Consider this

Kids like to test their balance. Whether it is walking on a fence, a sidewalk curb or a “Balance beam” in a gym, there is something about the challenge of seeing how far we can go without falling off. “Balance” is a key idea when we are grown too. He are some ideas about how to “keep your balance” in the New Year. First, we need to look back. Past successes and failures have a lot to teach us if we would just take the time to remember and think about them. God’s people, Israel, were very concerned about where they had come from and what they had learned. For example, when God stopped the water so that his people could cross the Jordan River, they were commanded to take twelve stones from the river and pile them up on the other shore. The Bible then says, “In the future, when your children ask, ‘What do these stones mean?’ tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord” (Joshua 4:6-7). God did not want them to forget how he had t...

Words can lose their meaning over time. This can happen because of neglect (we simply do not use the word enough to recall what it means), through misuse (connecting an incorrect meaning to the word) or by reduction (taking a word that means a very broad range of things and reducing it to one meaning). I believe that “repent” is one of those “reduced” words. Most of us know that to repent means to “turn around”, or (more fully) to make “a complete alteration of the basic motivation and direction of one’s life”. Unfortunately, though, these days “repent” has come to be a threat. It is a word that is most often (and, sometimes, is only) heard in the messages of the so called “hellfire and brimstone” preachers. It is a word that has become tied to other words like “hell”, “damnation” and “judgment”. What if we heard it differently though? What if it was not a threat but rather an invitation? That would make a lot more sense in verses like Acts 3:19 which says, “Repent, then, and turn to G...

For forty days and forty nights the rain just kept coming. The water kept rising until there was nothing but water to be seen. According to Genesis, Noah and his family were on the ark for over a year (Genesis 7:11 and 8:13-14). Now, we know how this story ends even before we start reading it, but what would it be like to be Noah? He had no idea what was going to happen next. All he knew was that the rain kept coming. Have you ever felt like that? Like “the rain just keeps coming” and there is no end in sight. Worse than that though, is the knowledge that, even when it does end, everything will be different. The uncertainty that comes with not knowing how things will end is sometimes worse than the storm itself. I do not know what things are like in your life right now. I hope that the skies are blue, that the sun is shining and that everything is great. For many people though, the dark rain clouds are just beginning to appear on the horizo...

It seems like she was always there. My Grandma, Annie Hannan, has been part of my life as long as I can remember. When we were going up, Grandma and Grandpa lived only a few short blocks away from us and so we saw them almost every day. We had sleepovers. We went for walks. We went out for supper together. Every summer, we would go camping with them, mostly at Buffalo Pound Provincial Park. Growing up Grandma was always a part of my life. Then, when I got married and had kids, she became part of their lives too. Visits to see Grandma often meant “Orange floats” and games of Crokinole. In later years, we often talked on the phone and she always wanted to know how Sara and the girls were doing. She had been in and out of the hospital frequently over the past few months, so, considering that she was ninety-one years old, it was not hard to guess that the end may be near. Still it was a shock when my mom called last Thursday to say that “Granny” (as her great-grandchildren call...

“Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains” (Colossians 4:2-3). On the surface, those two verses likely do not look all that interesting or important. Sure there is a good lesson in there about the nature and attitude of prayer (words like “devoted… watchful and thankful” give some good instruction in that regard), but it is the last portion of the quote that should inspire us. Paul most likely wrote this letter while he was under house arrest in the city of Rome (Acts 28:16-31). His future was uncertain and his life was in the balance. He may have been chained to his prison guard twenty four hours per day. If not, he certainly had someone watching over him constantly. His outlook was bleak and there seemed no reason to be optimistic or to look for a good outcome. In the midst of these circumstances, Paul asks his brothers and sis...

Last week, I read an article about how courts are going away from eyewitness testimony because it is so inaccurate. In fact, the article claimed that most eyewitness testimony is based on what people think they saw rather than on what really happened and that, when studied, the details are very often fabricated. To test this theory, I asked the congregation to look at a picture of a group of men. I left the PowerPoint slide up for approximately five seconds and then asked a series of questions like, “How many people in that picture were wearing red shirts?” “How many people were wearing glasses?” Not surprisingly, I heard all kinds of answers. Some people were right about certain details but not about others. Some were certain that they were right only to find out that they were wrong. Others simply guessed (One man kept saying “Fourteen” no matter what the question was). The information that I received was certainly inaccurate. That leads to a scary thought: If second han...

I would not have wanted to be Ananias. In Acts 9, the Lord tells him to go to Damascus and find a man named Saul. Ananias protests and says, “I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your saints” (verse 13). However, Ananias is told that Saul has been prepared for his arrival. On the way to Damascus, Saul had seen a blinding light, he heard the voice of Jesus and now he was waiting for God’s messenger to come to him. With that knowledge, Ananias goes. He teaches Saul and baptizes him and one of the worst enemies of the faith becomes its biggest promoter (You likely know “Saul” better by his Gentile name, “Paul”). One chapter earlier, Philip is told to go and meet a man from Ethiopia. This man is riding in a chariot and is reading from the Old Testament prophet Isaiah. When Philip approaches he asks, “Do you understand what you are reading?” (Acts 8:30). When the man says that he does not, Philip explains the passage and tells the man “the good ...