Posts with the category “daily-devotions”

Have you been enjoying the daily devotions by Greg Steggreda? They have been so encouraging, insightful, and uplifting. We are thankful for his thoughtful study of the Life of Christ and sharing it wi...  Read More

It’s kind of ironic that in the end, the very last question the disciples had for Jesus was the same expectation the Jewish religious leaders had. Here it is, in Acts 1:6-9: “Then they gathered around...  Read More

When Jesus revealed himself to his disciples after Easter, there was an interchange that never really struck me before. I read it this morning, in Luke 24:44-45: “He said to them, ‘This is what I told...  Read More

It’s easy to become a prisoner of your own expectations; we see what we think we’ll see and we find what we set out looking for. Sometimes, that makes us miss a fantastic truth, something new and comp...  Read More

Holy Week is over. The sad services of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, the melancholy introspection of Saturday were flooded away by the great good news of Easter Sunday. But now it’s done for anothe...  Read More

I sit this morning with two thoughts. First, after an unexpectedly amazing Easter Sunday, I’m blown away once again by what Jesus did and how much God loves us. Pastor Tim made me realize that Easter ...  Read More

A lot of strange things happened when Jesus died, and they all tell us something. But the thing that strikes the deepest for me is the tearing of the temple curtain. Here’s how Luke relates it, Luke 2...  Read More

In the end, the chief priests did what Herod couldn't do: they killed Jesus. In the name of their religion, which by that time was more about political power and nit-picky rules than about grace, they...  Read More

The people didn’t care. Incited by the chief priests, they just wanted Jesus dead.Pilate didn’t care. He just wanted peace; he was trying to avert a riot. Here’s the story, in Mark 15; Pilate offers t...  Read More

Jesus’ trial is kind of like the anti-police procedural. You know those shows like CSI and Criminal Minds, the ones where the authorities try to piece together what happened? In Jesus’ case, there was...  Read More

If there’s any value that’s still anywhere near being universally held by Americans, it’s the idea that you’re always there for your squad. You jump in when they’re in trouble; you hang in when they g...  Read More

What’s the best thing you ever got from your Dad? Dads give good gifts. My dad gave me puppies and ponies and hatchets and BB guns. He gave me golf clubs and cars. He gave me a lot of advice, some of ...  Read More

For members of a religion of faith, we sure struggle to have faith. In general, we’re suspicious and want proof. And then we want to see the source data from which the evidence was calculated. Once we...  Read More

One of my favorite cinematic depictions of Army life is the HBO series Band of Brothers, and one of my favorite scenes comes in the first episode. Easy Company is still in basic training and finds its...  Read More

Jesus has a pointed question for me: Do you understand what I have done for you?Actually, he asked his disciples that, in John 13, after he went around doing the dirtiest job in the room, which was wa...  Read More

The Bible is such a compelling story of people that sometimes I forget it’s really about God and Satan. This morning I was reminded of that as I continued reading the life of Jesus as recorded in Luke...  Read More

There’s a wonderful thing happening in our community and country. It’s the same thing we saw immediately after the terrorist attacks we now call 9-11: people are reaching out to help other people.Serv...  Read More

This year I've been working my way through the life of Jesus in all four gospels, and I've come finally to the closing chapters. A couple weeks out from Easter, Jesus' travels bend back toward Jerusal...  Read More

I once served with a particularly profane officer, both in his language and lifestyle, who frequently said, “I know, you think I’m going to hell but my grandma prays hard for me so I think I’m OK.” It...  Read More

There’s a saying we use a lot at work: when the cat’s away, the mice will play. That’s our way of acknowledging the reality that when managers and supervisors are gone, workers often take advantage of...  Read More

Well, the day we’ve been dreading is here. COVID 19 has made it to Orange City. I find myself thinking a lot about Italy, a nation that is having one of the worst pandemic experiences. A few years ago...  Read More

Even though it feels like life has been turned upside down, it’s hard to believe that this world will ever end. After all, it’s been around forever, at least relative to my existence, and even though ...  Read More

I want to dislike the Jewish religious leaders, but honestly I see too much of us in them.This morning I read Luke 20, and was immediately struck by this interchange between the teachers of the law an...  Read More

A frustrated teacher, grappling with online learning after his school closed this week, said, “We’re making a mountain out of a molehill!” In some cases I’m sure it’s true, but I think we may be more ...  Read More

What happens to the ones who kill God’s son? Jesus tells us, in a parable about some tenant vintners who rebel against the landowner, and end up killing his heir, with the outcome in Mark 12:9-11:  “‘...  Read More

A lot has changed since Friday. Friday morning I was in a contingency planning meeting where we noted we had a couple of weeks to plan for school closures. Two days later, we’re all grappling with wha...  Read More

For an age supposedly committed to science, we’re sure hard to persuade. In fact, it seems like every technological advance makes us more skeptical; we used to trust audio tapes, then photos, and then...  Read More

I had another of those moments this morning when a familiar passage hit me in a completely different way. In this case, it was the story of Jesus running the money changers out of the temple, as told ...  Read More

It used to be axiomatic in law enforcement circles that most crimes boil down to one of two motives: sex or money. Add pursuit of power and I wonder if you have the triumvirate of temptation. And I wo...  Read More

One difference between American soldiers and soldiers of almost any other nation is that American GIs always want to know why they have to do something. Most soldiers just follow orders. I think Ameri...  Read More

What’s fair? I remember when my boyhood sense of justice was offended and I complained to my dad, he’d say, “You’d better hope you never get what’s fair.” I’d like to say he was making a profound theo...  Read More

There’s a difference between being child-like and childish, but because we don’t want to be childish we resist being child-like. We don’t want to be whiny and demanding and unreasonable, so we instead...  Read More

A couple of summers ago I was in a reader’s theater called Things We Couldn’t Say, about the experiences of a young Dutch woman in the resistance during World War II. In one letter to her fiancé she t...  Read More

A 16-century monk named Brother Lawrence, a lay brother in the Carmelite order in Paris, worked his entire career, at his own wish, as a scullery boy - the ones who clean up and wash dishes. His reaso...  Read More

One thing all Christians know is doubt. Most of the time it has its roots in misunderstanding: we just can’t see what God might be doing in a given situation. Sometimes we legitimately wonder about th...  Read More

Sometimes I reread my favorite books. In fact, there are books I may have read eight or ten times in my life. There’s something reassuring about the known; stories can increase in comfort just like ol...  Read More

I wonder if normal life isn’t one of the challenges we face as we try to live faithful lives.The writer of Ecclesiastes notes that the simple routines of our daily lives - eating, work, sleep, fellows...  Read More

Situational ethics is pretty much the norm these days - too often we decide how to act based on immediate factors rather than bedrock principles. Obeying traffic laws, telling the truth, working on Su...  Read More

Jesus has a special heart for the lost. I used to think that, because of the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the prodigal son - I read all three again this morning in Luke 15. I used to...  Read More

The mystical religious concept of karma - the idea that right will always balance wrong, good will offset evil - has become popular. I don’t think most people who refer to karma realize it’s really a ...  Read More