It was a cold and dreary Christmas Eve in London. A crotchety old “humbug” of a man came home from his counting house having worked late into the evening. He made his way through the dark and dank rooms of his house to his upstairs bedroom, and settled down to eat his Christmas dinner: a…
Today we are beginning a series of stewardship sermons, entitled “Enough: Discovering Joy through Simplicity and Generosity.”1 It is based on a stewardship curriculum written by Adam Hamilton, way back in 2009, as a response to the economic meltdown in 2008 that brought so much financial pain to so many people – including an unprecedented…
What is Love? That is a question that is not easily answered. Ask a teenager what love is and you will get one response. But then ask an elderly person caring for their invalid spouse, and you will get quite a different answer. Ask the struggling single mother who visits our church what love is,…
It seems that every religious holiday has become overshadowed by the secular trappings of the day, especially in the minds of children, and Easter is no exception. In the newspaper cartoon, “The Family Circus,” the children find their Easter baskets on Easter morning and begin enjoying them. The little boy asked, “Who colored all these…
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John Guard the bed that I lie on: Four corners to my bed Four angels round my head, One to watch and one to pray And two to bear my soul away.1 So went a nursery rhyme composed sometime in the mid 1600s. Throughout the centuries of the Christian faith, there…
Last Saturday, at our Vision Retreat, our Leaders were all in agreement that we as a congregation should focus more on becoming an “Inviting” Congregation. To do this, we all will need training in how we as individuals are better equipped to become Inviting people, as we reach out to our friends and neighbors to…
During the Great Depression, there was a sheep farmer named Yates who struggled to make ends meet. Like millions of people in those years, he had to rely on government handouts to provide for his family. One day, a geological crew came by and asked permission to drill for oil on his land. Mr. Yates…
In his book about Discipleship, Jim Harnish tells a story about a Methodist church that was located right across the street from a rather disreputable bar. The members of the church were teetotalers and they prayed for years that the Lord would do something about the bar across the street. One night the bar was…
This morning, we have finally come to the destination at the end of our “Path of Salvation” (these basics of the Christian faith) that we have been looking at over the past couple of months. By now, we have seen that there are a number of milestones each of us must pass along our journey…
Matthew 18:12-14 (NRSV) What do you think? If a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he rejoices over it more than…