writing
Scripture Reading: Jeremiah 36:1-8, 21-23, 27-28; 31:31-34
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It’s not very often we read scripture out of order. We’re looking at the book of Jeremiah this week, and we started near the end of the book in chapter 36, then backtracked to chapter 31. We’ve done this on purpose of course.
We are hearing part of the story from the life of the prophet Jeremiah. We’re roughly 100 years after the prophet Isaiah who we looked at last week. Unfortunately for the people of Judah and Israel, things have not gone well at all over the last century.
Jeremiah is a prophet during a time when the people, and it’s leaders have no interest in God. There is a constant threat of war, which often means regular people are living without luxuries as funds are put into the army, or in this case, the lifestyles of the elite. Something we can still see today at times. read more…
awe
Scripture: Isaiah 6:1-8
Have you been somewhere we’re you’ve felt just a complete sense of awe? Maybe on an ocean beach, or on the top of a mountain? Maybe you felt it with our choir singing last Sunday evening!
When I think about times when I’ve felt a complete sense of awe, there are a number of places and times that come to mind. One is when we lie at the end of the dock at the cottage and just watch the stars with the Milky Way spread out above us as we watch for meteorites to streak across the sky. There’s something about seeing the vastness of the universe that makes you realize you are so small.
Deserved
Scripture: Jonah 1:1-17; 3:1-10; 4:1-11
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We’ve all had a point in our lives where we’ve looked at someone, or some situation, or some event, and we’ve said, “They got what they deserved.”
We’ve all said it right? Someone does harm to someone else and they get in trouble for it. And we naturally think, “Yup, they deserved that.”
After all, isn’t justice for everyone what it’s all about?
Now I realize this morning we’re looking at a pretty big story in the Bible. We’ve read 3 of the 4 chapters in the whole book of Jonah. It’s a story we’re familiar with in some way. We all know Jonah was swallowed by a big fish, or a whale.
We might not remember the circumstances around why he ended up in the belly of a big fish, but we remember that part. We’ve all heard it in Sunday School. And we might giggle when we remember that Jonah was literally spit up on the land when he was released from that prison.
But what do we remember about why this happened? And what do we remember about what happens next? read more…
Promised forever
Scripture: 2 Samuel 7:1-17
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This past week I had a couple of small, private funerals. All that were in attendance were family and a few close friends. They were nice, quiet times where the family just wanted to have something so they could say good bye to their loved ones.
What’s nice about these services is that they are often much less formal. People tend to be more relaxed, and often, but not always, they are less emotional. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not, but there is definitely a different feel to these smaller services.
Usually when I meet with a family they just say they want something simple. So I offer some prayers, read some scripture, share some words of hope, and that’s it. There’s no music, no eulogies, we’re in and out in 10 minutes.
But even in their simpleness, there is still something very special about these services. There is still a presence, and I know it touches people because of their comments afterwards. Sometimes it’s a promise to start coming to church, sometimes it’s just a simple thank you, and the way they look me in the eyes to say it tells me God has touched them. read more…
faithfulness and trust
Scripture: 1 Samuel 1:9-11,19-20; 2:1-10
What an interesting reading this morning from the book of 1 Samuel. Some of us may remember parts of the story of Samuel as he was called by God as a young man. We like to remember how God called out to him in the dark of night, but he thought it was the priest’s voice, Eli, who was speaking.
But this morning we are picking up the story earlier on. We are hearing more information about Samuel’s past, and more precisely his mother and her life before he was born.
But before we get into that, let’s take a brief look at what has happened in the time since the reading we had last week. Last week we looked at Moses being up on a mountain and the people decided they were going to worship something else. God spared his people from judgement for their failure to follow His laws, and then they continued to wander in the desert for the rest of those 40 years.
Once they made it to the promised land, the Israelites spent a fair bit of time getting settled. They had lots of “adventures” as they made their home in the promised land, with a number of leaders called Judges. This was a time of repeated sin and repentance for the people, and the end of the era of Judges does not end well.
It’s an ugly ending with the final words being, “In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes.” (Judges 21:25) read more…