Living light and in the Light

This photo is not a younger version of me or of any of our children but just a stock photo to show what I am going to be doing this week.  Sometimes I wonder why I put myself under this much pressure but again, I have been called by God to preach His word.  So I wade into the deep waters of God's word this week for the sake of His church.  Let me let you in on what is on my plate.

I finished the book of Titus this week in the morning worship service so next week is the start of a new book of the Bible and it will be Malachi.  The start of a new book always requires more study as I get acquainted with the whole of the book prior to preaching from chapter 1.  

At the same time, I will be starting the book of Ezra in the evening worship service.  I didn't plan it this way but both the Sunday morning and evening services ended their series at the same time.  

I will be reading the book of Numbers this week for my online masters class and writing a 3 page reflection on it.  There is a…

Today's Wednesday in the Word covers John chapter 12 and verses 37 through 43, which read,
Verse 37 -  But though He had performed so many signs before them, yet they were not believing in Him. 


This is a clue that our belief in Jesus as the Son of God is not just Him performing just the right miracle at the right time to switch some lever inside of us that indicates that now we have enough to believe that He is who He says He is.  Jesus did so many miracles that they were searching for those who He hadn't healed!

Another element of Jesus is His teaching and the crowd's response to it.  Mark 1:22 says,
They were astonished at His teaching because, unlike the scribes, He was teaching them as one having authority.


So we have Jesus teaching like none other and performing miracles with 1000's of eyewitnesses and yet...some were not believing in Him.  How can this be?  Usually this type of "matter of fact" reporting is tied to something prophesied before that it would …

My photo wall is growing in my office in Machias, Maine and so is the requirements of my online masters class.  More papers are due this time and this section of my second class deals with the third book of the Old Testament, the book of Leviticus.

If you like reading instruction manuals, you would like to read the book of Leviticus.  Maybe Leviticus is the very first instruction manual with its meticulous details.  What can I learn from it?  Well that is what I am challenged to find out and write about in this week's upcoming paper.  God gives Moses plenty to record that will set up the procedures to follow to the "t".  The title "Leviticus" literally means, "matters of the Levites" and there are a lot of matters.

With the required reading of the book, I started to jot down some observations.  Some things are holy; some things are clean; and some things are unclean.  These are three distinct groups in the book of Leviticus.  The holy could be the pries…

We have become a nation of sound bytes.  We skip to the end of the story or zoom through the video to "the good stuff."  I've heard around the church, "I went to the end of the Bible and it says that we win."  This is great but it is important to know what happened to make that win possible.  We also say, "freedom isn't free" and so it is with our salvation on Jesus' part but He deemed the suffering He would endure as worth it.
Today's Wednesday in the Word is John chapter 12 and verses 29 through 36, which read,
v.29 - So the crowd of people who stood by and heard it were saying that it had thundered; others were saying, "An angel has spoken to Him."
Last Wednesday we ended with God speaking from heaven about Jesus.  He has done this before.  As with Jesus, God gets some mixed reviews from the crowd.  Some thought a storm was coming and others attributed the sound as some type of communication with Jesus.  It was coming from the di…

Another film roll back so it is Maine roll #4!  Here is looking at you and the precious face is our little Evie from the backseat of her parents Ford Explorer.  Stephanie and I had some wonderful time away with this part of our family and I loved my time in the backseat with Evie.



Here is little Evie with her big brother Joshua.  She is able to follow him around the playground.  So whatever Joshua can do, she can do to...at least until she gets rescued by mom!



Or Grandma and then she not certain she really wants to go.  



But something more her size and she glides down with no fear.  It is something to be around the grandchildren and try to see life from their eyes.  We once looked at life that way.  It seems so distant now.  I can still go down a slide but I've lost the joy of this face to do it again and again and again.



A neighborhood pool allowed me to get this picture of three generations.  What a picture of Grandma and Mama teaming up to help the third generation master a necessi…

This summer I made a friend named Tom who is a runner.  I watched him cross the finish line in first place at the annual Blueberry Run in Machias, Maine.  Work has moved him on but he has been crossing some more finish lines.  Sometimes in 1st place but always determined to finish the race.  I thought of Tom as I walked through these verses about our Savior, Jesus Christ who is approaching the ultimate finish line of all history.
Today's Wednesday in the Word covers John chapter 12 and verses 20 through 28.
v.20, 21 - Now there were some Greeks among those who were going up to worship at the feast; these then came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida of Galilee, and began to ask him, saying, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”
Jesus has come into Jerusalem on the foal of a donkey.  Cloaks are laid down and palm branches are waved to the sound of the crowd shouting "Hosanna."  Some are believing that Jesus is the Son of God while others are pointing blaming fingers at each other for t…