The future, every next moment, not knowing what lies ahead; that is what the Bible is designed to carry us to and through. The past is only an awakening to the future. The present is only the past waiting to happen and the future blossoming in every next present moment. Therefore the question is not what can I do to make myself secure in it but rather how can I experience life in it? This is why the Bible is a book about belief, trust and faith. Faith is the door that makes every next moment…

Is it to feel good about what we already believe? Is it having a safe place to be with others who believe the same things? Is it a search to make sure that what we believe is right? Is it a path to grow and enter each next moment as a conscious disciple of Jesus? These are legitimate questions. The reason I say that is because if we are studying it just for ourselves we are missing why we have it. Its content should define our starting lines for every next moment.   They are our faith…

I always want the full text of remarks someone makes so that the critique is not  overly subjective.  I'd much rather have people read the original document and make their own conclusions.  So read her direct sermon and then my evaluation after.

All Saints Church, Steenrijk, Curaçao [Diocese of Venezuela]

12 May 2013

The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori

Presiding Bishop and Primate

The Episcopal Church

The beauty of this…

Everybody makes choices. We like the idea of being able to choose and to choose freely. We are by nature pro-choice people.

But what is your initial reaction when the phrase ‘pro-choice’ is used? Does it make you go on the offensive or the defensive? The reaction proves one clear conclusion. The word ‘choice’ has been hi-jacked to argue against moral restraint. To quote Henley’s poem Invictus, “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.” Ultimately it implies there is no…

Awareness is the experience of immediately conceptualizing what you perceive. You hear a sound, observe an event, touch an object, smell a fragrance, taste a food, sense emotions and attitudes and then make a conclusion. If it carries a newness about it there is that ‘aha!’ moment. If it is a repetition of an experience it is catalogued as something to anticipate in order to avoid or accept like a sunburn or a suntan, an enemy’s insult or a friend’s smile, rejection or…

There was a person we knew in New Hampshire that came up with the expression ‘Think Snow’ and started the bumper sticker craze for skiers. The idea was to get people to think about all the things that snow offers; the thrill of skiing, having a skill and developing it to look good, the beauty of nature, the pleasure of fellowship around a nighttime fire and spirited beverages, the possibility of meeting someone for an alluring relationship. To ‘Think Snow’ is to make one season the pinnacle…

The Bible is only as effective as the faith in Jesus we bring to it. Anything less reduces it to just another religious book. The Bible is a spiritual, personal and relational development manual. It takes faith to understand it, to embrace it and to share it. Its authenticity and contents are not measured by the response it gets but by the Lord God who authored it.

Again it is how open we are to the Bible that determines the benefits it offers. Jesus gives us a method to achieve that…

Awareness is the experience of immediately conceptualizing what you perceive. You hear a sound, observe an event, touch an object, smell a fragrance, taste a food, sense emotions and attitudes and then make a conclusion. If it carries a newness about it there is that ‘aha!’ moment. If it is a repetition of an experience it is catalogued as something to anticipate in order to avoid or accept like a sunburn or a suntan, an enemy’s insult or a friend’s smile, rejection or…

Jesus gives us the key to seeing the OT as a treasure revealing Him not only as the Messiah but as the Son of Man who lives a perfect human life and the Son of God who lives God’s perfect spiritual life in the Holy Spirit. The clearest passage is Luke 24:13-35 and especially His summary in vs.27, “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, He explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning Himself.”

First, this makes His statement about why He wanted to be…

The following is an outline, a part of a series, a discussion starter, a way to approach the Bible in a group, to start the ball rolling, so to speak.......

If you have ever been on the top deck of a tall building like the Empire State Building in Manhattan, the Eiffel Tower in Paris or on some observation platform in the mountains there are telescopes through which you can scan the area around. Or you may have a microscope to see the unseeable. The Bible is our telescope and…

When I say “Getting the most” I mean the attitude with which we approach the Bible. That has everything to do with what the Bible offers. In Matt.16 Jesus asks Peter who people think the Son of Man is. Peter says, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets. “But what about you?” He asked. “Who do you say I am?” Simon Peter answers, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

The Culture of Acceptance

I grew up in a…

Flush from a wonderful Easter service and a delightful lunch with friends I was resting at home.

I happened to be watching the National Geographic channel, at least I think it was that channel. The program was covering what is known as the ‘Higgs Boson Particle’ which just the program said may be the foundational particle in the universe, the ‘God particle.’ There is even a 17 mile long collider in France that sends particles crashing into each other to prove the point. Now I’m…

In the 60’s Robert Scott wrote “Where Did You Go? Out. What Did You Do? Nothing.” It was like a bit of his emotional autobiography when he was a child. It answered the parental query about a child’s experiences when he goes out to play and comes home after two or three hours. In that time he rubbed a stick on a picket fence just to hear what it would sound like, laid in the grass and wondered why it grew up and down and not sideways and a number of other inconsequential discoveries that are…

Before I go on let me remind us that we are on a journey through nouns that describe a God-word separated from Him and made into a manmade system of belief. How more basic is the word human (Gk. anthropos, root of anthropology, the study of man in society) which has become humanism, a philosophy intentionally separating mankind from God? Take community, commune, communion; all having to do with persons being and sharing together. The idea is core to God’s plan for humanity to live in…

A Time to Reason and a Time to Pray

Holy Week gives us moments to pause and consider where we are in a drifting world. Where have we gone and what are we doing with the moments we have? It’s a world where leadership in every human activity moves away from God and invents its own system. C.S.Lewis rightly observed, “We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst (from The Abolition of…

Yes, I admit it. I’ve actually done that, made my own religion. I can kind of pinpoint the way it happened. Before I get there I need you to follow some thinking. It won’t be a life story or some gory confession but kind of an overall look at humanity in need. If I use ‘I’ a lot please forgive the verbal indulgence. Your indulgent time through this would be appreciated.

Like any person who wants to know what makes us tick, what makes other people tick, for that matter, what makes the…

John Stott summarized the injustice Jesus bore and bore in our place. Think about this and what we are called to be in this present world. He writes the following:

"It is hard for us to grasp, let alone to feel, how completely the verdict seemed to have gone against Jesus when he died, and how in consequence the apostles' past hopes had been extinguished.

Jesus had been condemned in a Jewish court for blasphemy by duly authorized legal procedures.

He was…

Jack Webb played Sgt.Friday in the old TV show, Dragnet. When he interviewed witnesses he didn’t want theories, or feelings about what happened, he wanted facts, just the facts. Well the facts of history stand out especially in the area of man-made religion. So far we have seen man making a religion out of the nouns reason and love which are both gifts of God in His plan for mankind but separated and used apart from Him. How far does it go? Let’s continue our trek through some other…

Remember the Alamo! was a battlecry to rally Texans. But patriotism has taken a different swing into the moral sphere. You can almost say we have reached into our recent past and found a new rallying cry, ‘Remember Woodstock!’ Follow the following follow-up.

We’ve been talking about making a religion out of nouns. One not so subtle principle in the world is to take a God-word and make it into a religion. This is done by grabbing a word that makes people feel good, separate it from God…

Recently I watched a debate between Dinesh d’Souza and Andrew Bernstein “Is Christianity Good or Bad for Mankind?” It was a spirited interchange before a University of Texas audience. d’Souza is President of Kings College in New York City and made the movie “2016.” Bernstein is a leader in Objectivism, a movement based on the writings of Ayn Rand, author of “Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged” both of which were made into movies.

Objectivism is a philosophy based on the idea that…