Giving to Jesus

We’ve all heard the phrase, and perhaps you even used it and that is: "Put your money where your mouth is.”  According to the Cambridge Idiom Dictionary, this means, “To show by  your actions and not just your words that you support or believe in something.” Jesus said something similar but radically different in the Gospel of Matthew.  We read Jesus’ words in…

Characteristics of Character.

If you’ve spent any time on Grand Manan, you have probably heard of the Dark Harbour Hermits. Their names were Lewis “Lucy” Greene and William “Darby” Greene. They were brothers who lived between 1861 and 1940, spending most of their adult living in camps they had built from debris collected from the shores on the…

Origins: Jacob

It was a beautiful August day in 1692. She was just there for the hanging, but then everything went sideways. She was part of the group that had gathered to see five convicted witches being hung when someone in the crowd accused her of causing a pinprick in their foot, and she was arrested for…

I Am Resolved (New Years 2023)

Well, it’s the last day of 2023; who would have thought it? And I would suspect that there will be a pile of New Year’s resolutions made in the next 24 hours. And if the truth be known, there will probably be a pile of New Year’s resolutions broken in the next 48 hours. We…

Origins: Shaking the Family Tree

His name was John Allen, and he was born on January 3, 1746 in Edinburg Castle. His parents were Major William and Isabelle Allen, and they had sought refuge in the Castle during the Jacobite rising of 1745. In 1749, John’s father accepted a position in Nova Scotia and moved his family to Halifax. When…

The Absurdity of Christmas

Imagine that you are standing out in your driveway, marvelling at the fact that it’s the third Sunday of Advent, and tomorrow they are projecting a high of 11.   In your imagination, you do not live in Alberta.   Suddenly, a UFO lands in the middle of your front lawn, and the door slowly…

Taking Christ out of Christmas

Have you noticed that every year, people seem more intent on secularizing Christmas? They wish you a “Happy Holiday” or “Seasons Greetings” and then have presentations at school that make no mention of the Manger or the Wise Men, let alone the Christ Child. Now, I may be a little overly sensitive, but somehow, I…

Therefore, 2 Peter 1:12

Therefore 2 Peter 1 When I was at university, one of the courses I had to take was homiletics, which is simply defined as the art of preaching or writing sermons. The goal of the class was to teach us to do both things: how to write sermons and how to preach sermons. My professor…

Therefore, Hebrews 12

Part of my misspent youth was spent hanging around Racehorses and those who bet on horse races. I’ve mentioned before that my sister and I both had horses when we were teenagers, and when we lived in Hammond River, just outside of Saint John, New Brunswick, we boarded them at a farm that provided stabling…