Joy and Purpose

Those of you who love the Lord, hate evil! God guards the lives of his faithful ones, delivering them from the power of the wicked. Light is planted like seed for the righteous person; joy too for those whose heart is right. Rejoice in the Lord, righteous ones! Give thanks to his holy name! Psalm 97:10-12 It’s come up in my spiritual walk on a few occasions over the past several months, and I see i…

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Lessons from Exile: Welfare

The Lord of heavenly forces, the God of Israel, proclaims to all the exiles I have carried off from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and settle down; cultivate gardens and eat what they produce. Get married and have children; then help your sons find wives and your daughters find husbands in order that they too may have children. Increase in number there so that you don’t dwindle away. Promote the we…

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Lessons from Exile

Greetings friends! As we continue to learn in this season of quarantine to find new ways to connect with each other, we thought it would be a good idea to dust off the old blog, and try to connect with each other a bit that way. So for my part, I have a series in my mind to run on Tuesdays, and some other voices will chime in on the blog here on Thursdays. Also, don’t forget that we do frequent v…

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The Death of Embarrassment

I have written about it before, but one of my favorite tunes comes from the rock group Coldplay. It’s the end of their incredible album Viva La Vida, and they choose to end their album with these words: No I don't want to battle from beginning to end I don't want a cycle of recycled revenge I don't want to follow Death and all of his friends For a long time, death in our culture has been p…

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Shake it off

There are any number of texts that confuse me deeply. Yes, even as a pastor, even as someone who has studied these texts far too much, I am still confused and disoriented by some texts. Which, right at the onset, I should say I think is good. We are called to wrestle with God, not just understand God. One of the texts I wrestle with is when Jesus is telling his disciples to go out in to the…

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