Humility and Trust

To be frank, I don't know if I want to trust you. I've trusted people before, and some of them betrayed me, gossiped, and made fun of me. Some of them abandoned me, just hung me out to dry and walked away. So if I ask you to pray about something, or open up and tell you about my problems, what will you do? Or maybe this is you, asking me

The Gift of Presence

"Your presence is the only present we request" sometimes shows up on an invitation to a birthday or anniversary. The hosts are expressing that it's more important to be there, than to give something to the person being honored. Guess what? Jesus 'showed up' often during his life on earth, and his presence was often simply that, and that alone. Jesus came to

A Safe Place

I really don't feel like talking to God about my latest failing. I've done it before, I'm afraid I'll do it again, and I don't like the way I am when I fail like that. So I think maybe I'll just skip the prayer part and go on, pretending it didn't happen. Surely God understands...Well, yes, actually he does, and I know better. Maybe I need to remember again why God is the safest place, the only really safe place, for me to take all my junk!  There are three

Love WHO???

Sometimes I don't understand Jesus. He's just a little too 'out there' for me. He's famous for the Sermon on the Mount, but that is a challenging piece! I mean, he takes the old command "don't murder" which is fairly straightforward, and makes it impossible with "don't call anyone else an idiot." Is that fair? (Maybe he only said that because he didn't have to deal with the drivers around here.) Not only that, he tells us we should love, not only our neighbors and friends, but even our enemies. That can't be realistic, can it? Maybe he had something else

What Is Jesus Doing?

It's morning, and I'm working on some coffee and some of God's words to get steered in the right direction for the day. My goal for today is to know Jesus' will for me and to

The Gospel Is about Race Relations Too

This video clip from Mark DeYmaz, of Mosaic Church, talks more bluntly -- with grace, just more openly than we normally politely do -- about race and injustice in America. No its roots, but its cure, which is our responsibility not the government's. 

http://vimeo.com/103651314

Well worth the 11 minutes to watch. May I dare you?

He Felt Our Sorrows

Is the Gospel relevant? It is as relevant to our lives as the newspaper or its online equivalents. Lately, we've been hit with the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO, and the recurring Israel-Gaza conflict, with over 2,000 dead and no proper end in sight -- just to name two out of thousands of conflicts right now. How does the Gospel apply to all these? Here are a few