When you hear that someone is “acting out” it usually isn’t heard as a compliment.
McKenna
Saints Like Us (Hebrews 12.1)
There’s an instinct to idealize the saints as entirely different from the rest of us, off in another league at some unattainable level of holiness and favor with God.
Stumbling Along ‘The Way’ (Mark 10:35-45)
Most of us know the image backing the word “scandalize;” i.e., somebody tripping over a stone in the road.
Talk, Speech, Deed
Talk, Speech, Deed (1 Cor 2: 1-5) In one of the many commentaries on the quality of the rhetoric in the recent campaign, I came across a distinction I had never thought of – the difference between talk and speech. Talk, whatever comes to you on the spot, or from off...
Repenting From Fear to Trust
Repenting From Fear to Trust (Matthew 4: 17) In Matthew’s fourth chapter we come across what you might call the very first word in Jesus' very first sermon, Repent! Which means at base “to turn around.” And so the gospel, “From that time on, Jesus began to...
A Family Gift: Practical Integrity
A Family Gift: Practical Integrity (Mk 3:1-6) If you were hired as the Public Relations director for the Jerusalem Pharisees and Scribes mentioned in Mark, you wouldn’t want this section of the gospel to get too much circulation. In their confrontations with Jesus,...
Heavenly Gaze
A scene setter. You’re out in the cold night fields, keeping close watch over your flock. And suddenly this light is shining at you and all around you. From out of this radiance a voice of an angel sings out news about the infant in swaddling clothes lying in a...
Sensing Grace
Sensing Grace (Lk: 1:26-38) The angel Gabriel reveals to Mary that she’s “full of grace.” And so the question, what is this “grace” that Mary is filled with? There are few better answers to be had than the one in the five words that follow. “The Lord is with you!”...
Attuned To The Fear of the Lord
Attuned To “The Fear of the Lord” (Isaiah 11:1-5; Lk. 10: 21) In Isaiah’s description of the special one God will send (“A shoot from the stump of Jesse”), he lists a number of qualities this person will have. Wisdom, understanding, strength, and so forth. But one of...
Counsel for An Anxious Time
Counsel for An Anxious Time (Lk. 17:20-25) All through Luke’s gospel, the underlying movement is towards Jerusalem. From the beginning that’s where Jesus is heading, and as He gets closer the pace picks up and the tensions rise. This is not only because of the...
Belief Under Pressure
Belief Under Pressure (2 Maccabees, 7; Luke 20: 38) One of the things that has sharpened inside me on my journey into the senior years is a sense of time passing (where did it go?), and an accompanying wonderment about what happens when it does pass. What’s on the...
Lost and Found
Lost and Found (Luke 19:1-10; Wisdom 11) Throughout Luke’s gospel, Jesus tells a good number of “lost and found” parables and incidents. There’s the lost and found coin, the lost-found pearl and earlier on the lost-found tax collector, Levi. And last Sunday we come...
