Have you ever met a celebrity that made you rather star-struck? I once found myself having dinner in the same restaurant as my favorite singer of all time- Matthew Thiessen of the band Relient K. I was shy and decided the best course of action was simply to ask the waiter if I could pick up his tab as a thank you for how much his music had impacted my life. The friend I was with, however, was…
This past Saturday I was one of our church’s volunteers at Produce to People (P2P), the Greater Pittsburgh Area Food Bank’s food distribution program. Our volunteers went to an elementary school on Pittsburgh’s near North Side by Allegheny General where we sorted large containers of loose vegetables and then handed out 30 pounds or so of fresh vegetables and other food to over 450 needy indiv…
Last week was a little grammar heavy, so allow me to tell you a little story about the word “Amen.” When I first became a Christian, I didn’t have much experience in church. My family wasn’t religious and I’d been around a little bit just because I liked to sing but my overall experience was pretty slim. I started to pray every night before bed and I knew that you were supposed to close your prayer wi…
Living our faith is not always easy. As humans we have our flaws. These flaws distract or lead us away from a faithful life. So how do we consistently and faithfully live a Christ-focused life, especially regarding the words we choose to use? I find that at times I let emotion get the better of me. Driving is a common trigger for me that fires up a negative emotion. The words I conjure up in my…
There are two groups of people who get antsy about the use of the name “Yahweh.” One group are Jewish believers who believe that name is too holy to be spoken and will henceforth replace it with “Adonai” which is a lower name of lord (think the tenth day of Christmas.) The second group are students who aren’t super confident about the imperfect verb tense because that’s pretty much what we’re talking about…
