Consider this

            God’s people were in big trouble.   Shortly after being told that they were to “Have no other gods” and that they were not to make “an idol” (Exodus 20), they, inexplicably, create a Golden Calf and worship it (Exodus 32).   God’s reaction to this incident is to withdraw his presence from the people.   “I will send an angel before you… but I will not go with you” (Exodus 33:2-3).                Moses knew that he has to find a way to re-connect the people to God, so he came up with a plan.   “Now Moses used to take a tent and pitch it outside the camp some distance away, calling it the ‘tent of meeting’. Anyone inquiring of the Lord would go to the tent of meeting outside the camp. And whenever Moses went out to the tent, all the people rose and stood at the entrances to their tents, watching Moses until he entered the tent. As Moses went into the tent, the pillar of cloud would come down and stay at the entrance, while the Lord spoke with Moses. Whenever the peo

                        A news headline this past week read, “Cellphone call limits suggested by Health Canada”.   The story went on to say that, though more study is needed, parents should encourage children to limit the time that they spend talking on their cellphones.   The concern comes from the radiation that cellphones emit and the thinking that it may harm children whose brains, skulls and immune systems are still developing.             In church on Sunday, I asked, “Have any of you done anything differently in light of this warning?”    Interestingly, though most people had seen the story (or others like it), not one person said that they had changed their actions.   Why?                I think it has to do with the fact that the consequences are not immediate.   The issue, if there is one, is going to surface, not now, but 30 years from now, so we just keep doing what we do.   If the consequence was immediate, if you burned your ear every time you used your ph

            “For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve” (I Corinthians 15:3-5).             Sometimes we are very selective in our reading and teaching of the word of God.   I do not think that we do it intentionally, but it happens.   For instance, think about how we teach the story of the New Testament.   We like both the birth and baptism of Jesus, so they get a lot of attention.   We dissect and dig into the “Sermon on the Mount” (Matthew 5-7).   We love the parables and the miracles of Christ.   We dwell on the cross and its meaning.   Then, something odd happens.   Often (in my experience anyway) in our rush to get to “The Day of Pentecost” and the starting of the church in the book of Acts, we skip over the most important part.   “At dawn on the first da

            Harold Hackett, a 58 year old man from Prince Edward Island, has an interesting hobby.   Over the past fifteen years, he has tossed more than 5 000 “messages-in-a-bottle” into the Gulf of the St. Lawrence with hopes that they will make their way to the Atlantic Ocean.   He has since received about 3100 responses from people in places like Iceland, the U.K., the Netherlands, France, Germany, and as far away as Africa and South America.   One bottle even made it to the Pacific Ocean, somehow landing in San Francisco.   Recently, he received a reply from one of the first bottles that he threw overboard.   It took fifteen years for the bottle to wash ashore, to be found and then responded to and that is what makes it interesting to him.   You never know how long it will take or from where you will receive your response.             Upon hearing that story, someone pointed out to me that tossing bottles in the ocean is somewhat similar to what we experience when we pray.