“Put in your earplugs, put on your eyeshades…”
Humanity has historically had trouble when our knowledge and technology advance, but our morality and ethics lag behind. The law of unintended consequences, which I’ve talked about many times, figures into this; but there’s more to it than just that.
“Teach Us, Oh! LORD…to PRAY”
November 10, 2024 (Proper 27) “Teach Us, Oh! LORD…to PRAY” Matthew 6:5-15 & Luke 11:1-4 Outline: I. the PLACE of PRAYER II. the PURPOSE of PRAYER III. the PLAN of PRAYER IV. the POWER of PRAYER
“Teach Us, Oh! LORD…to PRAY”
November 10, 2024 (Proper 27) “Teach Us, Oh! LORD…to PRAY” Matthew 6:5-15 & Luke 11:1-4 Outline: I. the PLACE of PRAYER II. the PURPOSE of PRAYER III. the PLAN of PRAYER IV. the POWER of PRAYER
“Hopeless”
Humanity has historically had trouble when our knowledge and technology advance, but our morality and ethics lag behind. The law of unintended consequences, which I’ve talked about many times, figures into this; but there’s more to it than just that.
“A Mixed Blessing”
Looking back at it from here, I’m not sure that Solomon’s temple was an unqualified good for his people.
It was a great and magnificent building project, one in which many of Solomon’s people participated. Such building projects often bring a people together with a common purpose, sort of like fighting, supporting, and ultimately winning the Second World War brought the people of many nations together. That isn’t a bad thing, of course. But in the case of the temple, not everybody who worked on it did so voluntarily.
“Our house is a very, very, very fine house”
Once again we’ve skipped forward many centuries between last week’s reading and today’s.
Israel has long been settled in the Promised Land, sometimes called Canaan in the Bible. They conquered the peoples who were already living there—although some historians nowadays say it’s more likely that they moved in and eventually everybody assimilated into one people, rather than a wholesale “Manifest Destiny”-type conquest. I don’t know that there’s any way to know for sure, and for our purposes today, it doesn’t matter.
“Moses was shamefully late!”
“What is taking so long? Moses should have been back weeks ago. It’s absolutely shameful for us to abandon us like he has!”
That’s what the children of Israel said to Aaron as they waited at the foot of Sinai. God had given them the beginning of the Law—the Ten Commandments—directly, then Moses went back up to the top of the mountain to receive further instructions, because the Israelites were so frightened by God talking to them directly that they begged Moses to stand between them and God from then on, to receive God’s instructions himself and pass them on to the people.
“Why is this night different from other nights?”
We have once again skipped over a whole lot between last Sunday’s reading and today’s. Last week we were with Abraham, back when his name was still Abram and he hadn’t had any kids yet. Now we step back in centuries later, to see what happened to his family, the descendants of his grandson Jacob, also known as Israel.
“I meant what I said.”
Preaching every Sunday reminds me of how most of us used to watch television.
Nowadays if you watch something on a streaming service, like Netflix, you can get every episode of a series and watch them one after another, for hours. And I admit that I do it from time to time, on my day off when I’ve got nothing else pressing to do. Even shows on regular channels can be recorded and then you can watch a bunch of them when you’ve got time. We don’t have to do it the old-fashioned way, one episode at a time with a week’s break in between.
“The Buck Stops Here”
I was in college before anybody told me that there are actually two creation stories in the book of Genesis. Obviously I knew the stories, since I had been in church and Sunday school from the time my mom could carry me to church, but I hadn’t learned about where the two stories came from, or how they came to be where they are in the Bible.
Special Presentation of “Our Amazing Journey to Israel May 2019”, by members of the First Christian Church of Mount Vernon.
“The joy of the LORD is our strength.”
It was eight years of drought—the worst we’ve seen, before or since.
Not that we didn’t get any rain—every now and then one of those big thunderheads would build up on the horizon of an evening, and we’d stand outside and watch it as it moved closer to us, watch the top of it flatten out, and it’d rain for a few minutes, then it’d move on by. And the sun’d come out, and the bricks and things would steam for a little bit, then it was all over.