The Reconstructed

Ezekiel 34:1-10                 I feel like pastoral ministry oriented jobs are easily and often subject to criticism. While criticism may range from well-founded to unreasonable, it’s easy to critique someone who is expected in their vocation to respond to a call and to care, and to care specifically for hurting people. Critiquing someone’s level of…

“Indeed, to them you are nothing more than one who sings love songs with a beautiful voice and plays an instrument well, for they hear your words but do not put them into practice.” Ezekiel 33             Yesterday, I sat on the walking bridge in Liberty Island State Park. The park itself provides a view of…

Heel – the term for the villain in professional wrestling. Jacob – grasped at the heel of his brother Esau, tricked his brother out of the rights of the firstborn, wrestled with God It might be a stretch but Jacob cheated his way through much of his life. His tricky tactics brought Him places, until He…

I have this friend, in her late 50’s, a blogger, who writes about addiction whom I’ve never met or talked to. That’s grounds for friendship, right? When I read her writing, I feel some of her pain and some of her hope. If not for our perspectives on suffering and our relationship with God, we…

Love is Saving                 The word saving like the word love encompasses a lot. To save implies preservation, protection, rescuing from harm. To say that love is saving suggests that loving is an activity that gives life. Love does not take away from us or something else. Scripture suggests in 1 Corinthians 13 that love…

Love is Staying Loyal love is the definition of mercy. It’s the kind of love that endures through suffering. It’s the portion of the resilient, perfect love of God that is necessary for imperfect people to live full lives and have any type of lasting love. Because at some point, or perhaps more often than…

Love is Seeing Some people believe in love at first sight. While it might be tempting to suggest that one saw love before they stepped toward love; it would be wrong. In order to occupy space with the one we propose to have affection for, someone took a step whether it was a conscious one or not. So a…

So in less than 2 weeks I’ll be preaching to a group of college students on love and I’m using the Scriptures 1 John 4:7-21 and John 13:1-20 to talk about the movements of love that proceed out of the character of God. It’s also a few days after Valentine’s Day so leading up to…

I la la loved the movie La La Land because how it true it felt to la la life (That was the last “la-la” I promise). The movie was filmed beautifully, the music was great, singing was fun, and it told the best story of any movie I have seen in over a year. But…

Ezekiel 30-32 We expect to lament the loss of a home or the loss of friends and family and even a great leader. In 3 chapters, a large chunk of text is devoted to Ezekiel lamenting Egypt, the neighboring former enemy and enslaver of Israel. In this portion of Scripture, Ezekiel devoting 3 chapters to…