Morning Musing: Psalm 127:3

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“Sons are indeed a heritage from the Lord, offspring, a reward.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

As the old saying goes, a broken clock is still right twice a day. For the better part of a generation, Disney has been one of, if not the, primary entertainment-producing companies in the world. But in recent years, they seem to have forgotten that they are in the business of making money, not pushing a particular cultural agenda. As a result, they haven’t been making money quite like they once were. But for all of their cultural tone-deafness, there are some signs they are starting to turn a corner and remember that one of their primary audiences is families. One of the latest such signs came in the recently completed and final season of What If?…

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Digging in Deeper: Romans 1:1-4

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“Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God  —  which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures —  concerning his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who was a descendant of David according to the flesh and was appointed to be the powerful Son of God according to the Spirit of holiness by the resurrection of the dead.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

When I was getting my degree in chemistry, I was the weird kid in the department. This wasn’t because of personality (I was generally right at home in that sense as all chemistry majors are a little weird). It was because I was the one kid in the department who hated lab work. I vastly preferred classwork. I wanted all the theory and didn’t care two cents about the practice. My brain didn’t process information that way. Oh, I faked my way through it just fine, but I never really understood what I was doing. That included when I had to write lab report abstracts. Those were the introduction paragraphs for experiment write-ups. You had to pack a ton of information into a tiny word count. If you’ve been following this blog for long, you know that brevity isn’t really one of my strengths. It wasn’t really the apostle Paul’s strength either, but he could still pack a ton of information into a few words. His introductory statement for his letter to the believers in Rome is a great example. Let’s explore part of it as we begin a whole new journey in this new year.

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Looking Out

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In the world of church life, this is the one Sunday that often gets forgotten about. It’s like a throwaway Sunday. I know of some churches that don’t even meet this week. Sitting between Christmas and New Year’s, most people are ready to just lie low, resting from the year past and preparing for the one that lies ahead. Yet rather than wasting such a time like this, it seems like a wiser play to redeem it. So, let’s look back and look forward at the same time; reflecting with gratitude on what has been, while anticipating with joyfulness what still lies ahead. Let’s talk about how we can be the kind of church God has made us to be.

Looking Out

So, I’m going to run out on a limb and be honest with you about something this morning. I went back and forth on this because of how it would be received, but decided that transparency is the best option. Before your minds race too far ahead of me with a list of all the things I could follow that opener with, I’ll just tell you: The idea for this message came to me in a dream. If you had a copy of the message and already read ahead, you were spared a bit of suspense there. I’m honestly not sure what it means that the idea came to me in a dream. I’m not sure how much weight to put on that. I am certain that it doesn’t mean anything significant about me. I normally have sermon subjects and passages planned out months ahead of time. But I had recently shifted some things around, and had been praying through what the message for this morning was going to be. For some reason, God seems to have chosen this way to communicate it. Prayerfully I’m getting it right. Again, I don’t know why. I don’t honestly remember any of the rest of the dream. I just remember the one idea that gave birth to what we’re going to be talking about today. I am pretty sure it is from God’s Spirit, though, because I hadn’t been thinking in this direction at all before, and the message is consistent with the Scriptures as we are going to see. All of that is to say this: I think what we are going to talk about this morning together is something God wanted to set before us as we wrap up this year and get ready for the new one arriving on Wednesday. 

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Advent Reflections: Christmas Eve

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Today is Christmas Eve. Tomorrow is the grand celebration of Jesus’ birth. O happy day! Here’s what I’ll be sharing with my own congregation this evening at our Christmas Eve service. Blessings to you as you prepare to celebrate with your family and friends. As a housekeeping note, this will be the last post until the new year other than this coming Sunday’s sermon on Monday. See you in a week!

Have you ever been a part of a show? No show happens on the spur of the moment. It takes planning. Lots of planning. Often months of planning. Depending on the size of the show, it may take years. But eventually there comes that moment when all the planning is done. Every line has been learned. All the costumes are set. The make-up is applied. The sets and scenery and props are all in place. The band is rehearsed and warm. It’s time for the show to start. 

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The Time Has Come

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Christmas is almost here. Just today and tomorrow, and we have made it through the entire season of Advent. We can shift gears to celebrating the Christmas season. On the fourth Sunday of Advent yesterday, we got back to the basics and talked about the story that started all the excitement. It is a story that is perhaps greatly familiar to you. So familiar, in fact, that you have a tendency to tune it out. Let me challenge you to not tune it out this week. Engage with the story and reflect with me on just what exactly you need to do about it.

The Time Has Come

The best and most successful innovations happen at just the right time. Consider the iPhone. It came along at a time when cell phone service was really starting to hit its stride. Much earlier, and the service required to unlock its full potential wouldn’t have been widely enough available to see it succeed so spectacularly as it has. Much later, and the market would have become so saturated by competitors that it never would have gotten very far off the ground. As it stands, I suspect nearly everyone in the room has one in their pocket or purse. For the rest who have an Android device, I just want you to know that this is a judgment-free environment, and we love all people, even if they make choices clear thinking people find questionable. I kid…mostly. Indeed, though, when things come at just the right time, everything seems to go like clockwork. It all falls together, and the results can be nothing less than world-changing. 

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