Intersections

      I know we’ve been in dealing with the Corinthian church for the last month or so, and there was a possibility of continuing that through Paul’s second letter, but… given that we are pushing into Lent later this week, maybe it’s time to get back to the gospels. I set the theme of “Love Never Ends” and this is the last week for that series, and it may seem that this is a strange scripture to end on, but hopefully I can tie it up nicely. The theme throughout our scriptures in the series has been about how community matters - people matter - and that we individuals are part of a whole. Even last week with Willie preaching, his focus was on how the scouts (Boy, Girl & Cub) were another venue, like church, for teaching our young ones how to live in a community, and what kind of rules we should follow. It might even be fitting that the last sermon in our series would be something about how love is consistent and unchanging; that God’s love is the same yesterday, t...

  As much as I've enjoyed the winter weather... I can't help but to look ahead to when it's a little warmer outside. I know it's a little before the season, but does anyone enjoy garage sales? I mean, it's a great way to clear out stuff from your house you've accumulated, and if you're lucky, then you can get some cash out of it to do whatever you want with, whether it's to trade it for more stuff or not!   Anyway - about five years ago, at our old house, we tried to have a garage sale. We got all our stuff around, put on a half dozen tables, labeled & priced everything to move. It was part of a whole neighborhood two-day sale; we thought - how can we not get rid of this stuff?? We opened the garage on the first morning, hoping there'd be a line down our street. There was no one. We said, maybe it's just early - the people will come later.  At the end of the first day, we had no customers. What we didn't realize is that as much as w...

  Ah... the good old days... back when everything was more simple, am I right? I’m sure each of you has a story or two about “back in my day...” that you could tell me about. It may even involve being thrown in a snowbank (my uncle’s favorite threat), or walking to school, uphill both ways in waist-high snow, barefoot. We have gained so much in the 60-odd years since this church was built, yet I believe its best days are still in front of us. Technologies have changed, improved, and re-evaluated modern life, but not everything can be the way it was when we began.  In 1959, when this church was started, a few other things were: the middle of the Cold War - that probably wasn’t difficult for anyone... Vice President Nixon met on LIVE TELEVISION with the Russian President and debated on the merits of each of their systems. Could you imagine something like that today? The Pioneer 4 unmanned spacecraft was supposed to do a fly-by of the Moon and photograph it. It failed to take any...

  Happy February everyone! This month is special to me because I’m a big fan of Valentine’s Day. I know, it seems to be a holiday made up by the greeting card companies & chocolate makers to be advantageous to them and their profits. But no - there was a real Saint Valentine, much like Saint Nicholas and Saint Patrick. I understand that the United Methodist Church doesn’t subscribe to the idea of sainthood, but connecting to larger church history may be at very least interesting. The truth is, that historians aren’t sure if St. Valentine was one or more people? The legend goes, he was a real person, who was martyred in 270 A.D., and the story beyond that is inconsistent at best. One account says that St. Valentine was a priest who was beheaded by the Roman emperor Claudius II because he would help Christian couples wed during a time when it was outlawed. A different account says that he was a bishop, but with many of the same details. Regardless, it’s interesting that the t...