Presby-Musings

Did you know that the Bible is One Big Story of God’s love for people who don’t always feel like they deserve God’s love?  It's true--it's the best kind of story, to be honest. And God has a way of always picking the wrong kinds of people to do what God needs doing.  People who think they aren't good enough, people who the rest of the world thinks aren't good enough--heck, people who really aren't good enough... that's who God seems to love to pick to write God's One Big Story. The Bible is One Big Story filled with heroes and villains, great adventures, epic battles, love stories and astonishing tales.  It’s also the story of a “once and future” King who picked the most unlikely people to help him share the story of God’s amazing love, and how far God was willing to go to save the world.    Today we are continuing our summer sermon series, One Big Story.  And what we're going to be learning over the course of this summer is one very simple fa...

It's the Fourth  Sunday of the season of Lent, and we are journeying together after Jesus as he travels to Holy Week and the Cross. The thing is, when we step into the Lenten journey, it's easy to feel a bit lost.  It's one of the most difficult seasons of the year--a long wintry trudge that is sandwiched between the joys of Advent and the transforming moment of Easter. And let's face it, following in the footsteps of Jesus as he journeys to the Cross isn't exactly the most thrilling of propositions for most of us. What we need are guides to help us along the way, to inspire us to keep going and to give us direction when we feel lost and alone.  That's the focus of the sermon series we're beginning today--a series entitled, "Rescue Me." We'll be engaging with the lectionary Psalms that are part of our Lenten readings for each of the Sundays in Lent.  The Psalms are more than just poetry.  They are more than prayers.  The Psalms provi...

One of the stories in the Gospels that has always captured my imagination is from John 8:1-11 . In the passage, we find that some legalistic religious leaders brought to Jesus a woman,  who had been caught in the act of adultery .  A strict interpretation of Mosaic law meant that the woman should be executed by stoning.   The purpose of these religious leaders was to discredit Jesus as a false teacher, who didn't uphold their religious laws.     The text later reveals that these guys already had stones in their hands, ready to throw at her.  Her verdict, as far as they were concerned, was decided.   But Jesus offers a strange response.  He kneels down and begins drawing on the ground in front of these men, and then invites any of them "who is completely sinless" to throw the first stone at her.    John's Gospel reveals that "one by one" they dropped their stones and left.  And then Jesus turns to her and asks her "Who is he...

Last night we put the (almost) finishing touches on the Christmas decorations in our new house, which include a pretty extensive Christmas village that gets set up every year.   My two youngest boys love setting up the village.  It's never failed to capture their imagination, and the day we set it up is always one that is filled with a lot of expectation and excitement.   Our recent cross country move, however, wasn't kind to our village, and there was some damage done this year that required more than just a bit of minor repair.  Even though I did my best to cover the brokenness with various kinds of glue, there are some all too visible cracks in some of our pieces.   But when we turned on all of the decorative lights in our miniature town, the cracks seemed to fade into the background.  The village was still as beautiful as ever. My wife finally announced, "I think this might be the best one we've ever done."   I couldn't help but see the ...

This Sunday I'll be continuing the sermon series that I'm preaching on the book of Habakkuk entitled "In the Meantime."  This week we'll be focusing on Habakkuk 2:4,  the key verse for the book---a verse that is used by the Apostle Paul to help Christians understand their new life in Christ.  Before I dig into the Scripture I need to share something first so that we can all get on the same page.  This is what educators would call "getting into learning mode." I read a story this year about a group of IT workers in a New York business who always pooled their money and bought Mega Millions New York State Lottery tickets together.  There were eight workers altogether, and they'd been buying tickets faithfully for a long time.  It seems that one of the group decided that he wasn't going to participate on one particular week.  When his buddies asked him why he didn't want to kick in for a ticket, he told them "I don't feel lucky thi...

Predators (R) Starring: Adrian Brody, Alice Braga, Danny Trejo, Topher Grace Directed by:  Nimrod Antal Produced by: Robert Rodriguez My oldest son and I took a man-trip recently.  We were supposed to drive to NC to retrieve some furniture.  Since we left late in the day, we decided to drive to Atlanta, get a hotel, see a movie and then drive on to NC the next day.  As it turned out, we had to return home the next morning because of serious thunderstorms that would have ruined whatever furniture we had in the pickup.  So basically, we ended up spending like $200 for a 16 hour trip to see Predators in a suburban Atlanta mall.  It was worth it.  Not because of the movie, but because I got to hang out with my son for 16-plus hours and have a man-moment with him at a movie we wouldn't watch with his mom. However, the movie was pretty good--even if it wasn't 16-hour trip good.  Predators is the kind of movie that you sort of go see withou...