Let’s Talk About Peace

How do you make peace?  In secular thinking it just takes agreeing that we should believe in curbing our hostility and choosing not to be in conflict.  That’s the solution.  But is that real peace?  Can we personally make peace?  Is the absence of conflict really peace?  How does an individual resolve what causes conflict?  You’ve heard the question, “Why can’t we just get along?” …

“Glory to God in highest heaven, and peace on earth to those with whom God is pleased (Lk.2:14).”

The angels were singing this after one of them pronounced the birth of Jesus to shepherds who were tending their sheep in the night.  There are several things that need to be brought up here.  First, angelic presence.  In our self-centered scientific age, the very thought of…

Three Gifts

 What I can surmise from Scripture based on word meaning, the magi were men of wisdom, studied in religion and representing the culmination of human wisdom in their respective cultures.  Their trip had purpose, to see a king from a culture that believed in one God.  In it a prophesied deliverer, the wisest of the wise would be born.  While they were wise men of the…

The Longest Trail Revisited

 “Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning (Lk.12:35)”

 In the last session we talked about being spiritual trailblazers.   We can take a plane and in one day be in Asia.  We can go by car and reach the West Coast in a comfortable five days.  We can ‘Duo’…

Trailblazers  

In cross country skiing you have a forerunner, that is, someone who blazes a trail through new snow to make way for the next skiers.  If you are a group of people you each take a turn blazing the trail since new snow takes more effort and energy.  Each one may take a few hundred yards then the next does the same and so on.  Each skier helps the one behind.…

Why We Prepare the Way for Jesus

 Now here’s the rub---when our religious, political, economic and educational structures, the foundational support system for our whole human enterprise, are separated from God, they take His place and eventually self-destruct.  Our world, our culture, is in meltdown because of secularization, its political correctness and the de-spiritualizing of…

Advent, What Were We Made For?

 “But I say unto you, that in this place is one greater than the temple (Mt.12:6).” 

 Which is really greater?  Is it the building, the people, the leadership, the institutional forms and rules under which they operate, or the One for whom all that exists? Another way…