Consider this

On the “Discovery Channel” last night, I watched an interview with Michael Collins, the third member of the Apollo 11 crew that landed the first man on the moon (the other two members, of course, being Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin). He shared many interesting reflections about that event, but one really stood out to me. I am paraphrasing here, but Collins said, “The one thing that I really remember is how often people used the word ‘we’ when they talked to us. They did not say, ‘Wow, you Americans did it!’ Instead, they said, ‘Wow, we did it!’ There was no ‘us’ and ‘them’. The walls were gone. Everywhere we went, England, France, Spain, Mexico, people talked about what ‘we’ as human beings had accomplished. And I really enjoyed that!” Collins went on to say that, unfortunately, the “we” attitude did not last very long. Soon, people were back to thinking about themselves, the walls went back up and life went back to “normal”. I liked Collins’ picture of a world t

On Saturday, Estevan Motor Speedway held its Second Annual “Faster Pastor” race and I could not wait! I grew up going to stock car races and I go to the speedway here every chance I get. Carl and Blair Hanson had called me earlier in the week to tell me that I could drive their car and that was good news because I knew that their car was well built and fast. It was going to be a good day! When it came time to race, though, there was a problem. Due to breakdowns in the previous races, there were more ministers than cars. As speedway officials ran around trying to round up enough rides, I heard something that made me stop and think. One of the guys turned to the officials and said, “I got to drive last year and my friend here didn’t. If it comes down to us not having enough cars, I will sit out and let him drive instead”. Now, let me make clear that this guy really enjoyed racing last year. In fact, he was probably as excited about trying it again as I was. Yet, instead

As a kid, I drank many cans of “Tang” orange flavored crystals. I loved this highly sugared, fake orange juice. Oddly enough, I hated real orange juice! I could not even stand to taste a drop of it, but I would drink “Tang” by the bucketful. Now that I am older, that has completely reversed. Now I like real orange juice and I cannot even recall the last time I drank a glass of “Tang”. It is sort of strange that anyone would prefer an imitation to the real thing, but it happens all the time. In fact, it happens all the time in Spiritual things. All you have to do is spend 10 minutes watching “Christian TV” or “Televangelists” to realize that. I cannot stand most of those programs, because I constantly want to argue with what they are saying. Some of it sounds true and right, but most of it is an artificial message created to sound like the real thing. In fact, the problem is so bad that now the real message of the Bible is the one that sounds strange and odd. We have

The tour guide had taken us a few hundred feet into the “Lewis and Clark Caverns” just outside Bozeman, Montana when she stopped and said, “This is what we call ‘Decision Rock’. It is called ‘Decision Rock’ because at this point you have to decide to go on with the rest of the tour, or you have to turn back. After this rock, there are no shortcuts out of the cave. If you go on from here, you are committed to going all the way to the end”. Decision Rock made me think about our faith. At some point, each of us comes to our own “Decision Rock” where we need to decide to stop “playing church”. It is easy to go in a little way, to just stand in the entrance of faith, but at some point we all have to decide, “Am I going to go forward with God, or am I going to turn around and go back?” The reality is that we cannot stand there forever. We have to make a decision. Jesus told the church in the city of Laodicea, “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold or hot. I wish you were

When the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you… you have found favor with God” (Luke 1:28 and 30) she must had been expecting something good! Then Gabriel says, “You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus” (ver 32). This is not exactly the news Mary would have been expecting. In fact, it is terrible news! How was she going to explain this? In those days, an unmarried woman who was expecting a child was to be put to death! Not to mention the fact that she had to explain that this child was going to be brought by the Holy Spirit (verse 35). All of this must have left Mary thinking, “How can this be God’s plan?” She would not, however, be the first one to ask that. Think about Noah building his great big boat, for years and years (Genesis 6). Do you think that maybe some of his neighbours thought that he had lo