Posts from August 2020
LIFE IN THE LIGHT OF MORNING
“It was the best of times and it was the worst of times,” is the way Charles Dickens began his novel, Tale Of Two Cities. Paul would have said the same about his times. In our epistle lesson from Romans 13, he says: “The night is almost over, and the day is drawing near.” The times are dark with judgment…like the night. The times are bright with promise…like the day. We would have to say the same about our own…
CASTING BREAD UPON THE WATERS
“Cast your bread on the surface of the waters,” wrote King Solomon in Ecclesiastes 11. It has a beautiful ring to it. But what does it mean? Tossing a loaf of bread into the Mississippi would seem an odd and pointless thing to do! Solomon is actually talking about an act of commerce or trade, of shipping “bread,” that is, grain, over the waters to distant lands. The Bible tells us that Solomon had a fleet of trading ships. Once…
OUR SUBSTITUTE
Our old teachers spoke often about “the vicarious atonement.” We got it, because they explained it. Churchy words such as, “justification” (to declare not guilty), or “redemption” (to be ransomed by the blood of Christ when we were held hostage by sin, death and hell), or “reconciliation” (that God made friends of us when we were His declared enemies) – these and countless other rich Bible words do not need to be dummied down to a vanilla vocabulary. They…
GOD’S ACRE
You may recall that this past April 12th, we observed Easter in a way we had never observed it before…virtually…live streaming the service with as much joyful noise as a few voices and instruments could make amid the shut-down. Today’s hymns are Easter hymns! This is on purpose. With as many as are able to come to our sanctuary, we will celebrate “a little Easter in August.” We shall stand in a little graveyard in the village of Bethany and…
WAITING FOR GOD
So the rain finally ceased. The waters slowly receded. Noah waited. The total time on the ark for Noah and his family came to 1 year and 10 days. The configuration of the ark was such that Noah had no clear view of things – what was out there or where he was going. There was only the steady rocking and bobbing of the ark upon the surface of the deep beneath a gray sky. Would the sun…