6 Things God Hates. No, 7!
All of us have seen the signs of the fringe, so-called, Christian group that protest at military funerals. They seem to have the belief that they know exactly who God hates. Ridiculous! As if all the sins and mistakes of all the people in the world who have ever lived...
WHOA!
You've heard the old joke about the man who bought a horse from a very religious owner. The horse didn't respond to the normal commands like "giddiup" for "go" and "whoa" for "stop." The religious man who had trained the horse taught him to "go" at the word "hallelujah"...
Raising Cain
Ah, the joys of sibling rivalry! My daughters (I am a dad who has all girls. After all, why mess with perfection!) are a joy to watch. As my older daughter recites her activities of her day, my three year old immediately pipes up with the accusatory question: "What...
Did God Say….
In his famous book, "Rules for Radicals," Saul Alinsky states "“Lest we forget at least an over the shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins - or which is which),...
A Rose By Any Other Name
Poor Juliet struggles as she wrestles with the fact that her new-found love is for a hated Montague. Romeo listens as she says her famous line "'Tis but thy name that is my enemy; Thou art thyself, though not a Montague. What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,...
In the Beginning….
I recently bought a copy of the book "Start with Why" by Simon Sinek for each member of our parish council. My main motivation is to drive home a fundamental point and a fundamental danger to any community or association: If you forget why you do what you do,...
Come What May
Robert Louis Stevenson once said "Sooner or later, everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences." And this is precisely why it is always so corrosive to a person, to a community, and to a society, to blindly chart a course of actions that ignore the consequences of our choices....
Come, Let Us Reason Together
"Vain repetition, that's all it is!" My friend was absolutely horrified by my shift from my Pentecostal roots to the Greek Orthodox Church. He came to a service where I was presiding as priest and he simply shook his head in disbelief. "How could you do this?" he wondered...
O Lord and Master of My Life…
As we enter this life-giving season of Great Lent, let us forgive everyone who has ever wronged us and ask forgiveness of everyone we have ever wronged.
Joy AND Fasting!
"Do I have to?" Ah, that wonderful, childish question. "Do I have to?" I remember asking that question as a boy, and hearing the frustrating answer from my mother "No, honey, you don't have to; you get to!" Why is it we humans seem to struggle against the disciplined life...