Presby-Musings

It snowed in Texas yesterday--a real snow that came down in big wet flakes that actually stuck.   I happened to be making a grocery run when it started to snow really hard.  As I made my way to the entrance to the store, everyone I encountered had a surprised and joyous look on their face.   At one point in the evening my boys were having a snowball fight with the neighbor kids down the street.  I stood on the steps watching the snow fall and could hear them shrieking for joy.   I've lived in places where it snowed more than once every few years.  But this particular little snowstorm in Texas ranks up there with the most memorable in my life--mostly because it was so surprising.   This Advent season I have been reading through the book of Revelation from the New Testament. It's a difficult book to decipher with all of its first century references, and strange images.   But what I love about Revelation is that ...

I've been serving in ministry of some kind--either as a church staffer or pastor--for nearly twenty years.  I grew up going to church, and (other than a five year absence when I had a crisis of faith) I spent most of my life before ministry in some kind of church or another. Not much surprises me any more when it comes to church and church-y folks.  In fact, it's easy at times to get a bid jaded about spiritual matters when you've been at this Christian thing for as long as I have.   Whenever I have had church members express their dissatisfaction and then depart for another church, I always genuinely wish them well.  But what I know is that whatever drove them to dissatisfaction in the old place, will almost assuredly surface in the new place.   Because the truth of the matter is that most of us Christian-types too-often take our eyes off Jesus and let our gaze fall on people, leaders and institutions instead.   And when we do this, we are al...