Scriptures:Proverbs 25:6-7a & Luke 14:1, 7-14 As the minister officiating the wedding, I was once invited to the wedding receptions of couples I really didn’t know that well. On one occasion, the bride and groom were not members of the church I was serving, but had very close friends who were. They had found me […]
Scriptures:Isaiah 58:9b-14 & Luke 13:10-17 I am a member of one of those generations that has the questionable habit of mindless scrolling on my phone. I’m sure there are plenty of downsides, but one of the upsides is the diversity of people I have to learn from right at my fingertips – people who teach […]
Scriptures:Psalm 50:1-6 & Luke 12:32-40 One thing I appreciate about school nurses (just one, because there are an awful lot of things I appreciate about school nurses), but one thing I appreciate about school nurses, is that they understand the fear that strikes a parent’s heart when the caller ID says “school nurse.” In a […]
Scriptures:Hosea 11:1-11 There’s a line in the play Love Letters by playwright A. R. Gurney that came to mind as I was reading Hosea this week. This play, which premiered in 1988, is performed by just two actors playing two characters, Melissa Gardner and Andrew Makepeace Ladd III. They sit side by side at tables […]
Scriptures:Deuteronomy 6:1-9Luke 18:15-17 Despite the morning scramble it inevitably produced, “Show and Tell” was a favorite day when the kids were little. Finding just the right thing to fit the designated theme, whether it was by color, season, or letter, was a good game. Although, I’m surprised that our preschool didn’t ban Show and Tell […]
Scriptures: Luke 10:1-11; 2 Kings 5:1-14 Back after the exodus from Egypt, able to anticipate how the power would corrupt the nation, rule by king was not the model God desired for God’s people, Israel. But when the people begged again and again for a sovereign like their neighbors had, God reluctantly obliged and gave […]
A social media post from contemporary English author and theologian, Dr. Joy Marie Clarkson, circulates all the major platforms every once in a while. It reminds us: This is your gentle reminder that one time in the Bible Elijah was like “God, I’m so mad! I want to die!” so God said “Here’s some food. […]
We don’t often spend a whole lot of time in the book of Proverbs. There are probably a couple of different reasons for that. For one, the short couplets of advice and counsel that make up a significant portion of the book don’t really lend themselves to sermons and preaching. One scholar said they should […]
A few years ago, one of my best friends and her spouse bought a local small business in the Wisconsin town where we used to live. I met Erin, a Lutheran pastor, when the Lutheran colleagues in my town adopted me into their weekly Bible study and sermon preparation group. She lived and served in […]
In the early days of the spiritual movement that we now think of as the early church, the followers of Jesus were pretty much all people who share Jesus’ Jewish faith. The followers of Jesus, those who believe he had been resurrected from the dead for the salvation of the world, didn’t see themselves as […]