Sermon Blog

Snow White had to face off against a troll. It was no troll that David had to face…depending on your point of view, it was just as bad, or worse. The last time that God’s people and the Philistines had gotten along without question was during the time of Abraham, when as Abraham traveled to the land God was leading him, he lived for a time amongst the Philistines.  However, since the time of Abraham’s son, Isaac, there has been tension between those who follow Yahweh and the people called the Philistines.  Isaac had lived among them for a while.  Tensions began when Isaac tried to pass his wife Rebekah off as his sister, out of fear for his and her lives.  Isaac and his family continued to live amongst the Philistines until they grew to be a formidable size family.  The king of the Philistines then told Isaac and his family they had to leave the land. The Hebrew people eventually found themselves in Egypt, first for refuge from the famine that st...

Rudy.  He was not built like any football player.  He was barely over 100 pounds, and it was pushing it to say he was over five foot tall.  The coach would look at him, and readily pass him over.  The coach had allowed him to be a manager on the team, but it was not until the very last game of the season that the coach even let him put on the uniform (and the only reason he was allowed to put on the uniform is because the whole rest of the team threatened to pull out of the game so Rudy could take their place.  However, even as the game wound down, and Notre Dame was ahead by 21 points with only 27 seconds left in the game, the coach would not consider putting Rudy in.  He did not look like a football player.  However, after the team and the crowd chanted relentlessly, the coach finally puts Rudy in, and we saw the results…in his only collegiate football play, Rudy threads the offensive line and sacks the quarterback.  Rudy didn’t look like a fo...

There is a story of identical twins.  One was a hope-filled optimist.  "Everything is coming up roses!" he would say.  The other twin was a sad and hopeless pessimist. He thought that Murphy, as in Murphy's Law, was an optimist.  The worried parents of the boys brought them to the local psychologist. He suggested to the parents a plan to balance the twins' personalities.  "On their next birthday, put them in separate rooms to open their gifts.  Give the pessimist the best toys you can afford, and give the optimist a box of manure."  The parents followed these instructions and carefully observed the results. When they peeked in on the pessimist, they heard him audibly complaining, "I don't like the color of this computer…I'll bet this calculator will break…I don't like the game…I know someone who's got a bigger toy car than this…" Tiptoeing across the corridor, the parents peeked in and saw their little optimist gleefully t...

I’m not going to ask for a show of hands on this one, mainly because it is not anything that many of us would want to admit to in a forum like this, especially sitting so close to someone else.  However, even though I am not going to ask for anyone to identify themselves to us, I would challenge that many, if not most or all, of us here have done this.  We have an important event, maybe it is a job interview, maybe it is a date, maybe it is time to meet the future in-laws; something along those lines.  We jump in the shower, of course we want to be clean, wash our hair, soap our body, and rinse off.   We get out of the shower, brush our teeth, put on deodorant, and start getting dressed.  Halfway through getting dressed, we stop.  Where is that shirt?  It is the shirt that we had planned to wear for this event all week long.  We look in the closet, it should be hanging up!  Well, maybe we folded it without thinking, we look in our dr...