FaithIsland

This tells me what God's real job description is. The heavens and the earth will be totally destroyed - and yet we will not be. God not only set eternity in our hearts - but He also sent His Son to redeem us so "we would not perish, but have life everlasting." When Jesus said, "All ye that labor and are heavy laden," He saw the rich man worried about someone stealing his stuff, the poor man on the...

Did you ever feel like sacrificing a goat because of something you did wrong? How about buying an indulgence for you or a family member? Crawling on your knees up every stair at St. Peter's Basilica saying a prayer on each one? Walking across Spain on the Camino Santiago. Or moving into a monastery, forsaking all material possessions and promising to remain silent the rest of your life? And even i...

What if heaven was created for us even before the first person was born? What if you have already been forgiven of all of your sins so there is nothing left you have to do to get in? What if death - which is the enemy - is really just a momentary transition from where you are right now to where you were born to live forever? Have you ever thought about how audacious it was when Jesus told us to ca...

My hope in heaven is not "unprecedented." If it was - I could still hope - but my hope might not end so well. This is where faith comes in. Faith is not hope. Hope is "fingers crossed, lucky rabbit's feet, wishing on a falling star." Faith is having just enough evidence that whatever you are hoping for is possible. Where does that evidence come from? If you always wanted a child - and have not bee...

King David, after his great sin that would have brought him and the nation down if it had not been for God's grace - wrote these words in Psalm 51, "You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings - the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise." God didn't want all the sacrifices - but they wer...

I love that what Gamiliel said, "You may find yourself fighting against God." And how would you know? It is as simple as "last one standing wins." If God is God - then "He will build His church and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it." I know we love those old Sunday School stories - Shadrach, Meschack, Abednego and the fiery furnace, Daniel in the lion's den, Moses crossing the Red Sea,...

You are filled with the Spirit to receive God's love. Being the church reminds us God promises to always be with us - even when we feel we don't deserve His love and forgiveness or aren't up to the work He has set before us. The Spirit keeps breathing into us - reviving us and bringing us back to life because a life - especially one that is unique and unreproducible as yours - should never be wast...

Jesus told His disciples to wait for the Holy Spirit before they went out to change the world because there is nothing worse than a bunch of people without candles or flashlights running around in the dark - bumping into things, bumping into each other and not getting anywhere. But there is nothing better than a bunch of people with candles or flashlights helping people find their way in the dark....

And this gets back to our calling. Rarely can we change all the things we think need to be changed to make us happy - whether we're talking about changes to our body or changes to the world or changes to the people around us. We aren't in charge of everything - and even if we were, we can tell people what to do - but they aren't any better at changing things than we are. As Bob Goff said, "Most pe...

How many times has a new experience led you to new questions? And new questions led you to new answers that challenge how you thought about life. When we were children - if we read and listened to our teachers and ran and played and talked - our minds were constantly stretched so to absorb all the new stuff we were experiencing. Then came the hard part - processing and figuring out what was good a...

Unless we have some context - all those doctrines, fancy words and Greek and Hebrew verbs aren't going to make sense. Sometimes, in fact most of the time, we aren't going to fully understand what God is trying to tell us until the moment comes that translates it for us. It's not about us being smart or holy - it's not even about us wanting to know things. Sometimes you have to be in the moment - w...

If you have ever experienced the loss of someone who was close to you - someone you loved and perhaps even said, "I don't know how I could live without you..." - you know what Mary was feeling. It's these flashes of honesty that Ezekiel is talking about in our Old Testament Lesson. The Lord asks, "Can these bones live?" Elijah answers, "Oh, Lord God, you know." I love how Elijah turns the question...

Black is a color. White is a color. But light and darkness are completely different. Darkness - especially deep darkness - only hides what is actually there. When the darkness is complete - you discover the table, the chair, the marbles on the floor. They were always there - the darkness didn't make them go away - you just couldn't see them. You can't see light - but you see what it lights up. I s...

What Isaiah and Jeremiah want you to know is - the worst thing in your day, your week, your month or even the worst thing in your entire life is not the last thing. Did you get that? Like daughter Zion, we can be tempted to give up - to think we've been forgotten - if we were ever remembered in the first place. Like her, we might even write "it looks like...you have utterly rejected us and are ang...

What does it take to move you from apathy to action? You know those late night commercials with children and animals in need? Or St. Jude's hospital? Which commercials do you have to leave the room otherwise you would max your credit card and empty your bank? What news stories get you out of your chair and onto the street or into a school or gathered with a group of people setting forth to make th...

500 years ago someone supposedly asked Martin Luther what he would do if he knew he was going to die tomorrow. Luther replied, "I'd plant an apple tree." When they asked why he would do such a crazy thing - he said, "it was on my list for today." Luther was saying - if it was important enough for me to do - then it doesn't matter whether I get to enjoy the fruit or not - someone will - and that is...

The Woman of Lamenations represents all of us. We are so proud of being God's people - all the things we said and did in Jesus' name. We are the chosen - the saved - the redeemed. And yet if we step outside of our churches and put down our crosses and Bibles and prayers and see ourselves from the world's view - what do we look like? Are we the Bride of Christ - or the Bride of Frankstein?

There could be no book of Lamentions if there were no God. If there is no God, no grand plan, no purpose or reason for our existence other than being an accident of time and space - then lamenting makes no sense. If you cry out, "Why?" - the answer is "Why not?" If you ask, "How can this be?" - the answer is, "why shouldn't it be?" But the response changes if there is a God, a grand plan, a purpos...

We are paying the price of our sin - and the sin of our family and neighbors and community and the strangers we've never met. "Everything happens for a reason" - and our reason is sin. I get that we don't like it. And it's possible we aren't as guilty as others. But we are guilty. That's what this day is all about. And sitting by the river, refusing to sing while we wait for God to fix things - is...

We don't know when Peter, James and John finally told everyone what they had seen and heard on that mountaintop. Once Jesus was dead, there was no sense in keeping the secret anymore. I know most of us like to think if we had been there - if Jesus had told us He was going to die and rise again after three days - we would have believed Him. We would have been standing outside the tomb with a "welco...

The prophet Micah says: "What does the Lord require of us? Act justly, love faithfulness and walk humbly with your God." Such acts are not easy for us mere mortals - which is why we tend to build buildings, install stained glass windows and make pews more comfortable - those things are easy. Did you hear Jesus' words in the Gospel lesson? "If you don't want to be near me - I won't judge you becaus...

If you read the Bible - you will find every argument and complaint and disappointment vocalized by people like Ricky Gervais and the Atheist social media darlings. As Solomon said - there isn't "anything new under the sun." These individuals and others who rail against the "God they don't believe in" are not the enemy - nor should we treat them as such. They are the mission field. I have come to l...

The worst thing about depression and darkness is you know you need to get into the light - but you just don't have the energy. Newton's first law, "a body in motion tends to stay in motion - but a body at rest tends to just give up." That's my paraphrase. Last Monday was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Two of his quotes I love are: "Faith is taking the first step even when you can't see the whole...

Being a disciple is not about what you know or can prove or even how much you believe. Faith is something we can make sound a lot easier than it really is. When we say someone has faith - it doesn't mean they don't have doubts or fears. You know those clear, glass walkways at the Grand Canyon or Tianmen Mountain in China or the CN Tower in Canada. I know engineers spent a lot of time and the contr...

The simplicity of baptism is a deeper story than we will ever understand. We tried to become like God - not just His image but His power - and we failed - that's the Creation story. Since we could not become God - God became like us - that's the Christmas story. Jesus got baptized and walked this earth showing everyone how to forgive and love and live - all things we should know but forgot because...