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Showing posts from May, 2018

wake you up with a dawn full of golden rays

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i want you around A sermon on the First Chapter of Ruth Like so many good stories this one begins on the run . After a famine hits, Naomi and her husband pack-up, get the boys in their carseats and say goodbye to their old life in search of a better one… …It’s a familiar story, isn’t it? I grew up in a small town, west and north of here. By small I mean, 8 blocks long by three blocks wide. My friends and I, we spent high school talking about how once we left, we’d never go back. How we were going to leave and find something better . …Only, it’s not that simple, is it? The past doesn’t let go of us so easily. And it’s no different for Naomi, either. She can only run for so long before everything she’s been running from, catches up with her…. And in spades, too. First , Death comes for her husband.   And then, if that weren’t enough, right when her boys get to be the age when Naomi can start expecting grandchildren, Death finds her again …  

all day long we talk about mercy

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lead me to water lord, i sure am thirsty A sermon from the Christ Hymn in Philippians 2 This is one of those passage that sounds nice… “Be of the same mind. Have the same love. Be in full accord.” It does. It sounds nice. It sounds nice, UNTIL you realize you DON’T actually want to! Be honest. Who here really wants to, in humility, regard others as better than ourselves? Are any of us really so eager, NOT to pursue our own interests, but somebody else’s ? Well??? Because that’s the rub with passage like this, isn’t it?   Nice as it MAY sound, deep down, we don’t actually want to.   When the rubber hits the road, there’s something in us , that insists on insisting on our own way, isn’t there? We all have this part of ourselves that is willing do pursue our own interests before all else. As bad as that realization may be, what’s worse is when, after hearing a passage like this, the pastor just glibly climbs in the pulpit and proceeds to ju

for peace and trust can win the day

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despite of all your losing A sermon from the introduction of Paul's Epistle to the Philippians (1:1-18a ): Well, I finally saw the new marvel movie… You know, the BIG one, with all the superheroes.   But I’ve got to confess; I got a little bored .   Not because it wasn’t good. It was.   It’s just that, in those movies where the “fate of the whole world hangs in the balance,” I just tend to lose a little interest… I’m like Emmet, in the Lego-Movie. When they’re trying to explain the significance of the magic red-block to him. It cuts to his head, what he’s hearing; and it’s just explosions. That’s how it is for me too in these movies where some stones are the key to whether humanity makes it or not… Because the truth is, my world isn’t that big. I can’t relate to those stakes!   My world is comprised of small things. You know, petty grievances. Short -comings. The occasional victory; that in perspective isn’t really that big… It’s that