Presby-Musings

It's almost here.   Christmas that is. It feels like we've been waiting for a while, doesn't it? Some of us have been waiting in expectation--the kind of expectation that we used to feel when we were small.  For whatever reason, this year seems different, this year feels--special. Some of us have been waiting in deep grief.  It's the first year without the loved ones we lost last year.  Or maybe it's the tenth.  This season brings none of the expectations and excitement that it used to.  We might feel snatches of joy, and perhaps a smile or two.  But our grief is always there, like a familiar unwelcome burden that aches our shoulders to carry, but we can't set it down. Some of us have been waiting with dread.  Nothing has worked out like we planned.  Families are at odds, perhaps and we're dreading that dinner or that get together.  Maybe we plodded through everything we experienced so far checking things off of our list--jus...

U All good things must come to an end. Have you ever heard that before?  Maybe you've even repeated it on occasion. Probably when something good was coming to an end. Recently, my wife and I had the opportunity to get a way for a couple of days--just the two of us.  We relaxed, sat by the beach, wandered around Key West, watched the sunset, ate unbelievable meals, slept in, read some books, laid in a hammock... What? I should tell you everything? At any rate, as we came to the end of our time away we both found ourselves saying over and over again---"just one more day... if we had just one more day..." I remember the last football game of my oldest son's high school career.  He re-injured his surgically repaired shoulder throwing a forty yard touchdown pass, and then a few plays later got concussed on a running play.  We all knew that it was over.  His season had ended, and a promising football career with it.  I remember my wife and I sitting...

This week we'll be launching a new sermon series that will take us all the way through the month of June--and will be re-exploring the core values of our church. We imaginatively named this sermon series, "The Core" because we are (as I stated earlier) re-exploring our church's core values: Worship, Pray, Grow, Love and Serve. But there's another, more important reason why we chose this particular name, a reason that reflects the overall theme of our re-exploration: Atoms. Let me explain. You are unbelievable. Let me tell you some facts about you. [the following is liberally borrowed from Rob Bell 's "What We Talk About When We Talk About God "] You lose fifty to a hundred and fifty strands of hair a day... you shed ten billion flakes of skin a day... every twenty eight days you get completely new skin, and every nine years your entire body is renewed. And in the middle of all of this shedding, renewing and changing your body co...

In 1998 I landed my very first job in a church--as a part time youth director for a tiny 80-member church in Tallahassee, Florida .  The pay was less than part time, if we're being honest--but the hours weren't.  You can't really do part time youth ministry--at least not very well. There was this kid that found us one year.  I think someone invited him at some point, and before too long he was permanent fixture at just about every youth event we had.  He lived with his disabled mom in a small apartment that smelled faintly of cigarette smoke and dog fur. He would call me sometimes and ask if I could give him a ride to one thing or another--to the store, to Walgreens...  If he couldn't get a hold of me, he would try one of the kids who could drive--but mostly he got a hold of me.  Sometimes our excursions would take several hours--hours I didn't have with a wife and small child at home, and a mountain of school work to complete so I could finish college....

Before we returned from our second trip to the Holy Land in as many years, my wife Merideth and I began planning our next one. We hoped to return once again in the Spring after Passover and Easter, which seemed to us like the perfect time to go. We also wanted to make sure that we secured who we believe is the very best guide that anyone could ever have on a trip to the Holy Land: Erez B'Galil.  And we wanted to add some exciting components, provide our pilgrims with the opportunity to experience some of modern Israel , and have more opportunities for me to teach onsite, and offer learning opportunities that are catered to our particular group. Well, we did it.  All of those things fell into place, and Merideth and I will be getting the chance to lead another incredible trip to the Holy Land in April, 2015 and I'm offering a great opportunity to folks who would like to join me. Merideth and I are inviting our friends, family, church members or anyone who is interest...

This week we'll be concluding the sermon series "The Elijah Chronicles," a series where we re-imagined the story of the prophet Elijah as though it were set in a post-apocalyptic future.  The world is desolate in our story.  There is an evil king, a military dictator if you will, who is persecuting those who worship God and advocating the worship of idols instead.  There is a remnant, a small group that refuses to give in---the Resistance. When we last saw Elijah, he had just experienced the most incredible victory of his life---the defeat of the prophets of Baal, the false god that the wicked king Ahab and his detestable wife Jezebel were forcing the people of Israel to worship.  God had sent fire from heaven to demonstrate his power, and his continued relationship with the Hebrew people , and the story ended with the people crying out "The Lord is God!" before executing all the evil prophets of Baal.  It was a huge win for the Resistance, and for Eli...

This week I am continuing our sermon series on the life of David with the story of David and Jonathan ---perhaps one of the most dramatic and enduring stories of true friendship in the Bible. And it's a story that's made even more compelling by the fact that they were such unlikely friends. I looked up "unlikely friendships" on the interwebs and this is one of the first images that came up: I'm pretty sure this is breaking a whole bunch of rules.  You've got a pit bull, a cat and a bunch of ducklings all hanging out together. I think that it's sort of an understatement to describe these friendships as "unlikely." But it undoubtedly would be an overstatement to call the friendship of a pit bull, cat and baby ducks as "enduring."  Something tells me that if  either the dog or the cat missed a couple of meals, this photo wouldn't be so darned cute.  But that's just me. Who is your "best friend?"  And what make...