My Ramblings

I recently came across what has become, to me, a great metaphor. Between 1980 and 1994 Michelangelo's paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel went through another restoration. For years artists and onlookers had assumed they knew what the paintings looked like. The restoration didn't reveal any new images. However, once much of the smoke and dirt that had accumulated on the paintings was removed the true vibrancy of the colors used by the great painter were realized. "This restoration had a profound effect on art lovers and historians, as colours and details that had not been seen for centuries were revealed. It has been claimed that as a result 'Every book on Michelangelo will have to be rewritten.'" ( Restoration of the Sistine Chapel frescoes, Wikipedia) When I heard this story on the radio, it brought something alive in me. I recently started a new sermon series, "ReDiscovering Christianity." The discovery at the Sistine Chape...

Regularly on Sunday nights, there are several people from the church who get together at my house. We eat a little, laugh a little, pray a little, etc; we enjoy being together. One of the other things we do is talk about the Bible. This tends to be accomplished by either a group member leading us in a study/discussion of a particular passage of the Bible, or by our viewing a video and following it with discussion from our Christian perspective. Over the past two weeks we have been trying something different. Two weeks ago, we replaced the Bible study or video with discussions about the sermon we heard on Sunday morning. We begin with a short prayer followed by an ice-breaker. Our ice-breaker is each of us sharing something that is personal, but not invasive; for example, "What is one trait about yourself that you really like?" The ice-breaker is followed by a 45 second recap and outline of the sermon. This is easy for us since I am usually the one who giv...

The last two months have been brutal for me. Several weeks ago I preached a sermon entitled, "distracted by the things that had to be done." The title references a story from the Bible about Mary and Martha. In the sermon I pointed out that Martha was not distracted by unimportant stuff, but by things that had to be done. How do you put aside something that "has to be done?" I think it was Martin Luther that had the answer, "I have so much work to do that I must spend at least three hours in prayer in order to accomplish it all" (my paraphrase). Things were great for me up to that Sunday; or so I thought. Since that Sunday, the Lord has allowed numerous circumstances to line up in such a way that they revealed my need for personal change. The circumstances have forced me to recognize that I had allowed my priorities to get out of order. God has spoken to me through my family life, church crisis, sermon preparation, friendships, leader...