People tend to avoid the book of Leviticus. If you read it only as strange or different from your worship practice you surely miss much. Much in the first chapters of Leviticus is devoted to sacrifices dealing with sin.

God set out that sin requires some “sacrifice”, some act to complete forgiveness. Today religion has reduced confession to a set prayer spoken every Sunday, and forgiveness as words by the priest after the prescribed prayer finishes.

What’s missing? Read more…

Manitoba maple trees produce thousands of seeds every year. They fly everywhere. The seeds germinate easily. So yesterday I went out to remove them from my privet hedge at the back.

The job multiplied. When you start pulling out one “weed” you find more. As we read in Hebrews 12:1, “Therefore then, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses [who have borne testimony to the Truth], let us strip off and throw aside every encumbrance (unnecessary weight) and that sin which so readily (deftly and cleverly) clings to and entangles us, and let us run with patient endurance and steady and active persistence the appointed course of the race that is set before us” (Amplified Bible). Read more…

My Father died when I was about seven. Mother raised the three of us, at great personal cost.

Mother

Sometimes the food wouldn’t divide four ways and so she went without anything. Since this all happened before the modern trend towards rights and protections we moved often. All her attempts at a new relationship rested on shaky terms because of her instinct to protect her brood.

She raised us in Baptist churches, though the specific breed never took on importance. The only thing that mattered in the choice was could we get a ride, or could we walk.

While such things escaped me when I was a child, it haunts me now to think that she went hungry so we kids could share the last of the bread and milk. The stress of single-parenting, all the weight of earning the money, finding accommodation, making what little we had go around makes an almost unbelievable story.

Had she just given up on us her own life might have turned out better for her. But she didn’t.

I make no pretense of my Mother living without flaws, nor does she. But I honour her model of faith, endurance and a love that goes far beyond words or definition.

When I look at my Mother I see Christ at work, not theologically, but in the dirt and grime of some of the worst that humans have to endure.

I tell her this. Here I do that again. And now I pass it on to you. Jesus lived the love of the cross, even though it costs. My Mother did, too.

Will you?

When we accomplish something it feels good if someone notices and compliments us. Often we look for that. Somehow an achievement feels better if we get praise.

There’s a difference between encouragement and flattery, however. Read more…

A recent survey on prayer says a Christian prays 8 minutes a day, supposedly. A pastor prays only 4 minutes longer.

Read more…