Always Reforming

    This will be my second Father's Day as a father.  I have learned much about life over the past 15 months, but  I'm still quite wet behind the ears, if you will.  I thought it would be interesting to take a second to think about what it means to be a father.     Firstly, I would like to say thank you to my father and to all the father figures that God has placed in my life.  All these men have shown me a thing or two about life, even if they didn't realize it, by their triumphs and defeats in life.  I've found that one of the best ways to grow up/learn stuff is just to watch people. Analytic observation of real people in the real world is one of the greatest tools for growth.     Secondly, what does it mean to be a father?  That is a deep question.  Being a father, I suppose, combines bread-winning, spiritual guidance, mentoring, and many other things.  Ultimately, however, fatherhood is a metaphor.  Unde...

    As I was reading my Bible today, I read 2 Timothy 2:8, which says, " Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel."  Seeing as we are coming upon Easter, I thought I'd take a moment to comment on the Resurrection of Jesus.       Paul tells Timothy to remember the Resurrection.  The Resurrection of Christ is an essential doctrine to the Christian faith, as Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 15.  In our day, however, many have denied the Resurrection.  They try to make Christianity and the Bible more acceptable by saying that miraculous events like a body coming back to the dead couldn't actually happen.  They say that it's a metaphor.  They say Jesus was just a teacher who showed us the path of sacrifice.  They water down the message of the Gospel.     The Resurrection was not merely a side note to the Apostles.  It was the foundation of their ministries.  R...

    An issue that is hot in the Christian world is "To judge or not to judge?"  Jesus specifically said, "Judge not, lest ye be judged," right?  He did in fact say that (or something approximate), but what did He mean?  Did He mean that you are not to make a moral judgment in your own mind regarding another person's behavior?  Did He mean that we ought to accept any and all behavior?  Was He telling us that we should never, ever, absolutely never ever tell anyone else that what they are doing is forbidden by Scripture?  Should the elders of the Church wink at sin?      I don't think so.  If we balance Scripture against Scripture, other passages make it clear that Jesus meant none of those things.  Passages such as Matthew 18 and Galatians 6 suggest that Christian "iron sharpening iron" is not only permissible, but commendable.  The key is that we must do so humbly, with correct motives, and ...

Exodus 13:17-22 When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near. For God said, “Lest the people change their minds when they see war and return to Egypt.” 1 But God led the people around by the way of the wilderness toward the Red Sea. And the people of Israel went up out of the land of Egypt equipped for battle. Moses took the bones of Joseph with him, for Joseph had made the sons of Israel solemnly swear, saying, “God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones with you from here.” And they moved on from Succoth and encamped at Etham, on the edge of the wilderness. And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, that they might travel by day and by night. The pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night did not depart from before the people     Our passage today is a brief account of the...

My father was never big on holidays.  I wasn't raised in a family that loved to commemorate things, at least not over the top.  One day that we always remembered--but never celebrated--was the anniversary of Roe V Wade.  To my father, this day embodied all that was wrong with our nation.  We disregard life.  We prefer convenience to responsibility.  We only think about the present.  The list goes on.  My parents felt strongly about children and abortion, and they conistently put forth their time and money to help pregnancy services.  I write all of this simply to introduce a set of song lyrics that I jotted down a week or so ago.  With callused fingers, She holds the test, The only solution, Is someone's death, As she walks in the door, She hears a voice, "What about me? Don't I have a choice?" "Mama, don't do it! Don't believe the lies! I can feel the pain! Can you hear my cries? Mama, don't do it! It'll b...

   In Genesis we have the familiar story of the testing of Abraham.  Between Genesis 12 and 21, God had visited Him many times, making a covenant with him and blessing him with a son in his old age.  God had promised Him that Isaac would be the heir of the Promise.  All of God’s promises to Abraham concerning the land of Canaan and a multitude of descendants were to be fulfilled in Isaac, but in Chapter 22, God visits him again and gives him a command that he could hardly believe.  God commands him to take his precious son, Isaac, and to sacrifice him.       How does Abraham respond?  Does he try to reason with God, insisting that sacrificing Isaac would be a step in the wrong direction?  Does he plead for the life of His son?  No, he simply obeys.  He obeys quickly.  He awakes early in the morning and sets out for the mountains.      He gathers the wood and fire, and he retrieves t...

A thought:      Every time we really look into the lives of our heroes, one truth emerges--they are imperfect.  Whether they're athletes, musicians, religious leaders, or even Bible characters, our leaders all share the fact that they are human, and, accordingly, they were flawed (except Jesus, of course).  They all have character weaknesses that went along with their character strengths.  They have sins with which they struggle.      This is actually a good thing.  Mentors and heroes that are perfect are much less useful to us.  We need to have real people to look up to, not illusions of grandeur.      There is a common issue, however, that I've noticed results when we discover our heroes' flaws and sins.  We tend to excuse our own sins.  We see that even great men/women were sinners, and so we allow ourselves to copy their sins.  "It can be that bad,"...