1 Timothy 6:6-19 Here is the question: What is something that makes you happy? Don’t overthink it. There are no wrong answers, this is not a test. What comes into your mind when you think of something that makes you happy? It might not be the thing that brings you the most happiness of all, but it is something. Did you think of something? I hope you did; I hope you thought of many things that make you happy. Everyone should have happiness. Who ever said, “There is too much happiness in the world?” No one. Ever. Except maybe Scrooge. And the good thing is happiness is, at least to an extent, under our control. If watching a “Die Hard” movie makes you happy, great. If it doesn’t make you happy, don’t watch it. If sitting on the beach getting all sandy and sweaty doesn’t make you happy, then don’t […]
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RE:frame Prayer
1 Timothy 2:1-7 I have been asked recently to think about prayer. Our presbytery is beginning a program called Vital Congregations, and in preparation, I was asked to contribute my thoughts on prayer resources, practices, and such. But one of the questions in particular has kept me thinking for days. That is, how has my thinking about prayer changed over time? The assumption, of course, is that it has changed. This is true. No longer are my prayers as they were in childhood. When I was young, I was taught, as so many of us were, to recite short little rhyming prayers – at the dinner table, at bedtime. We might learn to make up our own prayers within certain frameworks – like thank you, God, for lemonade and hula hoops; and God bless mama, daddy, and Tatters the dog. But with maturity comes more freedom and responsibility in all […]
Continue readingHow Do You Know?
1 Samuel 3:1-10; John 1:43-51 “The word of the Lord was rare in those days.” This is the setting in which the young boy Samuel first heard the call of God to him. It was the period of time before there were kings in Israel, a time when Israel was ruled by judges, and if you have read the book of Judges then you know it was not a high point in Israel’s history. As the closing words in that book says, “all the people did what was right in their own eyes.” The word of the Lord was rare in those days. It was not one of the good times. The boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord in the temple under the authority of Eli, and Samuel was there for a reason. Before he was conceived, his mother Hannah was childless. She was married to Elkanah, who loved […]
Continue readingWhere Are You Looking?
Acts 1:6-14 Kim and I think our little dog Chuy is really sweet, but we know he’s not that smart. We don’t kid ourselves. He definitely has a certain amount of street smarts, because he’s been out on the streets a lot – a born wanderer. We’ve had to Chuy-proof our backyard fence to keep him from escaping. But in terms of intellectual capacity? Higher level cognitive function? We never had high expectations. Although at one point we thought maybe we had underestimated him. Our house in Ohio sat on a corner lot and Chuy would sit out in the backyard with us, watching the world pass by. When he saw somebody walking a dog coming up the sidewalk toward the house, he’d go bananas. He’d run as fast as his little legs would take him over to the side fence to give his greetings. Then, when the walkers would […]
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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