Do you smell smoke? Go ahead; check yourself; I'll give you a second. Well… do you smell smoke? You say you're being tried and pushed, tempted and persecuted, talked about and scorned, cheated on and beaten; you say you're going … Read more
Where do you find God, pastor? As a minister that is a question I am often asked. To me the answer is unlimited. As I sit and write this, we are receiving a warm gentle rain, a rain that has … Read more
Martin Luther once wrote about the letter to the Galatians: "It is my epistle; I have betrothed myself to it; it is my wife." (He must have written this before his marriage to Catherine!) We all have words to which … Read more
Recently I went through a week of "finding passage" in several different ways. Our youngest daughter had spent the previous 2 1/2 months backpacking across Europe with three of her friends and although it had been an incredible experience, funds … Read more
When I first arrived here in Alberta at a new pastoral charge, there was great anxiety and stress. Could I survive without my wife of 25 years and my family for such a long time? We have never been separated … Read more
The boat we took across the Sea of Galilee was made from wood and patterned after the old fishing boats which used to ply those waters. From about a hundred yards off shore, we could see a couple of Arab … Read more
It was an ordinary Sunday morning worship celebration. People had come from all around to praise the Lord. Many a Sunday, I had prayed that God would reveal himself to this congregation in a special way. But nothing seemed to … Read more
What problem are you facing today which seems too much for you? How are you ever going to face it? More importantly, how are you going to overcome it? May I suggest prayer? When you are given the inner strength … Read more
If the Devil were to write his Beatitudes, they would probably go something like this: Blessed are those who are too tired, too busy, too distracted to spend an hour once a week with their fellow Christians in church — … Read more
Christianity is one of the strangest religions in the world because it is based on rock-solid reality and on life as it is. Christianity, at its best, refuses the convenient way out, of "pie-in- the-sky-when-we-die" and would have us down … Read more