Psalm 36:5-9 John 15:1-17 I have heard that if you want to really get the feel of a place you need to stay there at least three weeks. One or two weeks feels like a vacation away from your real life, but sometime during that third week your perspective shifts. You begin to feel like a resident, a local. When I was in college I spent a month in Oxford, England and that happened to me. I came home from that month away and looked at everything with new vision. I became a tourist in my hometown. An obnoxious tourist, actually. I was critical of everything, I rolled my eyes at the naivete of my loved ones. I was 19 and insufferable. I have grown up since then, but still, when I return home from a journey there is always a sense of seeing things differently. I spent three weeks […]
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Stronger than Fear
Matthew 2:1-12 Much of the time the stories from scripture live in our imaginations somewhat differently than they live on the pages of the Bible. This morning we sing an old familiar song, “We three kings of orient are, bearing gifts we travers afar.” And yet the scripture says nothing about them being kings. And, whatever we call them – kings, magi, wise men – the scripture never mentions how many of them there were. We only infer that from the number of gifts that were mentioned. Nonetheless, every nativity scene has three men bearing gifts, often wearing crowns. Because they’re kings. Only, they’re not. We’re really not sure what they are – except we know they are foreign. These guys are out-of-towners, and I think that helps to explain why they act as dumb as they do. They go to the king – Herod – to ask him for […]
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