By Donavon Riley –
Take away your church’s rituals and traditions. What’s left? Can you be a Christian without your rituals and traditions? Take away liturgy, and hymns, and sermons. What about now? Can you still be a Christian without them? Take away the water, words, bread and wine. Can you be a Christian without water, words, bread and wine?
By Cindy Koch –
It creeps up every year. Unexpectedly, all of a sudden, our normal and comfortable daily routine merges into the fast lane. I always seem to feel this pressure in the Spring, when the school year is ending, the kids’ performances are scheduled, the end of the year parties are planned, and the world seems to be ending as we all say goodbye at a graduation of some sort. I’ll never know why the close of such things (that happen every year, by the way) call for so many homemade cupcakes and flower bouquets. I have a strange feeling we will all be here again next June, stressing out together at the end of another school year.
By Scott Keith –
Lately, I have been considering the implication of what it means to be called to be a Christian. Is it simply that Jesus has, through his life, death, and resurrection, set me free from sin, death, and the power of the Devil, and that is it? Is there nothing more? What I mean by asking those questions is that I think we underestimate our preoccupation with our need to do something. You and I need to feel active; we need to feel as though we have contributed in some fashion to the way God feels about us and treats us.
By Cindy Koch –
Opening my front door, I saw a man and woman smiling enthusiastically. “Hi, can I share a few Bible verses with you today?” she said flipping through a well-worn floppy book. I politely consented. “Who can get enough of God’s word?” I thought. After pointing out some nice words about our happy eternity, she said, “Now I sure you are familiar with praying to God as Father, but have you prayed to God the Mother?”
By Cindy Koch –
Once upon a time, there was a town full of people who were very polite. Everyone smiled and sang, “Hi, how are you?” Ladies sauntered in leisure and men strolled at a composed quiet pace. Clothes were comfortable, boots were worn-in, and hair flowed gently around relaxed shoulders. In this little town, gardens lined the perfectly silent streets. Clear blue skies frosted the rooftops of each perfectly groomed home. The sweet smell of unity and peace and well-being swirled around every corner.
By Cindy Koch –
For years, I was told that church was a place of refuge. My pastor spoke of this mighty fortress of strength. My Sunday school teachers taught about this safe place of pasture. My parents talked about these people as if they were familiar relatives. And so I just assumed that church was a good place.
Like the warm Christmas fire, I can remember the red brick fireplace of my youth and the warm, soft church chairs on a Sunday morning.
By Joel A. Hess –
On the 18th of June, 1940, Winston Churchill concluded his historic speech to the House of Commons, saying,
“Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’”
By Ross Engel –
When my family and I moved here about six years ago, the main road that we took to get to our neighborhood was a small two-lane road that wove through miles of trees and swampland. Even the turn into our subdivision had nearly half of a mile of trees before you got to the first houses.
All of that has changed.
By Paul Koch –
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me…” Seldom does one go to the funeral of a brother or sister in Christ where these words are not spoken. And rightly so, for Psalm 23 is a powerful Word of God and it has sunk deep into the psyche of his people. The language of that Psalm, especially in the old King James translation is the go to passage from the Word of God for obituaries and those little cards at the mortuary. It may not be your favorite Psalm, but there is no denying that for most of you this is the Psalm that you’ve come in contact with more than any other.
By Ross Engel –
Strumpet. Now that’s a word one doesn’t hear very often. Shakespeare used it in Othello and Jack Sparrow used it in Pirates of the Caribbean. If you’re not familiar with the word, perhaps you’ve heard “harlot,” “hussy,” or “demimondaine.” All these words share one thing in common: they refer to ladies of the night—someone who sells themselves for pleasure. They are euphemisms for the title “whore.”
One of my favorite professors in seminary often would say, “The church is the bride of Christ, not the culture’s whore.” Recently I found myself recalling the sentiment and considering this juxtaposition.
