Consider this

            Telling people off feels good, doesn’t it?               Most people are too polite to admit that, but I know the feeling that comes after setting someone straight.   I feel smart because I was able to point out someone’s stupidity.   I am proud that I spoke my mind.       It feels good to let people have it! That is until I realize that my angry rant did a lot more harm than good.   Anger is a bottom-level emotion because it takes no thought or effort.   Anger is simply reactive.   Other emotions, such as compassion, require us to see the situation in new ways and imagine what it must be like to be the other person.   Anger does not require that because it is rooted in selfishness.   Most of my anger has nothing to do what is actually right or wrong.   Rather, it is based on the fact that my thoughts a...

            My wife, Sara, loves birds, so in the spring I get daily reports that go something like this: “The chickadees are back…. I saw a Robin today…. Ooh, I hear a woodpecker over there!”   She gets excited when she sees hawks floating on the breeze.   Our backyard is filled with bird feeders and we get more than our share of feathered visitors. Over the course of our marriage, I have come to enjoy watching the birds as well.   I even know the names of some of them now.   I am especially good at spotting “Red-winged Blackbirds” (Why can’t all birds be this obviously named?).     Of course, there is nothing new going on here.   The birds have been around for my entire life.   I just never paid any attention to them.   What is new is that Sara has taught me to notice these little creatures and now I cannot stop seeing and hearing them.   They are everywhere! You will see what...

           “Mother’s Day” has just come and gone and, as usual, it has left me thinking about the power of relationships. Pick up any Mother’s Day card and you will find words like; love, sacrifice, care, nurture and compassion.   We honour mothers because they demonstrate these sorts qualities.   We appreciate how selfless they are and how give themselves to their families without expecting much in return. Mothers have a powerful influence because they invest in others. The same attitudes that create strong and healthy families are the exact same attitudes that needed for a strong and healthy church.   In fact, if you read the first fifteen verses of virtually every New Testament letter, you will find words of care and affection because these letters were written not only to instruct, but also to strengthen, encourage and nurture. Churches as a whole, and we as individual church members, make a huge mistake when we...

             Sometimes Bible stories sound weird simply because we are missing some necessary information.   Take Matthew 21:18-21 for example. It says, “Early in the morning, as Jesus was on his way back to the city, he was hungry.   Seeing a fig tree by the road, he went up to it but found nothing on it except leaves. Then he said to it, ‘May you never bear fruit again!’ Immediately the tree withered”.                 What is going on here?   Why is Jesus being so harsh?    To understand the point, it helps to know a little about fig trees. Unlike fruit trees around here, fig trees produce both their leaves and their fruit at the same time.   The fact that this tree had leaves meant that it ought to have fruit as well, which is why Jesus went over to it in the first place.   That is also why Matthew went out ...