Genesis 18:1-15 Romans 5:1-8 Lately I have become aware of one of my personal flaws. I like efficiency, probably a little too much. I like things that are scheduled. Starting things on time. And ending them on time. Although I have to admit that session meetings often run too long. But I try to be on time. As if my life depended on it. As if the schedule were the most critical thing. But this story of Abraham has got me thinking about this, questioning this. Because what is time, really? To our God, what is time? Last week I heard someone say: “We serve a wildly inefficient God.” This is true. Efficiency was not God’s concern in the story of Abraham and Sarah, was it? As we heard last week, God waited until Abraham was 75 years old before calling him out to a new life. And in the […]
Continue readingMonth: June 2026
The Anatomy of Hope, Week 1 Foundation
Genesis 12:1-9 Hebrews 6:13-20 Forty years ago, when I was young and starting a family, people were worried about overpopulation. That was a big thing. China had its one child policy, which they were enforcing pretty rigidly. Only one child per family permitted, with very few exceptions. Among my friends, I would sometimes hear concern about whether or not it was responsible, even ethical, to bring a child into this world. What would life be like for them? What unknown challenges would they face in their lifetime? But while I heard people expressing these concerns, I don’t know if it actually impacted their decisions. It seemed like most of my friends were, like me, having families – two, three, even four children. And China did a total reversal of its one-child policy, when they discovered there might not be enough people to care for them when they get old. So […]
Continue readingThe Why of It
Genesis 1:1-2:4a Matthew28:16-20 Taylor Swift wrote a song called happiness. In it she says, “There will be happiness after you. There was happiness because of you. Both of these things can be true.” So, I am thinking about the sentence, “Both of these things can be true.” Because as confounding as it can be sometimes, it is so often the case in life. Two things that seem to contradict each other can both be true, at the same time. We say that God is three – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And we also say that God is one. There is one God – God alone. Both these things are true. We say that Jesus is fully human, just like us. And we also say that Jesus is fully divine. Both these things are true. And in the scriptures, we read that we are made in the image of God […]
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