Those little extras…
I’ve been reading the account of the feeding of the 5000 in Matthew 14:13-21. You’re probably already sighing and thinking this is a miracle you have heard about often enough. It’s the only miracle to pop up in each of the gospels, a reminder that there is something about food that is unforgettable. Feeding 5000 – yes, that was a truly memorable day. Except it wasn’t feeding 5000, was it? Tucked away in verse 21 is the little detail that they fed “about 5000 men, beside women and children.” Each time we speak of the feeding of the 5000 we quietly...
Read MoreGuarding God’s Reputation…
Have you ever sat through a sermon or a talk and heard the speaker express a view about God that made you think, “Well that makes God sound petty and small”? Usually the speaker means well, but has not thought deeply. An advantage of being 65 and of having preached my first sermon when I was 15 is that I now have half a century of sermon “thou shalt not’s” to sift through. In their own way they each say something about what the speaker thought about God, or perhaps didn’t think, because sometimes we make God sound so very mean and so very trivial. One that...
Read MoreFrom Theodicy to Theophany
Ok, I admit the title of this post is not exactly catchy! But you are still reading, so let me quickly say why I think it is important. You probably know people who have suffered greatly – perhaps you are one of them. All suffering is hard to watch, but it is especially devastating when it seems to be senseless and unfair. There are a thousand different scenarios I could paint, but in your heart you already know your “why, why, why” questions. How do we come to terms with life’s most devastating heartaches without shaking the fist at God and questioning how we could...
Read MoreA time to speak: 10 Reasons to speak up…
The last post looked at 10 reasons why silence is golden. But there is a flipside. The writer of Ecclesiastes 3 is right. There is a time for everything under heaven… and that includes both a time for silence and a time to speak up. Here are 10 signs that it is the time to speak… 1) While we should be still and know that God is God, when that truth dawns on us, we should not be slow to sing out His praise. Just as there is a place for quiet contemplative worship, there is also a place for joyous, rowdy, exuberant praise. The Psalmist writes, ‘Sing out my soul the glory of...
Read MoreWhy Theodosius vs Ambrose really matters…
Heard about the dispute between the Roman Emperor Theodosius and Bishop Ambrose of Milan back in 390? I thought not… Before you yawn a little too obviously and quote Henry Ford’s ‘history is bunk’, let me assure you that this case finds its way onto the pages of this blog because in my judgment it is one of those critical turning points in history – a little ah ha moment after which we all understand some aspects of faith more clearly. For those who are at the ‘Theodosius who?’ stage, he was the Roman Emperor famously (or not so famously if you have never heard of him) credited for...
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