Friday December 20, 2013 Colossians 3:18-4:1 The lesson today is bound to create a question or two! Wives, husbands, children, masters and slaves…what’s that all about? What does that have to do with Advent and the experience of Christmas? Before you let hot topics ruin your day, take a minute to read it again. Now, perhaps we can think about it by…
“How are you?” It is a question that we ask a lot. It is a question that we are asked a lot. I know that when I pick up my children from school, it is one of the first questions that I ask. Most of the time the response is “good”. Once in a while, it leads us into a discussion about…
Last month I wrote here in this space about all the great stuff coming up in the next month or so as we prepare for Christmas. I gave you a list of upcoming opportunities to worship and fellowship and learn in class. I warned you not to get your calendars full before you scheduled some of these things in there first. Unfortunately,…
Dear Friends: A friend of mine loves to say that there are two kinds of people in the world. First, there are those who love the month of December with all the bells and whistles. Then there are the people who bury their heads and pray for January to come quickly! I love January but I fall full speed ahead into the…
Thursday December 19, 2013 Colossians 3:15-17 Sue and I haven’t missed a Christmas Eve worship service for over 30+ years. It is the busiest and the best time of the year. We have shared Christmas Eve in a cold barn with cows and the commotion of kids. We have dropped in on worship while we were on the road. We shared Christmas…
Wednesday December 18, 2013 Colossians 3:12-14 Do you love musical harmony? Some of my favorite groups focus on tight harmonies that layer one voice upon another to create a uniquely recognizable sound. Even the simplest of harmonies can bring a smile to my face and lift my spirits. I wonder if that happens for you. Outside of musical harmony I also find…
Tuesday December 17, 2013 Colossians 3:5-11 Our passage for today may sound a bit harsh and even out of sync. Whenever we read the Bible our eyes and hearts should always shift in two directions. First, we want to focus on what the passage meant to the original readers. Sometimes that is really easy to do. But there are passages that require…
Monday December 16, 2013 Colossians 3:1-4 Have you been hearing some Christmas music in the stores? Maybe you have even been to a Christmas party or two. It is beginning to look a lot like Christmas! I love this time of year! Let’s start a new week with a quick look at the Gospels. John 1:1 says, “In the beginning (the genesis)…
Friday December 13, 2013 Colossians 2:20-23 My friend Phil grew up in a very conservative Christian home. His father was the spiritual leader for their community and his mother served as the primary teacher of the children for about 50 families. They lived in a very strict and closely guarded setting. It was closely guarded to keep others out and tightly controlled…
Thursday December 12, 2013 Colossians 2:16-19 Did the reading for today seem to be a little complex? Why are we talking about religious festivals and new moon celebrations? I thought we were moving toward Christmas! We are moving toward the glorious celebration of the birth of Jesus. But along the way we need to acknowledge that we live in a very unique…
Wednesday December 11, 2013 Colossians 2:9-15 Do you remember your baptism? Perhaps the gift of baptism arrived in your life while you were old enough to recall the experience. Or your baptism may have happened while you were too young to remember. Either way, the image is the same, in baptism we are symbolically dead and then you were raised to new…
Tuesday December 10, 2013 Colossians 2:6-8 The two short verses for today’s reading includes our memory verse for this week. Let’s take a look! I have been memorizing Colossians 2:6-7 but I confess that I have been captured by one particular word. It is a word that takes us back to the past while it launches us into the future. It is…
Monday December 9, 2013 Colossians 2:1-5 It is Monday of the second week of Advent! Welcome back to our daily reading, reflection, and prayer! I take great joy in knowing that so many in the congregation are literally ‘on the same page’ together as we continue our journey of faith through the Advent season. There is strength in sharing the journey together!…
Friday December 6, 2013 Colossians 1:24-29 Imagine that you are developing a plan to share the story of Advent and the coming of Jesus with someone who had no idea about the real significance of Christmas. Where would you start? You could start with the message of Gabriel or with the relationship between Mary and Joseph. Or perhaps you would begin with…
Thursday December 5, 2013 Colossians 1:15-23 There are a number of key ‘what do you believe’ questions that arrive in the lives of Christian disciples. One of them is about the nature of Jesus. Throughout time, people have been generating ideas and opinions about the identity of the Lord. Some say he was a really good guy. Others would claim that he…