“No one has greater love than this: to lay down his life for his friends.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
In his letter to the church in Rome, Paul remarks on how unusual it is for someone to die for someone else. Life is precious. We know that inherently. Because of that, we tend to guard our own life pretty jealously. The idea that we might give up our life for anyone or anything is an awfully tall order. Echoing this same idea, Jesus said that such an act represents the greatest gift of love a person could possibly give. Well, today is the day our nation pauses each year to reflect on love lived out. Let’s reflect on that for just a few moments together.
“Righteousness guards people of integrity, but wickedness undermines the sinner.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
Graduation season is always an interesting time. The primary reason for this is that it gives us the chance to reflect on the parting words given to graduates by a whole variety of speakers. Every one of these invited guests is there to tell his or her audience the things they presumably need to know in order to experience success in life as they move on to their next chapter. Sometimes the advice is good and wise; sometimes less so. Sometimes the advice is fairly generic and bland, while other times it can generate reactions in the broader culture that are a bit…livelier. The graduation speech given by Harrison Butker, the superstar kicker for the Kansas City Chiefs seems to have fallen into this latter category. Let’s explore what he actually had to say, some of the ways the culture has reacted to it, and see what we can do with it.
“Meanwhile, Moses was shepherding the flocks of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian. He led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
On occasion people will compare the times in which we live our lives to those before us. Usually this is done in a spirit of nostalgia, and we don’t come off looking very good. I’m not typically a fan of this. Nostalgia is a deceptively tough master that will leave us longing for a past that never really existed and discontented about the present. That being said, there is one point in particular at which we come off looking worse than our forebears that I would like to give some attention to this morning: We don’t like to wait for things. Humans have never been well-known for patience, but in our instant society, we’re particularly bad and getting worse. This creates problems when we serve a God who literally has all the time in the world. We get a glimpse of this as we move into the next part of Moses’ story. Let’s talk about it today.
This week we continued our journey through the story of Ruth by hearing from yet another character in it. Hear this week from Boaz as he marvels at the incredible risk of faith Ruth took and the gift of life brought about because of it. Thanks for reading and sharing.
Risks of Faith
For two weeks now we have been working our way through the story of Ruth in a teaching series I am simply calling, “A Love Story.” This hasn’t been quite our normal journey, though. Rather than merely telling you about the story as I normally would, we have been looking at the events described in the pages of Scripture through the eyes of the people who experienced them. Naomi took us through the awful events of the first part of the story. Then, last week, we heard from Ruth as she unpacked her incredible first day gleaning to provide food for Naomi and her, and how she stumbled upon the field of a distant relative named Boaz. This morning, we are going to jump forward a few weeks to the end of the barley season to hear some more of the story…
As we near the end of our series, Standing Firm, Peter pours a little bit of apocalyptic fervor over the whole thing. Why is it that we stand firm in our faith even when things get tough? Because the journey we’re on won’t last forever. Let’s explore this together today.
Stand with the End in Mind
I want you to do a little remembering with me this morning. Think about the last time you watched a movie or television show that was set in a post-apocalyptic environment. Now, you know what a post-apocalyptic setting is, right? Most directly it is a story setting that takes place on the other side of some kind of an apocalyptic event. Whether it’s a nuclear war or an alien invasion or a series of natural disasters or a horde of self-aware nanites eliminating all electricity around the world or a virus pandemic that turns people into zombies, something happens that causes massive numbers of people to die, and the survivors are left to figure out how to do life in a whole new world with a whole lot less people and no modern conveniences. In most of these shows people do reorganize into some sort of a society, but have you noticed that this society is almost unfailingly way more violent and brutal than it was before the apocalypse? It’s like the apocalyptic event gives people the freedom to give in to their darkest desires and tendencies. It’s like we’re in the wild, wild west again. These are the kinds of things I think about while watching TV. I’m a ton of fun to watch with.
The Nexus 