Braving The Waters

Several years ago a friend and I started playing a game to see who could find the best/worst messages on church signs. There were really good messages like; “Don’t drive faster than your guardian angel can fly” which was appropriately placed on a little church sign on a windy, country road known for fatal accidents due to excessive speed. There were also some messages like; “Our Pastor’s hot…The high today in Hawaii is 102” I have no idea what provoked that message. Shortly after our game began, my friend found a calendar of daily church sign messages, which she gave me for Christmas. One message from that calendar that sticks out in my mind as summer approaches reads, “God has NOT gone on vacation and left YOU in charge!”  Do you feel as if God has gone on vacation and left you to deal with weight of the world’s problems, or at least your family’s or the church’s problems alone? I wonder if Peter and the other disciples felt that way after Jesus’ death. Even though he had a...

I don't follow politics as much as I should... but I have been following, entirely second hand, what happened in North Carolina and President Obama’s statement supporting same-sex marriage and I wonder…how did we get here? I am in the midst of working on my sermon for Sunday and I don’t know where to go because I don’t know how we got here. Maybe you are asking “where is here?” Here May 11, 2012 in a society that feels like total anarchy. 236 years ago (give or take) some people who were feeling oppressed and alienated sought to make a better life where it would be understood that ALL were created equal. Of course that first claim came with underlying unspoken exceptions- ALL were created equal- except women, children, people of different skin tone, and more recently people who define and qualify love differently than others. I admittedly do not know much more than I did as a senior in high school about politics. Political Science was a classed I HAD to take in order to gra...