Category Archives: Uncategorized

Ephesians 3:1-12 Truth has been at risk for millennia. At times, ancient Egyptians destroyed the faces and names of previous kings carved onto statues and walls, erasing their memory. In the 18th century, pamphleteers circulated so much false information that even signers of the U.S. Constitution shrugged at protecting the press. Seventy years after the […]

Matthew 2:1-12 The Epiphany is one of the grandest stories of gift-giving in the world. The story has Hollywood proportions. Members of nobility kneel before the young Christ child. The wise men—they travel so far!—visit the palace, where the surprised and deceitful king dispatches them to find this heaven-sent child. Guided by a star, they […]

Hebrews 11:32-12:2 God calls us to spend some days in darkness. The Christian story is filled with accounts of the devout who suffer for Christ or didn’t live to reach the prize. As today’s scripture says, Yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised (v. 39). Some […]

Hebrews 11:23-31 Faith stories in the Old Testament sound so practical. Hide the baby in the bulrushes. March around Jericho. Walk through the Red Sea. But it’s difficult to imagine what we would do if the Voice called on us today. Like when my father moved our family from Dallas 40 years ago to the […]

Hebrews 11:13-22 My career as a pianist was short-lived. After one challenging lesson I went home, cried, and called it quits. At age 6. My son had a different musical journey. The first time he plucked guitar strings, he struggled to stretch his fingers to make a chord. But he persisted whenever he found a […]

Hebrews 11:1-12 Have you ever been asked to do something that you don’t know how to do? A teacher asks you to learn a new math formula. You need to repair a plumbing problem. You take a new job that feels completely foreign. This last example is the premise of Ted Lasso, a wildly popular […]

Psalm 98 A few years ago, my wife and I went to a JOHNNYSWIM concert. I hadn’t been to a concert since middle school, because I didn’t understand why I should pay to hear an audience butcher a musician’s songs. That changed when I saw this wife and husband duo dance and sing their way […]

Titus 2:11-14 Most of my life I’ve sung the familiar hymn “Amazing Grace.” However, not until several years ago did I realize I’d been singing one word wrong all this time. I wholeheartedly sang “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wrench like me!”  I could never understand why I was a wrench. […]

Psalm 51:10-17 In his sermon entitled “When God Makes A [Human]” my grandfather, Rev. Willie Boone, said, “Through this breath of spirit, God is breathing thoughts, insight, personality, attitude and purpose … life, into humanity.” We may wonder how just a breath can be all that. “Ruah,” the Hebrew term for breath, includes wind and […]

1 John 5:1-12 Have you seen that Wendy’s commercial in which a mother and her two sons are lying in a field at night stargazing? She says, “Look! A shooting star! Make a wish!” Jimmy, the older son, wishes for a Wendy’s Biggie Bag with its bacon double stack and more. The younger son says, […]