In fifty years of teaching music to students of varying ages, the students I am most concerned about are our young people, those who are still in our elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools, those who look to their elders for guidance, love, wisdom, and truth. What role models are they seeing when our families are not as strong as they used to be because parents are so caught up in the materialism of our secular world that the…..
In my book, “With Love, All Things Are Possible,” I tell the story of an old abandoned church where the steeple bell keeps tolling for everyone. It is our time as Americans to listen to that steeple bell, for Jesus Christ is calling us to unite and stand as one country. We are stronger when we stand together as one nation with one God. Despite the fact that many Americans are still mourning the election of a man they do…..
It is Election Day, probably the most important vote in my lifetime. It is a vote for right vs. wrong, character vs. a lack of character, integrity vs. corruption, good vs. bad, love vs. hate, unity vs. division, the needs of the American people vs. one selfish man. Yesterday, I viewed two videos about Rev. Dietrich Bonhoeffer and how he stood up against Adolf Hitler in a time not much different than today. Bonhoeffer’s beliefs and actions required a faith…..
Lord, Your name is excellent in the earth, and You have glorified the heavens. Strength is born in babies’ mouths when Thy enemies are mighty. When I think of Your heavens, the works of Thy fingers, and the beauty of the moon and stars, Why are You mindful of man, and why did You visit the Son of Man? You have made him lower than angels, and You have crowned Your Son with glory and honor. You gave dominion over…..
The Serenity Prayer has always been a part of my prayer habits. Today, I write my own prayer around that prayer. Grateful for His Love Lord, grant us the peace to accept the things we cannot change. Grant us the courage to change the things we can and the wisdom to know the difference. With that wisdom, use us as instruments of Thy peace, love, light, hope, and grace in a world that has forgotten who You are. We ask…..
On Labor Day Weekend, we celebrate all things built and strengthened by America’s workers. Wanting inspiration from my favorite pastor, Max Lucado, I watched his sermon on U-Tube; the sermon was about Mary Magdalene on Easter morning. “For his anger endureth but a moment; in his favour is life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.” (Psalm 30:5) Mary Magdalene was troubled by seven evil spirits before she met Jesus Christ. When Jesus spoke to…..
As we enter another week in mid-August, it is important to remember that we must be imitators of God, His beloved children, and to live in love as Christ loved us. It occurred to me that Americans have strayed so much from God that we are accepting what is wrong as the norm and not what is right. That means one thing: we need our hearts healed by God. The following things are what we should be doing to correct…..
I’m not quite sure what would help soothe my problems of this past week, but when I attend the church’s park service, my soul is freed and everything that was challenging fades away. I pray that the hostile political atmosphere of our country does the same. For the Gospel today, John 6:12 (KJV), Christ told His Disciples that they should “gather up the fragments of food that remained from feeding a thousand people and let nothing be lost.” With the…..
The bullets rang out at a Trump rally yesterday. President Biden is calling for calm and peace, not this senseless violence. Trump was carried off the stage, having been hit in the right ear by a twenty-year old assassin’s bullet. Even as the Secret Service put him in his car, he encouraged more violence by raising his clenched fist, and shouting, “Fight, fight!” As the images of January 6th returned to my mind, Trump doesn’t seem to care about what…..
What I thought would be a raising of my spirits after losing my beloved cat, Mikie, became a satire on how much the divisions in our nation are much like a divorce. I put the movie into the DVD player and was looking forward to a laugh or two, when I realized that the divorced parents in the movie were really the Democratic and Republican parties of our political system. Neither party spoke respectfully to one another, and political punches…..