That’s where the Jewish people were when the Prophet Ezekiel brought the Word of the Lord to them in about 580 BC. Their armies had been wiped out, their land had been ravished, the walls of their fortress city Jerusalem had been leveled, their awesome Temple had been ruthlessly torn down and all their leaders […]

I remember a conversation I had during my early years as a pastor, with a smart-alecky young man who bragged about being an atheist. To prove his point, he dramatically spread his arm in one direction, saying, “Look, I don’t see God over there.” Then he swept his arm around from one side to the […]

Some of us have been meeting together for in-person worship during the past two months, after worshiping only on-line for more than a year. For me, it’s been good to see some familiar ABC faces (at least the upper half) and be reminded of times when we could more fully enjoy each other’s presence. Now, […]

No, Henry, that verse wasn’t written for you. It was written to hopeless Jewish prisoners of war who had been taken captive into Babylon, almost 600 years before Jesus was born. I know, you were just passing on a Facebook meme that someone else sent to you. You filled in your favorite Bible verse, and […]

I was considering what to write about today, in the light of the renewed and escalating COVID concerns we’re all facing. The word that came to me was longsuffering, because that seems to be what we’re all feeling right now. COVID has severely limited our lives for more than a year, and it was beginning to […]

Many years ago (so long ago that none of you should try to figure out whom I’m talking about), a married couple were struggling to stay together. I had several conversations with them trying to help them resolve their differences. One day, he gave up and moved out. She called me in a panic and […]

The evolution of plants and animals on earth has been described as a process of natural selection over millions of years. The theory is that small genetic changes happen all the time (as we see in the new variants of the Coronavirus), and the changes that improve a plant or animal’s chance to survive win […]

Jesus chose his twelve disciples very carefully, making sure they had the right pedigree and college degrees. Not! They were a bunch of nobodies, at best. They included a few smelly fishermen, an anti-government activist and a tax collector. Maybe the least likely of them was the tax collector, a young man named Matthew. Guys […]

ABC’s Intergenerational Partnership: that’s what we’re calling one of our church’s four “growing edges” as we move into our post-COVID future. We’ve long recognized the gradual aging of our congregation and the diminishing numbers of young people among us. This was confirmed by our strategic planning self-study in 2015. In an attempt to change this […]

As psychologists reflect on the world’s worst pandemic in over a hundred years, more and more scholarly articles are being published discussing its effects in terms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.* During the past two years, people have described many difficult experiences, including loss of loved ones, long-term grief, loneliness, lack of physical contact, job insecurity, […]