Presby-Musings

This week the inspiration for our Daily Devotions will be drawn from the sermon that I preached this past Sunday for All Saints' Day--a sermon on grief, loss, hope, life, heaven, Heaven and resurrection. If you would like to read the transcript of that sermon, you can click HERE .  The Scripture that we used as our guide was John chapter 11--the story of Jesus raising of Lazarus from the dead.   In his best-selling novel  The Five People You Meet In Heaven , author Mitch Albom paints a beautiful portrait of the mission of heaven itself--as a place where we are given the gift of clarity.  In heaven (or more accurately paradise), according to Albom's story, the whole of our lives suddenly makes sense.  We get the chance to see how all of the dots connect.   Eddie, the main character in the novel, has just died and enters paradise where he is met by the first of the five people he must speak to--a character known as The Blue Man.  Albom writes:...

I recently finished reading Mitch Albom's newest book, Have A Little Faith .  Albom is also the author of For One More Day, The Five People You Meet In Heaven, & Tuesdays with Morrie. He is a newspaper columnist,  a sports writer, playwright, journalist and screenwriter who lives in Detroit.  Have A Little Faith is a book that was part of Albom's eight year journey toward a new understanding of faith, God & community.  It began with a strange request from Albom's 82-year old rabbi--that Albom deliver the rabbi's eulogy when he passed.  Albom, who had all but left the faith of his youth behind, was flummoxed by the request, and agreed to do so only if he could take the time to get to know the man he had always known as "Reb."  What followed was eight years of trips from Detroit to New York as Albom did his best to get understand what it meant to live of a life of faith, devotion and selflessness.  At the same time he was visiting and lear...