my phone called Ceaseless. Every morning at 8:00 it pings me and asks me if I would like to pray. Sometimes I say, “later.” And that is okay, because it is always there for me. It gives me focus for my prayers. Each day this app randomly pulls three people in my contact files and suggests I pray for them. I never know whose name will pop up. So it happens, sometimes, that it is the name of a person I am angry with. Or it may be the name of someone I am deeply concerned about or anxious for. It could be someone I haven’t thought about in ages, someone I’ve lost touch with and I have no idea what is going on in their lives. And Ceaseless asks me to pray for them. Sometimes, though, I don’t know how to pray […]
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