I saw on television this week a woman who had lost $2 1/2 million in the Madoff scandal. Can you imagine? Another attorney said she had her whole retirement savings invested with him and lost it all. She said, "Now I will be working until I am 95." It has been a vivid reminder that life is far more insecure than we like to think.
A strange event happened in a small Kentucky town some years ago. It seems that there were two churches in the town and one distillery owned by an atheist. The churches were always doing battle with the atheist owner of the distillery. They had tried several times to get it closed.
An elderly saint took me on a tour of her house and showed me a little bench sitting just inside her closet door. "That's where I say my prayers," she said. "You know the Lord told us to go into your closet and shut the door." Then she confessed, "Well, I don't always shut the door, but then there's nobody here but me, so I don't suppose it matters."
Once again Ash Wednesday inaugurates the season of self-examination and self-denial we call Lent -- a name derived from the Old English “lencten” which means “lengthen”, referring to the longer period of daylight in the transition from late winter to early spring.
What makes "Humpty Dumpty" a memorable nursery rhyme is that it tells us something about ourselves. Each of us is Humpty Dumpty. Each of us is a cracked, broken egg that no power on earth can repair.
Let's talk about fasting. If this is uncomfortable for you, you're not alone. Over the years I've found that the three sermon topics that cause people the most angst are money, sex and fasting.
We give alms to help people in need or distress. Someone else is fed or housed, but we are transformed. This is how the Father who sees in secret rewards us. We would have settled for a certificate of appreciation, and instead God changes our lives.
Sermon Matthew 6:1-18 Not If, But When Check out these helpful resources Biblical Commentary Children's Sermons Hymn Lists Matthew 6:1-18 Not If, But When Dr. Philip W. McLarty This may have slipped by you in the reading of the gospel, but Jesus pays us a supreme compliment in this portion of the Sermon on [...]
Let's talk about fasting. If this is uncomfortable for you, you're not alone. Over the years I've found that the three sermon topics that cause people the most angst are money, sex and fasting.
My own initial encounters with Lent came as a boy growing up in Baltimore. Our Presbyterian congregation was a small island in a virtual sea of Italian Catholics. Most of my neighborhood chums were good Catholics, and come Ash Wednesday each year, I would see them in public with a smudge of gray on the forehead.