Presby-Musings

Almost every day of my life, I do things that make me dissatisfied in myself.  I yell at my kids.  I get impatient when I am driving around slow people, when I'm waiting in line at Chipotle, when I can't do all of the things I need to in a day...  the list is pretty long.   If we are being honest, most of us struggle to be the people we know that we should be.  And what we tend to hear most of the time from other Christians is that we can get it all together, we can overcome our feelings of inadequacy by reading that next Christian self-help book about 13 ways to be a better parent/wife/husband/child/church member/American... or going to church more often, being more religious, trying harder, keeping more rules...   But as Craig Groeschel writes: Religious behavior can make you nice, but it won't make you new.   As Christians we say we believe that following Jesus makes you new.  You can be a new creation. Like the Apostle Paul said, "t...

In the book of Genesis, when Abraham and Sarah were told by divine messengers that they were going to have a child in their old age, Sarah laughed at the prospect.  I am sure she thought that her future couldn't possibly include such a miracle.   Only it did.   I've been thinking this morning about Sarah's laughter, and why that story has always resonated with me.   I had the chance to spend the day with my middle son yesterday as we drove down to San Antonio to catch a Metallica concert.  He just turned thirteen.  It feels as though I blinked and he grew up, right in front of me.  At the concert, we were sitting next to a young couple who looked to be about eighteen or nineteen years old.  If I squinted my eyes I could imagine that young couple as my wife and I in similar concerts over thirty years ago.   My poor wife---I dragged her to so many rock shows back when we were kids.   If a divine messenger had walked up to ni...