Intersections

  Throughout our Lenten season, we are reflecting, and hopefully, some of that time is sorting out what God wants from us. Maybe how to incorporate spiritual activities back into our lives if we fell out of practice. Perhaps it’s how to better use the spiritual gifts that God has given us. We want our lives to matter. This is an entirely human trait and can be traced back through time.  Not only does Jesus call us to live out our faith, but he wants to see spiritual fruit from those actions. Just like natural fruit, it's something that happens when we blossom through the faith process. You need to be mature to create fruit. A newly planted tree isn't strong enough to go through the process. It needs to develop root structures, and branch out. There many not be fruit on every single branch either. There's all sorts of fruit, but people have named whole trees after the one fruit that it produces, like apple trees, lemon trees, etc. Thankfully enough, God did not create us to ...

     You may be able to see what the sermon might look like this morning. But, maybe,  in the excitement of the basketball tournament and our event later this morning, maybe we should have served chicken wings for everyone here to make sure to look underneath them. You may also be thinking let's hope I don't use foul language.  But seriously folks - I shouldn’t make light of Jesus’ words this morning. But, in thinking about how hens and foxes relate, there are many idioms and phrases that relate to this. Given that history, they seem to be pretty sworn enemies. Some of the ones I came across were: “madder than a wet hen” - that must be a Southern phrase, because it doesn’t seem to make much sense to me. Chickens really don’t mind the rain, it’s not like they’re scared of it either. Another phrase that I’ve actually heard was “as scarce as a hen’s tooth”… I can see that one. Chickens don’t have teeth, so it’s gotta be something super rare. The last one, which get...

Last week, we ended our last series with the glorification of the Transfiguration of Jesus. But then, the disciples and the Christ came down from the mountain and found the struggling in the valley and where the people are. There were bright lights, and costume changes, and although it didn't say - I bet there may have been a show-stopping song and dance that got lost in the translation over the millennia.  But this week, not only have we gone through the valley and the people who are in need of Jesus, but he followed the Spirit - which is always with him - to the wilderness. Now, you think of wilderness, what comes to mind? I imagine it's like the middle of South Dakota near the Badlands, where there is just a void of humanity. My sister used to live in Saltillo, Mexico, about five hours by car from the Texas border. We flew in through Monterrey, and then it was another two hour drive through the Mexican desert. It was interesting scenery - mainly because it didn't loo...

       You can practice sports - I know baseball is supposed to start their spring training sometime about now. Looking it up, they may be delaying it due to contract negotiations, but… another sign that spring is on its way. You can practice being positive, these days that can seem harder than it has in a long time. You can practice medicine, practice law, even some of you maybe think that I’m practicing… most weeks I feel like I’m doing ok, though. But it seems weird to have to practice piety, right? I mean - the grace we were given is enough… we don’t need to strive to look better that we are?  The practice that we are talking about with piety though, is to get us closer to holiness. That’s the thing about being pious, it’s getting closer to God, and more in the way God wants us to act. The word pious, to me, has a connotation problem. It has this air of religious superiority to it, doesn’t it? I mean - who doesn’t want to be PIOUS? Who doesn’t want to not ...

  I hope the brightness of the cover has perked up your spirits a bit. We are rolling into March here, and I can only expect spring to happen sooner than later every day. Now, since we are in the third month of the year, it makes me think of two things: Lent & basketball. That doesn’t sound like those have much in common, but I have been a fan of the NCAA tournament for as long as I can remember. One of my two favorite memories was watching the first weekend of basketball because it felt like it was EVERYWHERE, and ANYTHING COULD HAPPEN. My sister went to Valparaiso University, over on the other side of the state, and her first year in 1998, the Crusaders won their conference and were able to play in the tournament. They were a clear underdog, and no one expected them to win. As the game went on, Valpo kept pace with the other team, the University of Mississippi. But in the final seconds, as the clock was winding down, the team’s star Bryce Drew caught the ball and put up a sho...

      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...