Isaiah 1:10-20 Frederick Buechner, a novelist and minister, said that a prophet is the sort of person who gets invited to dinner only once. That was his colorful way of saying that prophets tend to be unpopular because they tell people things they’d rather not hear. A prophet is the opposite of a demagogue. A demagogue tells people whatever they want to hear, in order to get what the demagogue w…
They say that if you want to be successful with a project, you ought to begin with the end in mind. This has proven to me to be good advice, as I am one who typically picks up a hammer and nail and dives into a project without so much as thinking about the directions, let alone read them. Typically this leads to hurt fingers, curse words, and tremendous frustration, as I will have to undo 30…
The real reason people don’t volunteer is because we don’t have enough people who ask them. I love this quote because it is so true. Volunteering has historically played an important role in the United States. Volunteers are wonderful people who are necessary for the health of our society. The Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday is celebrated as a national Day of Service. We are also a country whe…
As you know there are many denominations and “flavors” of Christianity. In 2012 Christianity Today estimated there are “approximately 38,000” Christian denominations. Wow, that’s a lot of different human viewpoints of what it means to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ. So I wonder with all of these various ways of being church, and with church attendance in general declining over the last several d…
Imagine yourself a missionary. Though you probably value and support missionaries, it is too far out of your comfort zone. It looks too much like difficult living conditions and too many sacrifices. When I was young I thought I wanted to be a missionary going to some distant land. Little did I know that God was already using me as a missionary. Clifford Taylor was our old bachelor neighbor. …
