Video: “Blessed are the Emotional Wrecks”
This is from our “Beatitudes of Bethlehem” Advent series. This message speaks to the paradoxical truth that the saddest people on earth are those who haven’t learned how to mourn.
Advent Service (Week 1)
Online service for the 1st Sunday of Advent featuring a message on “The Beatitudes of Bethlehem” plus other cute silliness involving the Berg children.
Blessed are the Underachievers
While the “Most Likely To Succeed” badge may come with a superstitious curse attached, the “Class Mooch” has a very real cultural curse attached to it. In America we celebrate self-made successful people, and look down on the moochers who are dependent on others. What do we make of Jesus’s 3rd Beatitude that seems to promise the farm to the underachieving brother?
Poetic Resonance – Buy the Gift of Positivity
Happy Black Friday … um, I guess? But what if we could purchase some positivity and throw some joy and peace and love at those we meet? This has been a very difficult year for artists and musicians, unable to gig and play to crowded rooms. It’s also […]
Pure Thanksgiving (Skye Jethani)
Beneath the surface, sometimes even hidden from our own awareness, may lurk a more manipulative intent behind our gratitude. The believer sometimes thinks — If I offer these prayers, if I give these sacrifices, and if I show my gratitude for past blessings, then God will bless me again.
Words of Wisdom: Cyprian (AD 256)
“Beloved brethren, we are philosophers not in words but in deeds; we exhibit our wisdom not by our dress, but by truth; we know virtues by their practice rather than through boasting of them; we do not speak great things but we live them.” -St. Cyprian (AD 256)
Bob Dylan on ‘Happiness’ vs. ‘Blessedness’
If chasing worldly happiness is a “yuppie” preoccupation, then we live in a yuppie nation and breathe the oxygen of a yuppie culture. At the end of the day, however, the Bible isn’t a handbook for happiness; it’s a pathway to holiness.
Advent 2020 Overview
The Beatitudes of Bethlehem A new kind of Kingdom was born in Bethlehem that first Christmas. This was to be an upside-down Kingdom that would flip the script on who is really blessed and who is not in God’s unfolding plan. The babe in a manger would grow […]
Blessed are the Emotional Wrecks
The blessings of Bethlehem don’t fly up to the mighty on the mountaintops, but flow downward into the valleys flooded with the tears of the mourners—from Bethlehem to Sandy Hook.
Blessed are the Poor Shepherds
Ebenezer Scrooge had a hard time grasping and embracing the spirit and message of Christmas. The rich and self-sufficient always do. Their own personal kingdoms loom so large that they have a hard time making room for God’s Kingdom—and all the poor and lowly riff-raff to whom it belongs.
Boyhood Epiphany on a Garage Roof
Thirty years have passed since I sat on the garage roof staring up at the night sky. The worries and cares of a middle schooler have been upgraded to the burdens of a father, husband and pastor living in this current moment of darkness and fear. Perhaps, this Advent, you also feel like we’re sitting collectively on a cold and icy roof, staring up at the Heavens and badly need to hear these words this Advent: “The people sitting in a pandemic have seen a great light, and to those sitting in the land and shadow of covid, a light has dawned on them” (Matt 4:16).
