After the Sabbath,Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to the tomb, and an earthquake shook the earth. An angel descended from heaven and rolled back the stone of the tomb; his face was bold like the lightning and his robe as white as new-fallen snow. The soldiers shook so badly that they looked like they were dead. The angel said, “Fear not, for I know you seek Jesus. He is risen, and the tomb is empty. Go tell His…..
This is Holy Week in the Christian calendar; today, Palm Sunday, Jesus Christ rides into Jerusalem on a borrowed donkey with palm-waving and shouting citizens announcing His arrival. My blog is based on the questions that Pilate asked Christ and the mob on Good Friday, before angry and violent citizens who no longer cared about Christ but wanted Barabbas instead. I think we are all Pilates at one time or another in our lives. How could we not be? Jesus…..
I wonder sometimes how many of us stumble through life, hoping for God’s grace for the mistakes we make and knowing that we can live joyfully when we receive His forgiveness. There are new ways to think about the certainties of life. The surest way to God is through Jesus Christ. The birth of Christ was a sure sign of God’s love for the world, and the Sabbath is the pinnacle of God’s creation. Why do we look to heaven…..
I’m finding it very difficult to get over the restrictive laryngitis that I have had for over a month. Once again today, I watched the church service from the Washington National Cathedral on-line instead of going to church. The dean of the Cathedral, the Very Rev. Randall Marshall Hollerith, who I met on-line during COVID, spoke directly to my heart in his sermon about losing sight of your purpose. Many of us began our lives in faith-based families, but over…..
Passover was near, and Christ went to Jerusalem’s temple where He found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves and the money changers were sitting at their tables, waiting for customers. Christ became so angry that He drove everyone and all of the animals out of the temple with a whip. H poured the money on the floor and overturned the tables. He shouted, “Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” The Jews asked Him to show them a sign that…..
“Father, help me to come closer to You and to others.” These are my words of prayer today as I seek His quiet voice within my soul. I do not like the place that cell phones have in our society because they have stolen the personal connections, the face-to-face conversations, we have with each other. They have disrupted our lives, and yet, we have learned to accept and manage their interruptions. Somehow, we seem to have more patience with cell…..
I like to think I pray twice when I sing, but for the last two weeks, I have had laryngitis. A virus went directly to my vocal cords and is squeezing them. I’m not sure if my acid reflux disease is involved, as well. I hopefully will find out more tomorrow when I see the Ear, Nose, and Throat specialists. Acid reflux occurred after my second husband’s liver transplant, and the stress involved me having to carry everything for us…..
Max Lucado and Rick Warren are two of America’s prominent ministers in community-style congregations. They offered thees ideas about Americans’ fears. Worrying is “half-minded living.” One part of our minds wants to cower before fears; the other part wants to fight, by all means, to put them in a pine box in the ground. The answer to this troubling situation is to believe in Jesus Christ, to let Him lead us beside the still waters and for us to lie…..
God calls on us to have courage despite the darkness that surrounds us in the world. Peace can be found by observing God’s accomplishments amid the storms. There is a silver lining in everything dark. By focusing on God and remembering His great works, we can see that God is the commander of every storm, every trouble that stirs doubt and fear within us. Something good came out of the COVID years in respect to attending church services. While we…..
I have been watching the HBO series, “Band of Brothers,” for the past couple of days. Our current outdoor scenes fit so well with the scenes from the Battle of the Bulge in 1944. The snow is a foot of white cold, and the temperatures have dropped to minus twenty degrees. The fierce wind has brought down trees, not by bullets but by fifty mile an hour speeds. The roads are looking like black soot from the snow plows and…..