Rev. Dr. Carter Lester

Do you remember what it was like when you, or someone close to you, brought your new-born on or daughter home from the hospital?  How many pictures or videos you took?  How little they did – but how long you could just gaze on them, your heart bursting with love?  I remember one of the […]

You have to feel for Paul in this section of Second Corinthians. More than in any other city, Paul’s ministry has come under attack in Corinth. And he is not there to defend himself. His attackers are rival apostles who want to supplant Paul.  Their tactics are something any modern-day political advisor might agree with.  […]

When it comes to this account of Jesus and his disciples in a boat in a storm, our attention is usually drawn to the almost comic image of Jesus asleep in the boat in the midst of the storm – and then his power to still that great storm.  While we don’t want to skip […]

It has been said that you can divide people into two groups: those who watch a movie without talking or texting and those who like to think everyone else will want to comment or text while the movie going.  I am proud to say that I am in that first group, the right group, but […]

Don’t you just love Pentecost?  How many of you have Pentecost circled on your calendars?  Raise your hands if you like to… Gather around the piano and sing Pentecost carols? Bake Pentecost cookies, put up a Pentecost tree or put up a yard sign with a Pentecostal flame? Exchange cards, or gifts, or open Pentecost […]

Have you heard the one about the three animals approaching St. Peter seated on his chair at the heavenly gate?  The first animal was a Rottweiler.  St. Peter asked her what she had done to be deserving of entering heaven and the Rottweiler replied: “I was an excellent guard dog for the family who owned […]

Scriptures: Acts 8:26-40, Isaiah 53:7-9 “Look, here is water.” The observation by the unnamed Ethiopian here in Acts 8 seems like a fairly ordinary statement.  Except that it comes at an extraordinary point in this meeting between the Ethiopian and the apostle Philip – and there is not supposed to be any water nearby. Why […]

I do not know a lot about sheep. I am a suburban-bon kid after all, who has never lived on, or near, a farm. A number of years ago, right after Kerry and I finished school and before we started our first permanent jobs, we had a great opportunity to travel across England and Scotland […]