A couple of years ago, my wife and I celebrated our anniversary by spending a day at Longwood Gardens. We got there just after they opened, wandered the grounds and buildings, had lunch in the cafeteria and dinner in the very nice restaurant there, and enjoyed a concert in the evening. The concert was a…
So by the time you read this, the four-year anniversary of my being called as pastor of St. Luke’s will have passed (I began working here June 1, 2012). Sometimes it seems like I just got here, and sometimes it feels like I have been here a very long time. There have been a lot…
“By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things.” (Galatians 5:22-23) This year The Day of Pentecost (the day when the Holy Spirit first descended on the followers of Jesus, as recorded in Acts 2) falls on May 15th…
So you might recall that last week the gospel reading from Mark left out the stories of Jesus feeding the 5000 and Jesus walking on the water Well, here they are this week, only from the gospel of John. You might well ask, why didn’t we just read them from Mark, then?
April this year is somewhat odd in that it doesn’t contain Easter Sunday. Easter most often occurs in April, but this year it came early, at the end of March, and so here April sits, Easter-less. Well, not exactly Easter-less, because every Sunday in April is a Sunday of Easter. It’s called the Easter Season,…
March is a pretty great month, just normally. You have March Madness, the NCAA’s annual tournament to determine the college basketball national champion. 66 teams enter, and they play their way down to The Final Four, and then a champion is crowned. It is very exciting, and I especially like to root for the underdog…
3 times in the reading from Matthew tonight, Jesus talks about the Father who sees in secret And I got to thinking – the Father who sees in secret – is that good news, or bad news I mean, we all have secrets We all have things we don’t like to talk about We all…
As I begin to write this article, I just typed 2016 for the first time. Wow, 2016. Remember Y2K? The years have certainly seemed to fly by, haven’t they? New years are intriguing things, aren’t they? On the one hand, it’s just another year, January 1st is just the next day after December 31st, and…
I had the radio on as I was driving around yesterday, and John Lennon’s song “Happy Christmas” came on The song begins, so this is Christmas, and, being a church professional, my first thought was, no, this is Advent (alright, it really wasn’t – my first thought was, that’s a good song – but work…
There are certainly some significant differences between the two people who come to Jesus for healing in this story The man is an important person in the community, while the woman is an outcast from the community The man has a name, Jairus, while the woman goes nameless The man comes to Jesus directly, speaks…