Ruminations

I’m beginning a new series at The Message this Sunday called Unbelievable. I’ll be exploring the impossibility of Jesus and why his claims are so unbelievable. You might find it… interesting.
Comfort Suites Magnolia Greens in Leland, 6:00 p.m. The coffee is on me!

When the master of ceremonies tasted the water that was now wine, not knowing where it had come from (though, of course, the servants knew)…*
Imagine for just a minute that you are one of these servants. You are a servant, not someone important, and can get into some serious trouble if you are goofing [...]

Benaiah. Lion. Pit. Snowy day.
Thanks to Mark Batterson, many know the story.
It wasn’t an accident; he didn’t fall into the pit that held a lion. It wasn’t an attack; the lion hadn’t come after him. The circumstances surrounding the event were simply that, circumstances; the snow, the pit… they were merely the settings, not the [...]

Have you ever paid attention to all the prayers that folks lob up to God?
I was noting all the different ones that were being offered over the last few days on Facebook and Twitter. Everything from jobs to feeding the hungry. Petitions tossed out like a penny in a wishing well. I think we sincerely [...]

When fishing you don’t use a log for pole, chain for line and lobster for bait while screaming “bite or go to hell” The wise win souls  –Tommy Tenney Tweet, January 30,2010

I’m finding it interesting to see how our environment so colors what we read in the Word.
We tend to interpret our world based on our experiences. While that works relatively well in our normal environment, it typically works poorly in a foreign environment. I learned that the hard way many years ago on my first [...]

I’ve been rediscovering the Jesus story by way of John the last several weeks.
I’m actually trying to read it “differently.” That is, I’m trying to read it for what it says, not what I think it says, not for “distance” (how far or fast I can go), not via programed reading. I might read a [...]

Last night I sat in a gathering of people from several different area churches. Hosted by Lifepoint, there were people present from Rock, Horizon and River of Leland. There were probably others; I talked with folks from each of these.
We’d gathered to pray for Haiti.
The interesting thing is that while Haiti was the focus of [...]

I read this earlier today:
Now John also was baptizing at Aenon near Salim, because there was plenty of water, and people were constantly coming to be baptized. (This was before John was put in prison.)
The parenthetical really stood out. What was happening at that moment wasn’t the reality when the text was being penned. It [...]

Stuck between John 2 and John 3 is this:
Now while he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many people saw the miraculous signs he was doing and believed in his name. But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all men. He did not need man’s testimony about man, for he [...]