As I started to post my sermon from this past Sunday, I realized I had not yet posted the one from the week before. The passage is from Matthew 16—a conversation between Jesus and his followers about who they thought he was, which was a fair question, and one we still wrestle with. _____________________ When…
I concluded my series on the Lord’s Prayer this past Sunday with a look at why we repeat ourselves in worship. We have more than one reason, I suppose, but the ongoing challenge is to maintain our intentionality: to repeat as a matter of meaning and not a matter of convenience. ________________________ During the first…
Though the final phrase of the Lord’s Prayer isn’t in the oldest manuscripts, and when it is the words only show up in Matthew’s version, it has been part of the prayer that gets repeated so often for centuries, even millennia, which makes it worth considering. Here’s the sermon from this week. _________________________________ We have…
almosts it doesn’t have to be a sudden death shoot out for the little things to matter horse shoe nails go missing long before kingdoms start falling we miss most of the might have beens and play on unaware of all the almosts that roll by disguised as incidentals to see them all might be…
We are down to the next to last phrase of the Lord’s Prayer, which is the one about temptation and evil, so easy stuff to describe. Here’s what I had to say. _____________________ When you watch a series on television, whether on a network or one of the streaming services, the episode often begins with…
On the way to church Sunday I listened to Don Henley singing “Heart of the Matter” because I was preaching on forgiveness—the line in the Lord’s Prayer about sins or debts or trespasses. I ended up adding the lyrics to the end of my sermon. I also listened to the Lyle Lovett song I had…
We made it to the daily bread this week in my series on the Lord’s Prayer. To aid our thinking, we read the story of the manna God provided for the Hebrew people (Exodus 16:9-21) and the Feeding of the Five Thousand (Luke 9:10-17). In putting the sermon together, my mental travels took me to…
I was driving home from church on Sunday when a song crossed my mind I had not thought of in a long time. “Hey, Siri,” I said, “play ‘My Old Man’ by Steve Goodman.” She repeated my request and the song began. The version I have is from a live album, so it started with…
mercy drops who knows why old hymns rise to the surface but I found myself singing about showers of blessing for no apparent reason other than the rain hitting my windshield wipers keeping time until I got stuck on two words mercy drops I almost stopped and ran under the rain hoping to be drenched…
patina “people weather over the course of their lives . . .” Eva Meijer when I got my new carbon steel skillets they came pre-seasoned but without the scars a patina will develop with use the leaflet explained they will show their age like a copper pipe or a bronze statue the lichen on stone…