Presby-Musings

This phrase comes to my mind, and I frequently utter it out loud when something becomes difficult for no apparent reason:  "Why does everything have to be so hard?" Like when I'm trying to open a bag of potato chips or some other bagged, crispy snack, and the bag doesn't open correctly and explodes all over the place.  Or when I'm trying to put together some put-together furniture and realize I'm missing a piece of hardware, put something on wrong, or lost a screw.   I've also uttered that phrase when what I perceive to be a simple decision or a way forward is more complex to others and takes much longer than I thought it would resolve.  Most of us have a phrase like this that comes to mind, and perhaps we say it whenever we encounter unexpected challenges or accidents that blow up our plans or even turn our lives upside down.  And that exact phrase can also apply to the hard things happening around us.  Sometimes it feels like the world is an inhospit...

This past month, I had a peculiar feeling during my vacation and study leave that I couldn't shake for over a week or more.  It pervaded most moments when I was supposed to relax, read, write, and chill.  It was the feeling that I needed to be doing something productive even though I was trying to give my mind, body, and soul a rest.   As soon as I relaxed or felt peaceful, I began to feel a combination of uneasiness and guilt that wouldn't go away quickly.  It's not like I wasn't busy doing things, mind you.  I had daily chores, errands to run, places to take my son, books I was trying to read, and chapters in my new book I was working to outline.   But it took me a good while before I started to give myself a break.   I'm not good at sitting still.  Even when I'm supposed to relax, I generally find something to do or some way to keep myself occupied.   Sitting still for a time and watching the ocean, or the ripples on a ...

I've been listening to a lot of good new music lately, and one of my favorite albums from the past few months is by singer/songwriter Luke Sital-Singh, a British artist who now resides in Los Angeles.  On his latest album, an EP entitled Strange Weather , there is a song that blew me away, and I can't stop listening to it.  The song is "Hallelujah Anyway," and the chorus goes like this:  Can I sing hallelujah anyway? When the days are long And the night won't fade Hallelujah anyway Though the pain is real And I'm not ok Can I sing hallelujah anyway? Sital-Singh isn't an overtly religious artist, but there is an unmistakable spirituality to so much of his work.  And this song puts that on display.  It speaks to the moments when we feel as though there doesn't seem to be any end in sight for whatever obstacles we are facing in life or the challenges we are having to go through in the moment.  And in those moments, we have a choice to make.  We can refuse...

I  have tended to learn things the hard way my whole life.  When I was younger, I had a bad habit of ignoring the good advice and guidance that I received from people who knew better than me.  This invariably ended with me traveling down the difficult path of mistakes, poor decisions, and ultimately an admission that I didn't know as much as I thought.  Sometimes those mistakes were costly, though.  If I'd had an ounce or two more of humility, I could have avoided a lot of heartache and painful lessons.   I'm pretty hardheaded, as it turns out.   Still, there is something to be said about hard lessons.  Through those hard lessons, I learned in ways I would not have otherwise.  I needed to have my pride chipped away.  I needed to know that I wasn't all that.  As a result, I don't regret the paths I have taken in life, even when they could have been avoided for much easier ones.   Mark Twain once wrote:  A man...

I had some wonderful experiences during our family vacation this past week when I decided to say "Yes" to things when my initial instinct was to say "No."  Before the trip, I was adamant with the rest of the family that if I just wanted to spend the vacation resting, reading, and relaxing while they went off and had adventures, they needed to be okay with it.  I was more concerned about the logistics of getting seven people through flight connections, rental car pickup, and a four-hour drive than I was about actually enjoying myself.  Additionally, I wasn't enthusiastic about hanging out at the beach or swimming in the ocean.  I don't want to be attacked by sharks, and I watch too many videos of sharks swimming near beaches to be dissuaded from my fear.  I also get seasick easily, so going out on a boat didn't appeal to me either.  At this point, many of you are probably thinking, "Wow. I really want to hang out with Leon. He seems like a really fun...

Today we are beginning a brand new sermon series that will take us through the month of September as we explore the Gospel lectionary texts from Matthew.   This sermon series will take us through some of the key teachings and lessons from the life of Jesus as recorded in Matthew’s Gospel—to hear the Good News directly from Jesus himself.  There are a lot of people in our current culture who claim to speak for Jesus, and yet when you hold up what they are saying next to the actual words of Jesus it doesn't add up.   This is why it's so important to go directly to the source, and to read the stories and teachings of Jesus.  If we are going to call ourselves Jesus-followers, it makes sense to know what he wanted us to do to follow him more fully.   Today we're going to be learning what it means to do what we can to solve the big problems of the world---by offering what we have, and then trusting Jesus to do the rest.   The story that we are...

This past week we went on our first family vacation in a few years, adding my middle son's longtime girlfriend into the mix for the first time.   The seven of us traveled to Costa Rica, which meant connecting flights, a four-hour drive from the airport to where we were staying, and many tired people once we got to our rented house in the middle of the night.  Not to mention, I almost got the SUV I was driving stuck on the steep gravel road that led to our destination.  Because we had been driving in the dark for hours, and there were no natural street lights or any other kind of illumination around us, we had no idea what our environs looked like or where we were, for that matter.  We essentially fell into bed exhausted, not even unpacking our clothes.  The next day we all stepped out of our rooms for breakfast and were greeted by the most fantastic ocean view from high on the hill where our house was.   The sky seemed bigger than I'd ever seen, w...