Presby-Musings

This week the daily devotions will focus on how we approach the new year that we have been gifted.  We'll wrestle with what we will do differently, what we will improve, what we'll pick up and what we'll leave behind.   In his 1566 painting Census At Bethlehem , Pieter Brueghel the Elder sets the arrival of the Holy Family in Bethlehem in the middle of a busy Flemish city.   If you look closely at the painting you will see Joseph leading a donkey bearing a pregnant Mary.   There is hustle and bustle everywhere around them.  People are working, buying, selling, living and dying--all in a rush.  There is a huge crowd gathered at the inn trying to secure lodging.   No one takes notice of them.  No one recognizes that the Messiah has come.  They are all too busy to see, too immersed in their own lives to ever imagine that God would arrive in their midst as one of them.   One of the many things I want to...

This week the daily devotions will focus on how we approach the new year that we have been gifted.  We'll wrestle with what we will do differently, what we will improve, what we'll pick up and what we'll leave behind.   In chapters 5-7 of Matthew's Gospel Jesus delivers what most of us know as "The Sermon on The Mount," but what some scholars have also referred to as The Greatest Sermon .  These three chapters capture the absolute essence of all of Jesus' teachings.  They reveal to us what God desires of us, what it means to be a Jesus-follower and how we should live our lives to embody the kingdom of God here on earth, as it is in heaven.   As I was reading through The Sermon on the Mount this morning, I came across two verses that helped bring some clarity to my "resolutions" for the coming year.   "The lamp of the body is the eye.  Thus if your eye be pure your entire body will be radiant; But if your eye be baleful ...

This week the daily devotions will focus on how we approach the new year that we have been gifted.  We'll wrestle with what we will do differently, what we will improve, what we'll pick up and what we'll leave behind.   I'm not huge on new year's resolutions, to be honest.  While I have had some success in the past, I typically end up breaking my new year's resolutions within the first few weeks, which makes me feel poorly about myself.   Since I don't need any new reasons to feel poorly, I decided some years ago to not really do the whole resolutions thing.   But this year, I thought I would actually give it a try--with a bit of a twist.  I have some things I want to leave behind as I step forward into the new year and I have some things I want to pick up.   One of the things I want to pick up is a spiritual discipline that I believe will help better prepare me to experience all that God has in store for me in the coming...

It's not often that we begin a new calendar year on a Sunday, so today is a special day.  It's a new year and we're launching a new series that will take us through the end of the month of January--a series entitled Foundations.   We're going to be learning together over the course of the next couple of weeks what we need to build a solid foundation for 2017.    Years ago, I read a book that changed my life:  The Principle of the Path by Andy Stanley. In this book, Stanley said something that was transformative    it's our direction, not our intentions that determines our destination.     Our direction, not our intentions, determines our destination.  In other words, no matter how good my intentions might be, if I don't step in the right direction, I am going to end up where I don't want to be.   We all struggle with this.  We have good intentions, we might even declare those good intentions, but we step off i...

This week for our Daily Devotions, we'll be focusing on the coming of a new year, and what it means to be given a fresh start, a second chance and another opportunity to become the people that God has always dreamed for us to become.    "You are never too old to set another goal, or to dream a new dream." - C.S. Lewis Here are some of the things I'm resolving for the coming New Year--in no particular order:   Read a book a week (I've actually done this before, so I know it can be done), Lose the rest of the weight I need to lose (about 10 lbs), Increase the frequency of my workouts at the gym, Go to a pastor/church leader conference, Get more organized/set better priorities, Take at least two awesome trips, and Spend more quality time with my family.  I figured it would be kind of cathartic in a way to share what I would like my resolutions to be this year.  Maybe (and here's where my thinking might get a bit muddled) if I shared them here in public...

This week for our Daily Devotions, we'll be focusing on the coming of a new year, and what it means to be given a fresh start, a second chance and another opportunity to become the people that God has always dreamed for us to become.     "Every time you tear a leaf off a calendar, you present a new place for new ideas and progress." - Charles Kettering In just a few days we'll be ringing in a new year.  We'll "tear a leaf off" the calendar, figuratively if not literally.  I love the feeling that accompanies the beginning of a new year, actually.  There's a freshness to it.  I can imagine that the slate has been wiped clean, and all of the mistakes and missteps of the past year are behind me.  I have the chance to do things differently.  I stopped making resolutions a few years ago--at least out loud where anyone could hear me make them.  The reason?  I'm sketchy when it comes to keeping my new year's resolutions.  Most of us...

Recently, I found this website:  www.43things.com.  It's a strange kind of site where you list things (up to 43) that you want to accomplish in life.  It also lists how many people on the site are trying to accomplish the same task.  I have 24 things listed so far.  For some of my goals there are literally thousands of people with the same goal in mind, but for most of them there is only one---me.  Every once in a while I will add something new, or revise one of the things,  but I have not visited the site that often in recent weeks.  It's kind of daunting, to be honest, and my track record with keeping resolutions is spotty at best.  You can check out my 43 Things site if you want to... Just click here .   If you traveled over there out of curiosity and managed to find your way back, perhaps you can commiserate with me a bit on how daunting our resolutions, goals and yet-to-be-fulfilled dreams can be when you place them on a list like the one on 43 Things.  I decided to sket...