Tag: Christian living
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Insight
Because I live with “a doctor in the family,” I have been on one side of a lot of medical conversations with family and friends of family over the years. Recently, there was a long conversation that went something like this: “It’s a serious disease.” “You don’t feel bad, because you’re used to living with […]
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Reflecting on Acts 10 34-47
What does it mean that God “shows no partiality” – that God is not one to play favorites? Does this sound like good news to us, or not? What does God’s impartiality mean for us, for the way we relate to God, and for the way we try to live – or ought to? This […]
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Life after Birth
One of the perennial questions of the humanities is “What is a good life?” Religious studies ends up in the College of the Humanities in some universities because religion is fully absorbed in answering that question. At least, that’s one way of looking at it. Some Christians think of Christianity as being primarily about “life […]
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Guilt
Be doers of the word and not merely hearers who deceive themselves James 1:22 Have you ever just not wanted to do something right then? I was sitting in my chair, doing my morning reading, snuggled in a blanket for the first time this season with my feet propped up and the little dogs in […]
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Studying 2 Corinthians 4 16 – 5 10
We are winding up our summer study of “hopeful” texts with 2 Corinthians 4:16-5:10, Paul’s emphatic statement of hope for what cannot be seen in preference to what can, the text we’re studying for Sunday, August 29. Here are some notes [and some questions are here] on that text: BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT: As we might […]
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Reflecting on James 2 1-13
We are studying James 2:1-13 for Sunday, November 29 (which is also the First Sunday in Advent); this is James’s critique of “partiality” in the church. [A few notes on this text are here.] Here are a few questions we might want to consider in our study of the text: Who seems to be the […]
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Reflecting on James 2 14-26
We are studying James 2:14-26 for Sunday, August 16 – the source of the often-quoted Biblical saying “faith without works is dead.” [Some notes on the text are here, and here.] We studied this text not too long ago in our class, and the questions on the text at that time remain relevant, but here […]
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Minutes
Presbyterians are famous, or infamous, for doing everything by committee. Committees meet. Meetings need minutes. Minutes need writing up. Someone needs to do that.
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Taking Risks
“Taking risks” doesn’t sound like something people should do while in COVID-19 purdah[*]. We are faithfully avoiding crowds of 10 or more people and eschewing the kind of physical contact that could spread viruses for the sake of reducing risks, not running them. But there are lots of different kinds of risks. One kind of […]
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Gathering While Not Gathering
We had an abbreviated Sunday morning worship service online, via Facebook Live, at our usual gathering time on Sunday morning. Here’s what I noticed: I don’t know what I’m doing. [How does Facebook Live work? What page do I have to be on? OK, how do I make a comment? Wait, what … ? Etc.] […]
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Connection – Calm & Careful
Our congregation is small, our sanctuary is spacious, and our local community is still in the “green zone,” so we went ahead with Sunday morning worship. We didn’t “pass the peace” or the offering plate, and we left lots of space between people – we used all the sections of the sanctuary, which hasn’t happened […]
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Music
The most remarkable thing that happened today didn’t happen at church, although it happened in a church. VOICES of Kentuckiana practices in the basement of Central Presbyterian Church. This Sunday the composer of one of the songs in the spring concert, Harry Pickens, came to rehearsal to listen to the progress we were making on […]
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Locking Up
Someone always has to be the last one out of the building. It’s not always the same person, though. We almost all know how it feels by now. The building is familiar, and yet … when I’m the last one, it feels a lot bigger, a lot emptier, a lot quieter. It’s not even always […]
Matters of Interpretation 