How wonderful!

Today we went to London to visit our good friends of more than a quarter of a century. Saturday their new bakery (Artisan Bakery) will open.

What a feast lays before anyone who enters: Read more…

Yesterday I was reminded again of the great and socially encouraged sin of the church – gossip.

I have never added a motive onto my definition of gossip; that I leave for slander or defamation. Loose tongues speaking negatively or suggestively about someone who is not present is gossip.

“If a person thinks that he is religious but can’t control his tongue, he is fooling himself. That person’s religion is worthless” (James 1:26 God’s Word).

James 3:5-10 goes to great length to describe the horror of a loose tongue and gossip: Read more…

M. E. Abbey wrote words (1917) that became a very popular gospel song, “Life is like a mountain railroad”. I thought about that today as I was half asleep and the train passed by our house, and I laughed. Read more…

Religious people don’t read and study the Bible much. They do talk a lot about how to interpret it, though. They even talk about “how this applies to our life today” as though they needed to bring life to a dead carcass of outdated ramblings.

The spiritual person reacts like this Read more…

According to Apostle Paul, Christians inherit from the Jews, the nation God chose to bring Messiah into the world, the spiritual heritage of Almighty God. The thing is, that would mean the good and the bad, right? Read more…

Translation is a tricky thing. For example, the Old Testament often refers to “hardness of heart” in King James language. Read more…

I drove past a church building out in the countryside. The parking lot was filled, and the cars were spilling out into the adjoining field. Now no evangelist had arrived. No prophet had come to call the board back to humble service under Jesus. The turn out didn’t even indicate an itinerant healer had taken up shop. The big event that drew the crowds was  Read more…

Almost every group of people who meet as a church use the prayer titled, “The Lord’s Prayer“. Some groups use it every worship. Some people even use it in their personal devotion time.

When I used to lead worship I liked using it. Almost everyone knows it. It moved prayer time from a passive listening to an active speaking. Read more…

Today I spent hours in the strawberry patch.

From a quick look ripe berries showed, but only a few. Was it worth picking? But it was time to pick. Do I go by my eyes or the pattern of harvest? Read more…

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…