Thursday, March 14 A quick primer for those who might not be familiar with the Apostle Paul: A significant portion of the New Testament is made up of letters written by Paul to churches he helped start scattered around the northern shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Paul began as a Pharisaical Jew who believed that […]
Wednesday, March 13 Where we left off yesterday, God was talking Abram down from his despair. We were told Abram believed God’s promise that the day was coming when Sarah would give birth to a child and that countless descendants would follow afterwards in the future. But Abram isn’t finished with his doubts. In today’s […]
Tuesday, March 11 The Apostle Paul in the New Testament looks back at the Old Testament figure of Abraham as the original example of what it means to live by “faith”. Late into middle age Abraham (who at this point in the story we are about to read is still known as “Abram”) along with […]
Week 2 — Monday, March 11 Psalms are poetry, and as such if we approach them with our intellect in an attempt to analyze their meaning we’ll probably end up frustrated. Psalms are prayers used by people of faith through the ages to give expression to their varied emotional states – moving through the darker […]
A sermon preached on March 10th, 2019 – the first Sunday in Lent – based upon Luke 4:1-13 Fourteen years ago I was fortunate to receive funding to take a three month, clergy renewal Sabbatical. The central piece to this time involved a trip I made to northern California where I spent four days alone […]
Sunday, March 10 A quote from C. S. Lewis for your reflection: “People often think of Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God says, ‘If you keep a lot of rules I’ll reward you, and if you don’t I’ll do the other thing.’ I do not think that is the best way […]
Saturday, March 9th We continue on with the third and final temptation. Luke 4:9-13 Then the devil took (Jesus) to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning […]
Friday, March 8th Luke 4:5-8 Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, “To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I […]
Thursday, March 7 Yesterday, I talked about the significance of Jesus feeling famished – that he didn’t try to distract himself from his desire for food. Jesus has gone out into the wilderness to face specific desires that arise within him which if he were to seek to satisfy would take him away from the […]
Ash Wednesday, March 6th Every year on the first Sunday in Lent we hear the story of the forty days Jesus spent in the wilderness tempted by the devil. The forty days of Lent are modeled on those forty days, as well as, on the forty years that the Hebrew people spent wandering in the […]
