The question that Paul seems to be trying to answer for most of this passage of scripture is, how Jewish do you have to be to be a Christian?  It was the question of whether or not Christians had to follow all of the Jewish regulations and guidelines was an ongoing debate throughout the New…

The Unity of Love If nothing else, you need to love the sixties and seventies for their awesome sense of style. The band was “The Brotherhood of Man,” the year was 1970, and the message of the song was spelled out in its title “United we stand, divided we fall.” Interesting tidbit about the song,…

He was there on a whim. He didn’t have to be there, it wasn’t part of his job, but he had heard that something was going to happen, got caught up in the moment, and there he was. He was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. As the mob broke through the…

It was a party, everyone was there, and it was a celebration. The video clip you just watched was from Jesus Christ Super Star 2001, and I love the Palm Sunday scene. It captures the excitement and joy of that day, from the excitement of the crowd to the animosity of the religious leaders and…

Peter just shook his head.  That was all they wanted was money.  Couldn’t they see the bigger picture?  That there was more at stake than just money.  They had just arrived back in town, and before they could even get settled, the church was there with its hand out.  Well, it wasn’t actually the church,…

We don’t know a lot about them as a church.  We don’t know how they worshipped; we don’t know what songs they sang, which translation of the bible they preferred, and we don’t know what the preacher was like. What we do know is how they gave. This is week one of our Stewardship Emphasis…

The Language of Love Last summer Angela and I celebrated our fortieth anniversary with a trip to Europe.  During our three weeks there, we had the opportunity to visit twelve countries, and I marvelled at the fact that so many people were either bilingual or multilingual. If you’re wondering, multilingual means that you speak many…

My oldest niece has a philosophy. Actually, she has many philosophies, but I’m only going to share one with you today. Her philosophy on parenting is this: The government should put birth control in the water, and people would have to pass a parenting test in order to get bottled water. Makes sense to me.…

RR Our Parents If you’re as old as me, then you remember how TV families we grew up with were often more extended ones than there are now, you know, more families with several generations living under one roof. The Waltons had their Grand Parents living with them. The Beverly Hillbillies had Granny, the Munsters…

It was Tolstoy who said, “All happy families resemble one another; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Have you ever stopped to think that both the Old Testament and the New Testament start with the story of a family? And the bible itself is a collection of family stories. There are happy…