Serve by Design

Recently, during our Sunday morning Bible study group, we were dealing with a challenging paragraph from Luke’s Sermon on the Plain. The text included a short passage of three verses on Jesus’ statements of woe (Luke 6:24-26). The teaching was characteristically paradoxical in nature. The kind of challenge that often has the best of Bible students shaking their heads. One of our class members confessed aloud to everyone gathered around the table, “Hey! I don’t know about you, but I’m going to need some help with this one!” Image credit: istock.com Monique and I love to watch episodes of The Chosen on television. We like the vividly fresh way that the producers and actors depict the life of Jesus. Sometimes these creative writers take liberties with the literal accounts of Scripture (like a paraphrase would do!), but we have found that the end-product usually captures the essence of what the Bible is teaching. One memorable, thought-provoking, and entertaining scene (obviously extra-...

After getting home from another graveside service yesterday, one of our grown children exclaimed, “Dad you seem to have had a lot of funerals lately!” And it is true that I have had a funeral and committal service three out of the last four weeks. Sadly, this has happened many times over the past fifty years in my pastoral ministry! This is just another season in our church life! Image: adobestock.com As we continued to discuss the frequency of these recent deaths in our church, even the funeral director remarked, “As care pastor, I’m sure you keep quite busy officiating funerals in such a large congregation!” And I agreed, while noting that our two full-time pastors are also ministering to several families dealing with loss and grief. Not all of these have been with older adults either. Our community has also dealt with the loss of some precious children. But it was one of our middle-aged sons who thoughtfully remarked with this probing question from his experience in large city chu...

Pretend this is a popular game show. The host makes a statement from a field of general knowledge (literature, history, science, religion, popular culture, etc.) and the contestant identifies the answer with a question. This is delightfully counter-intuitive! Usually, we ask a question and then the hearer simply answers it with a statement. Indulge me, please. First, the statement... "This man has been made famous by questions." Answer is... "Who is Alex Trebek?" I think you have already figured out that I was teasing you with this little exercise of engagement. "What is this about? Who is this child?"  Clip Art Credit: FAVPNG.com Alex Trebek lost his battle with pancreatic cancer on November 9 and passed away at the age of eighty. He will be missed and certainly remembered by his many followers as the quintessential and iconic host of "Jeopardy!" This syndicated game show created by Merv Griffin first aired in 1964 and Trebek had been the steady...