Intersections

  Good morning again - last week, we talked through the first chapter of the Book of John, how the light of Christmas was lit and that lighthouses can help guide those in danger away from it.  This week, we’ve looped back around a couple of weeks because we are back talking about John the Baptist, continuing the story from… three weeks ago, I think? Hopefully, you’re not sick of John yet, although this is the last week we will be in the gospels for a while. Anyway - as you can see outside, the seasons are changing. Winter is here! Oh… no … not those seasons. Our season of Christmas has finished, and now we are in the season after Epiphany. We are back to those so-called “ordinary weeks” or numbered weeks because since we’ve celebrated Christmas and Epiphany, these are kind of the meat and bones weeks for Jesus’ actual ministry. Today we’ll be starting with his baptism, and over the next couple of months, we’ll be discovering being the body of Christ: how we can show that LOVE...

  Here we are, one week closer to Christmas. Hope you are starting your preparations well. Who is done with their shopping? For the first time in a long time, I think we are done, if not very close to being totally done with our preparations in our own home. Our tree is up, and decorated, even if our cat likes to nibble at the branches at the bottom. The outside lights are up, and we even have a spotlight for our garage that has various snowflake shapes in it. We were gifted it from my mother-in-law last year, and it ended up in the garage, but somehow got moved (let’s be honest, I was probably the culprit of that) and so it fell BEHIND some of the shelving, and behind a piece of plywood on the floor. Thankfully, Tadjena is amazingly thorough and relentless, so she was able to find it after looking for what feels like two weeks. So - yeah - we’ve gone through our to do list, and making sure it’s getting done, and with that comes a sense of peace. Are you one who really likes being ...

  What is truth? That is Pilate’s next sentence after the reading today. Pilate wasn’t the first to ask it, and we’ve been asking ever since. The essence of truth is such a vague question that it wields a complete spectrum of answers. Is the Bible true? Is Jesus true? How do we know? I know these are pretty fundamental questions of faith, but sometimes we need to start at the beginning to build that foundation on which the rest of our beliefs rely. This reading is only four verses, but there’s so much here to unpack, so let’s go.  Today is the Reign of Christ Sunday. It is the last Sunday of the year before Advent. For a bit of history, Pope Pius XI created the feast day in 1925. He did it to curb the smoking kindling that was starting to burn through Europe. This year is the same time in the United States that Calvin Coolidge is president; the middle of the so-called “Roaring Twenties” was happening, the split right between the Prohibition years, when alcohol was illegal. Mar...

  FROM THE PASTORS DESK Happy September everyone! Hopefully each of you are doing well, despite all I have heard about the busy-ness of this month. This will be my first popcorn festival season! I am excited to get in there, raise some money for our missions, and get the story of Bethany Church out into the community.  The theme this month will be AUTHENTICITY. But what does it m ean to be authentic? As Brené Brown writes in her book The Gifts of Imperfection, “Authenticity is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we should be, and embracing who we are.” This really resonates with me because it is too easy in our world today to hide. As a friend recently told me, the opposite of authenticity is hypocrisy. Our world knows too much about that today. Well - if this world is so hypocritical, how can we as a church fight against that? I have a few ideas. First, vulnerability is the key. God created you to be who you are. No one on this planet has experienced every...

Merry Christmas! Jesus Christ is born! I hope the joy, hope, love, and peace of the season visited your home this week. Maybe you have the next week off until the New Year to relax. Hopefully, you haven’t taken down your tree yet. This is only the third day of Christmas - we have nine more to go! In my family, we keep the tree up until Epiphany - January 6th, just to enjoy the fullness of the season. After the celebrations this past week,  today might be kind of a letdown. You may also be surprised that it’s not one of the pastors giving the message today, but they have had quite a year, so hopefully, they can relax a little bit, too, knowing they didn't need to prepare for Sunday after a Thursday service.  The gospel message this week is also kind of a letdown - there are no shepherds, no wise men, no singing angels or stars to follow to a manger. But don't think that I have a light message for you! If advent has been about waiting, the preparations have paid off because the ...

Welcome to the Tuesday devotional. My name is Daniel Douglas, and I am a clergy candidate for the position of local pastor. I asked Pastor Karen for some experience in the pulpit. We decided it was best to start small with this devotional.  How are you feeling these days? Or, as John Wesley liked to ask, how goes it with your soul? Is it charged up and ready to go? Or I’m suspecting that, like many of us, you could use some encouragement.  That brings us to today’s devotional verse - 1 Thessalonians 5:11, where Paul writes, “This is why you must encourage and help each other, just as you are already doing.” Some other translations say, “Bring hope” or “Build each other up.”  Having been through the most recent months, the never-ending election, the pandemic, good and bad times can happen - and change - very quickly. Even the next phone call or text message could be the difference between a great day and a lousy one. This week, I got the dreaded phone call stating that the...