Posts from September 2019

Posts from September 2019

A FRESH START

One day Jesus entered Nazareth, the town where He grew up. The Gospel of Luke says:  “The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him. Unrolling it, He found the place where it is written: ‘ The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom to the captivesand recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, and to…

WHERE THE LOVE OF GOD LEADS

On the 10th of November in ’75, the Edmund Fitzgerald sank beneath the waves of Lake Superior in a terrible storm. Gordon Lightfoot composed a ballad to immortalize the 29 men who went down with the ship.   His ballad, the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, has a sad line in it that asks:  “Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?” Jesus asked something like this when He hung helplessly from…

DRIFTING?

Do you just feel like you’re drifting some days?  Aimless? Lost? The inspired writer to the Hebrews (2:1) says:  “We need to pay even more attention to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away.” The words of this Bible passage take us down to the sea in ships.  In the language of the New Testament, the word for “pay attention” was also used of tying ships to the dock.  The phrase “drift away” speaks for itself.…

HEADLINES & DEADLINES

The people of Jesus’ day seized upon some “breaking news,” a recent headline (Luke 13:1-5).   Everyone was talking about it – the way we talk about mindless mass shootings in our cities, small children slaughtered at the hands of their own parents, natural disasters snuffing out lives by the hundreds and thousands. The Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, probably wanted to make an example of some Galileans who were worshipping at the temple.  Pilate had these men slaughtered as they worshipped…

THE GREAT SIMPLIFIER

People sometimes complain that the Bible is too difficult, that they can’t understand it.  Certainly, like anything else, you get out of it what you put into it. It does take faithful Bible reading habits to connect some of the dots, to see sinful man and a sinless Christ in the ceremonies and sacrifices of Leviticus, to get a handle on the numerous kings of Judah and Israel and the warnings and comfort to be found there, to use the…