Pastor's Blog (Page 17)

Hypocrite. What a stinging indictment! In the letter to the Galatians, Paul charged some people with hypocrisy. Ouch! No doubt you’ve seen the masks ancient Greek actors wore on the stage: a smiling mask for when they recited lines of comedy, and a frowning mask for when they spoke of tragedy. The actors who wore these masks had their true identity hidden so that they…

Ever heard of Diocletian? He was the emperor of Rome from 284 to 305. What was his claim to fame? He sent an edict around the Roman empire in 303 that all Christian scriptures were to be gathered up and burned.1 Then, over a burned and extinguished Bible, Diocletian built a monument on which he wrote these triumphant words: Extincto nomene Christianorum (“The name…

And they were glorifying God because of me.Galatians 1:24 What a wonderful life outcome! People were glorifying God because of Paul.1Not so with these: Diotrephes, a leader in the church, “loved to put himself first.”2 Others were proclaiming Christ, but were motivated by selfish ambition.3 Still others wanted to impress people by external matters.4 They took little…

Twenty years have now passed since those 2,977 lives were mercilessly snuffed out by heinous perpetrators of terrorism. Do you remember the spiritual shock waves that reverberated across our nation in the weeks and months after 9/11? People were suddenly conscious of God. And their mortality. And how they were living. At least for a season, people prayed, supported…

I guess some folks think the Ten Commandments are too narrow, irrelevant, or just plain passé. Because quite a few have made attempts to improve on them. After all, in our age of enlightenment, and considering how far we’ve come since Moses, surely we could crowd-source a better decalogue, don’t you think? Here are some proposed alternatives: There is no one right way to…

Lately I’ve been quite taken with the honeybee. What an amazing creature! Consider just the honeycomb, the foundation upon which the bee colony is built. I’m sure you know it’s for storing honey and pollen, receiving the queen’s eggs, and raising their offspring. And you’re probably aware that each individual cell of the honeycomb is in the shape of a hexagon. Always…