(Thoughts from Friday, October 7, 2011.) I'm not a very emotional person. If anything, sometimes I feel guilty because I don't have the same strong reaction to negative occurrences as many in the same (or similar) situations. While others can be devastated by an event, I can seem emotionally oblivious. This works out well in…
Category: Pastoral
Don’t Bring Your Sadness Down on Me, Peace Is Free
Peace. Isn't there is a universal longing for that elusive condition? Yes, there are those who relish constant turmoil, but I like to think that they are the minority. As a whole, don't we all want peace, whether it be between nations, between individuals, or in our own hearts? This talk will focus on the…
“After We Had Torn Ourselves Away From Them…”
VISION Keeping to my promise of sharing one letter a month, we are now at the second "I" in my VISION for the Antrim Church of Christ. Yes, I do realize that technically I've broken that promise, but I don't think you can blame me for the unseasonably-early pre-Halloween snow that cancelled church last week….
Occupy Sadness
A New Character One of the blogs that I check out daily is "The Corner" at the National Reivew Online. It has multiple contributors, but I'll admit I've never been really good, even with books, about remembering who the authors are (assuming I even check with a shared blog like "The Corner"). However, this past…
Of Witches and Goblins and Big Black Cats
As many of you know, I avoid creating sermons for holidays—they seem so perfunctory and repetitive. That, and I'm rebellious and stubborn at heart, so having the calendar implicitly tell me I must do something makes me want to do it all the less. Now Halloween, which is a couple weeks away, isn't a holiday…
Atheist Elementary School
One of the RSS feeds I follow is for a web site called Religion Dispatches. I will admit that I generally just read the short blurbs in the feed instead of going to the site—as a whole their pieces are on the liberal end of the spectrum and my traditional Christian hairline doesn't have much…
Missing the Bus
Introduction Today's sermon is going to be brief and a bit short on scriptural references. That's because I think the testimony it includes from a friend of mine is so powerful it's best to let it almost entirely stand on its own. First, about my friend. I can't say he and I were close…but he…
What Kind of Friend Are You?
VISION When I shared my VISION for the Antrim Church of Christ, I promised to speak on one letter of that acronym per month…and since I'll be heading to check out the Hartt School in Hartford with Mikey next Sunday, keeping my word means that today we are on the letter S. Stepping back two…
Giving God What He Needs
Do you enjoy movies that involve angels? Although I do, I worry that secular films with biblical themes can cause us to confuse that which is actually in Scripture with what is just in the imagination of a Hollywood writer. Regardless, a while back Michelle, Mikey, and I watched Legion, whose overall plot is that…
Heaping Burning Coals on 9/11
Ten years ago today I was sitting in my office at Tickets.com in Fairfax, Virginia. I was on the phone with my boss, and she was doing my yearly review. As we were chatting, she mentioned she saw a report on TV that a plane crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers. She…
Nowhere to Go and Nothing to Do
A couple weeks back I snuck out to the Hillsborough Circle K on my motorcycle to grab lunch. Although, as seems constant with any food I really enjoy, they've since stopped carrying the cheeseburger rolls I was trekking for…those midday runs are a nice break in a work-from-home day even if all I am rewarded…
A Grumpy Person’s Kryptonite
One of the 242 people or organizations I follow on Twitter is Sylvia, a person who works in marketing at a hard rock venue down in Worcester, Massachusetts. I'm not entirely sure if I've met her…but I suspect I have. Either way, I think I started following her because the club's Twitter account suggested I…
Cherry Trees
A VISION for Our Church Over a month ago I shared my VISION for the Antrim Church of Christ, followed a week later by a sermon on the "V" in VISION…which stood for "value"…as in, "My vision for the Antrim Church of Christ is that we will only get our values from the Bible and…
Somebody Misses You
This article was written for the next edition of the local Antrim, New Hampshire paper, The Limrik. Although the pews have a habit of filling up just before church starts, summer activities definitely have meant it's less crowded during the Sunday services here at the Antrim Church of Christ. Luckily, e-mail, Facebook, and various other…
Verboten at 30,000 Feet
Famous Last Words When someone is going to leave for a very long time…especially when that "long time" is death itself…we have a habit of putting great weight on their last words. With some, perhaps it is an attempt at reconciliation before there is no more chance to right the wrong. With others, perhaps it…