Resurrection

 We are coming up in a few weeks on the Christian celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  I say it this way because we often think about Easter for all of the wrong reasons.  We think of the eggs and the candy and the bunny and we forget that this holiday was and remains a distinctively Christian holiday.  We celebrate the resurrection of our Lord and Savior - Jesus Christ.  We do this because without the resurrection Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 15 that our faith is in vain.  If Jesus is not alive by the power of the resurrection we have no point in gathering and worshiping.  

This means that this coming holiday is arguably the most critical for us to maintain as distinctively Christian.  Our church still has an Egg Hunt as an outreach, but even we should reconsider this as we should reconsider what it says to our community about the importance of what we celebrate.  If we believe that the resurrection of Jesus Christ IS the most crucial part of our faith, why would we surrender it's celebration to a love of reproduction, nature, spring or worse.  We should hold these days as critically as they are important to us.  

May God help us to demonstrate in what we say and do that the living Christ is the most important part of these next few weeks.

2 months gone

 It is March, 2026.  As I get older I seem to notice the passing of time more and more.  2 months would not have been something I noticed a short while ago.  When I use that word "short", each of us have a different idea in mind.  For me it goes back less than 2 years - before I had been diagnosed with my second round of cancer.  Before I spent nearly 3 weeks in the hospital.  It seems that each day, each week and each month and year since then has been measured differently. 

It is interesting that Psalm 90:12 says, "Teach us to number our days, that we may present to You a heart of wisdom."  (NASB)  What intrigues me is that we have to be taught, by God, to number our days.  You would think that counting days is fairly simple, and yet it requires God's help - to be taught to number them.  We would tend to count them wrongly without His help.  And we want to number them rightly because that is part of us presenting to God our wise hearts.  Wisdom is found in numbering our days correctly.

Do you count your time properly?  Are your days and minutes and hours and weeks and months and years monitored according to how wisely you are spending them?  What does God have to teach you about how to use your time?  Perhaps we have more to learn than we think!

The Lord Your God

Reading through the books of the Pentateuch as I start the year and I have noticed that there is a repetitive way of God referring to Himself in the law.  He often calls Himself, "The Lord Your God."  I find this nomenclature both informative and instructive.  Think of the fact that God is repeatedly reminding them that He is the only God.  And yet meeting them where they are and encouraging them to avoid the gods of the other nations (who are not really gods) He does not use the definite article to refer to His deity.  Instead He uses a personal pronoun - He tells them He is "Your God."  But the definite article rests on the idea of His Lordship.  God is THE Lord YOUR God.  There is only one of Him, and He is Personal to His people, but He in calling himself this He is continually reminding them that He alone is in charge.  He is THE LORD.  The One who is.  The One who was.  The One who is to come.  He is and therefore He is to be obeyed.  

Perhaps you need this reminder this morning.  God is the Lord and He is Lord alone.  Worship and Obey Him and be blessed or ignore Him to your own peril. 

How quickly we forget

 I find it interesting that one of the most repeated commands in the book of Deuteronomy is the command to remember.  Some variation of the word occurs over 1,200 times in the whole Bible.  It is interesting because we are so very prone to forget.  In Exodus 32, the people have just heard the voice of God speak the commands to them - one of those was to not fashion a graven image.  And after Moses had been gone up the mountain for a while they decided they needed an image to worship.  They forgot.

Then they crossed the red sea and escaped Egypt.  But they forgot the great signs God did and complained.  So God provided food (bread and meat) and water and yet they complained again.  God made promises like they could win battles if they trusted him and they lost because they forgot to remember.

I wonder what promises God has made in His Word that you have forgotten today.  Do you take the time to read the Bible or have your forgotten just how important it is.  How many characteristics of God could you list from the Bible, or have you forgotten about God too and who He really is.

We tend to forget - so let us be reminded together to remember.

A New Year

 A New Year is upon us.  2026.  I do not know if you are looking at the new year ahead with anticipation or fear.  But I got to thinking about the concept of the new year and the concept of time in general and I realized that the only new thing about this year is the way that we view it.  There is fundamentally no difference between the day December 31 at the "end" of one year and January 1 at the "beginning" of the next.  There is no special transfer of powers that occurs or anything that makes it different from the transition of say August 2 to August 3.  There is no magic (even though a ball might drop) that makes the transition from one year to the next any different from one month to the next, or one week to the next, or one day (any day really) to the next.  Maybe this is why so many fail to keep resolutions, because we are looking for newness and change when newness is not really present.  Ecclesiastes reminds us that there is not a single thing under this sun that is new.  

If you are really looking for change - if you are really looking to make a difference in your life that lasts and one that matters, perhaps we should start considering looking outside of time.  If we measure newness by time we will find that history repeats itself and that those who do not understand history are the ones who are destined to repeat it.  This is not new.  In order to look outside of time we must look to One who is outside of time.  We must look to One who created it.  We must look to the only one who is eternal.  Who was and is and is to come.  We must look to God and in Him and Him alone we find the capacity to truly change.  We can change into what He wants to make us.  We can become what He created us to be.  By His help and using His word we can be made new.  

So this year don't look to yourself and place your hope in the fact that you might do better.  Place your hope in the Timeless One. The One who entered into time as one of us so that He might draw us to Himself.  And in looking to Him we can be made new!

Adoption

 Galatians 4:4-5 "But when the fullness of time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons."

I love this presentation of the gospel message.  God sent Jesus at just the right time so that he could redeem us.  This is often where we stop when we think of the gospel message.  We focus on the redemption - and the redemption is a good part.  But people could be bought and redeemed as a slave - and this is the whole context of this section of Galatians - the difference between a slave and an heir.  

No, God did not just redeem us, but he says in Galatians 4 that he redeemed us so that he could give us something even better - adoption as sons.  We become heirs of God through Christ.  Think of it - whatever Christ has been given we get to participate with Him in this and receive it because through our adoption we are brothers with Christ!  Sisters with Christ!  What a glorious reality.  God sent Jesus to be born of a virgin (at just the right time) to obey the Law perfectly so that he could redeem you and I - sinners who have no natural birth right - and make us His heirs.  This is the glory of Christmas!

Advent

 This week we started the advent reading cycle at our church.  It is for us a simple but important reminder that we need to focus our attention of the promised coming of Jesus.  It is important for a number of reasons that I wonder if you would consider.  

Celebrating the advent and not just Christmas reminds us that all of this is going somewhere.  Christmas in many ways has become very consumeristic.  Even our family celebrations and newsletters are often more about how we are doing well than about the coming of Christ.  Taking the time before the holiday gives us more time and space to reflect on the fact that what we celebrate on December 25 did not happen accidentally.  Galatians 4:4 reminds us that Jesus came at precisely the intended time.  

Celebrating advent also reminds us that this is still going somewhere.  We look back to Jesus' first coming to earth and look forward to His second.  In celebrating advent we remember that it is not just about a day, but it is about the arc of human history being aimed in a particular God-given direction.  This is also an important reminder when things feel so out of control - God is moving all of our lives toward a particular and planned end.  

Celebrating advent also reminds us that we should be anticipating the celebrations of the Christian calendar throughout the year.  Christmas is not then end (though because it is at the end of our year we often think of it in these terms.  Advent is the beginning of something greater - a pointing not just to the birth but to the death and resurrection of Christ.  It points us to the coming of the Spirit.  It points us to our perpetual need for the work of God in our lives.  

So celebrate advent with us.  And may God remind you that Jesus came to earth so that you could have life in His name.