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This week, we read about Peter and his buddies on a mountain with Jesus. The event is called the transfiguration and comes as a relief, and boost of hope after some heavy teaching words Jesus gives to Peter. Real hope is not in something we think we can do, but in...

As we make our way through the Gospel of Mark, we come to a passage that is really the epicenter of the whole gospel. It begins with the confession of Peter when someone finally identifies that Jesus is the long-awaited Messiah, the Anointed One. And yet despite...

This week we’ll read about Jesus’ incredible compassion on display in Mark 8. Henri Nouwen once said, “Compassion is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others to the place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken.” This is not our...

Ash Wednesday on Sunday Ah yes … because of the doozy of a winter blizzard predicted, we’ve decided to cancel Ash Wednesday services and celebrate Ash Wednesday this Sunday (Feb. 26). The beginning of Lent is too important to “cancel”, so instead we’ll just delay it a...

Somewhere along the line, there has arisen the idea that faith is something that we do… something that we must work at, something that we muster up enough fortitude to complete in order to satisfy God. Jesus would teach us something completely different. We might need...

The Bible is full of questions God asks us that challenge and motivate his children toward God, His purposes, and what He has planned for us. “Where are you Adam?” “How many loaves do you have?” “Simon, do you love me?” This Sunday, we will look at the question God...

Sometimes I hear people say they don’t want to join the church. What they usually mean is they don’t want to join an institution, or be part of another organization. That’s often true. But nearly everybody wants to be part of a family, everybody wants to feel like...

The Apostle Paul described the church as the bride of Christ, “without any sort of stain or wrinkle on her clothes … holy and blameless” (Ephesians 5:27). Martin Luther said the church is where the people of God gather, where the Gospel is preached, and the sacraments...

A peanuts cartoon opens with Lucy sitting at her desk writing line upon line of “I will not talk in class. I will not talk in class …” In frame after frame she repeats the vow ad infinitum. Finally, she reaches the bottom of the page. And under that impressive pile of...

In the “City of God,” the great St. Augustine wrote, “God wants to give us something, but cannot, because our hands are full— there’s nowhere for Him to put it.”  Before we can be filled, we need to be emptied. We don’t put new clothes over the old. No, first we take...