Salvogesis

. Today, I want you to remember one thing about Romans 14-16 and that is, ‘Don’t condemn, don’t despise each other’ . What is the one thing I want you to remember? . As many of you know, Susan and the kids are vegetarians: Rebecca and Sarah-Grace are quite devoted to the cause. I have a story about how that all began. Susan tells the story a little differently but this is my recollection. . Many years ago, Susan and I were studying Richard Foster’s  Celebration of Discipline  while we were part of 614  Vancouver . We were encouraged to try each of the disciplines as we read the book. Susan began exploring vegetarianism – for her it was is much about stewardship of God’s earth as anything else. If you ask her another time, I am sure she will quite happily tell you more about this. . While we were studying  Celebration of Discipline  and after Susan had experimented with vegetarianism for a couple of days, I went grocery shopping with a 2 or 3-y...

One day when my oldest daughter was in elementary school, she shared with us a story called something like ‘Harold and Harold.’ There is a family. The father is a fisherman. They live by an area of the ocean that can be treacherous in a storm, near a place called Ledgy Island. One day – as I understand the story– a young boy named Harold and his pet parrot, who is also named Harold, get up early. The boy Harold goes to play in the attic and the parrot Harold flies to the dangerous Ledgy Island. As the other members of the family wake up and get going for the day someone calls out, “where’s Harold?” and the voice from the attic replies, “on Ledgy Island.” The parents start to panic. There is a storm brewing and Ledgy Island is a very dangerous place in the storm so they call out the search parties to look for him; they call all their relatives; they call the RCMP; they call the coast guard; they call everyone they can think of to help find Harold the boy whom they fear is l...

My oldest daughter and I recently completed a cross Canada drive. We drove for thousands of kilometers from Toronto to Port Alberni, BC, on Vancouver Island. One of our stops along the way was Swift Current, Saskatchewan. We used to be posted to Swift Current so my daughter and I both still have friends in that community. We each spent the day driving around town and visiting our old friends and dropping into our old corps and thrift store. It was great. The sun was out. It was a perfect day. In the morning we continued on our way. We saw a pretty big funnel cloud off in the distance (I don't know if it touched down anywhere). We ran into some hail - literally the size of baseballs (I was afraid for my windshield). And Swift Current flooded. It was quite something. Yesterday Swift Current was as hot, dry, and nice as anyone could imagine. Tonight when I looked at my news feed I saw pictures of how parts of the city were underwater. This surprised me and reminded me of James 4:14 ...

“In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, in order to fulfill the word of the LORD spoken by Jeremiah, the LORD moved the heart of Cyrus king of Persia to make a proclamation throughout his realm and to put it in writing: ‘This is what Cyrus king of Persia says: The LORD, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and he has appointed me to build a temple for him at Jerusalem in Judah.” Did you know that some scholars consider that they are actually one book? Ezra-Nehemiah has two distinct sections pertaining to 1) the Temple (Ezra 1-6) and 2) Holiness (Ezra 7- Nehemiah 13) [1]  and some people even lump them together with 2 Chronicles as one whole work – if you flip back to the last two verses of 2 Chronicles you will notice that Ezra begins – with overlap – right where 2 Chronicles leaves off. [2] When I was going through teacher training many years ago, we were always advised to establish prerequisite knowledge prior to commencing a unit. There are a num...

We visited the world's first Kentucky Fried Chicken. I invite you to read the sign below. It was posted in the museum located in that original KFC and I think it sums up many of the sentiments of Jesus that are recorded in Luke 16. It is comparatively easy to prosper by trickery, the violation of confidence, oppression of the weak, sharp practices, cutting corners - all of these methods that we are so prone to palliate and condone as "business shrewdness." It is difficult to prosper by the keeping of promises, the deliverance of value in goods, in services and in deeds and in the meeting of so-called "shrewdness" with social merit and good ethics. The easy way is efficacious and speedy -  the hard way arduous and long. But, as the clock ticks, the easy way becomes harder and the hard way becomes easier. And as the calendar records the years, it becomes increasingly evident that the easy way rest hazardly upon shifting sands, whereas the hard way builds so solid...

We just completed a family trip through Kentucky and Tennessee. One of our stops was to see some ducks in Memphis. These were real ducks who lived in a hotel. Every morning hundreds of tourists would gather around the fountain in the centre of the hotel as these ducks came down from their penthouse apartment and walked along the red carpet to the fountain where they would spend the day until evening when hundreds more tourists would gather to see them exit the fountain and march along the red carpet to the elevator which they rode up to their room to go to bed. (I’m not kidding!) On another stop on a trip at a Shaker village in Kentucky, my daughter was able to help with another duck parade. She helped them march back into the barn for the evening. On yet another night, I looked out from our motel balcony to see quite a number of ducks parading to the river. I called my children over. I didn’t realize our trip had a theme but it did: it was all about the ducks. Scripture is...

15 The LORD, the God of their fathers, sent word to them through his messengers again and again, because he had pity on his people and on his dwelling place.   [He told them to stop it!]   16 But they mocked God's messengers, despised his words and scoffed at his prophets until the wrath of the LORD was aroused against his people and there was no remedy.   [They wouldn’t stop it!] .  17 He brought up against them the king of the Babylonians,  who killed their young men with the sword in the sanctuary, and spared neither young man nor young woman, old man or aged.   [God stopped it for them!]  God handed all of them over to Nebuchadnezzar. God totally wipes out the nation-states of first Israel (which should have been a warning to the southern kingdom) and now -in our text today- Judah because, Verse 14: “ …all the leaders of the priests and the people became more and more unfaithful, following all the detestable practices of the nations and defiling ...