Who has ever broken a promise? Our dictionary tells us a promise is an agreement to do something. In our scriptures these promises tend to show themselves in the form of covenants which are basically a promise from God to a person or people and a promise from the people or person to God. I … [Read more…]
My parents are keen to remind me that I was not a sharer when I was growing up. I was very possessive of my things. One memory that is always shared was when my cousin Josh, who was just a few months younger than me, would come over to play, I would gather up all … [Read more…]
One of my earliest memories is my fascination with the telephone. We had one of those old rotary phones that my parents rented from the phone company. I loved the motion of swirling the dial to call someone. I love the click, click, clicking of the dial as it went around. It was the only … [Read more…]
One of my flaws is that I can be anal retentive. I have always been someone who fulfills my obligations and will work hard to do so even at my own expense. In school, I would work all day and most of the night writing papers and reading for my classes, working several jobs to … [Read more…]
When I first started working at the hospital, on my first overnight shift there was an emergency that came in around the midnight hour. There had been a gang related shooting. In response the ER shutdown refusing entrance of any non-hospital staff. In the midst of the emergency the doctors and nurses called the chaplain. … [Read more…]
When it comes to maintaining faith, it can be very frustrating when you feel like God has not answered your prayers. We all have what seems like unanswered prayers. And it only gets harder as those unanswered prayers seem to come when we are praying for dire things. When I was young, I was bullied … [Read more…]
Trusting in a God that we cannot see is the most difficult in times of change, when it becomes easier to rely on the old familiar idols that bring us comfort. Our idols may not be golden calves or bulls, but they do exist just as they did in the ancient world. They just come … [Read more…]
This is the same thing being offered to us when we are fed up with the struggles of this life, the struggles of keeping faithful. God still speaks to us from the pages of the scriptures asking, “What are you doing here?”1 not in an accusatory way but in an inviting way, in a caring … [Read more…]
Have any of you ever done something that you wished you didn’t do? Have any of you ever done something knowing that it was probably a bad idea right from the beginning? Well, today we speak about wisdom as it is personified in our scriptures for this morning. The voice that tries to lead us … [Read more…]
In 2008, I ministered to a church in Preston Connecticut. One family was from Korea and the grandmother did not know English but still liked to attend worship every Sunday. So, to ensure that the service was worth something spiritually to her, we would work with the daughter to translate the service and the sermons … [Read more…]
