It was helpless feeling being locked in. I would’ve felt just as helpless if I’d been locked out. It gave me an insight: When you’re locked in – or locked out, there’s no sweeter sound than for someone to say to you, “Come on in, friend, the gate’s open.”
Her question was, “What are you most thankful for?” I made a list of all the things I have to be thankful for. To my surprise, what came to mind were not the big ticket items, but the simple gifts of life we often take for granted.
People, especially young people, ask how and when I felt called to be a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ? They want to know if their experience is normative, or if their struggle is one that only they themselves have come to know.
The disorientation that lurks inside us consists of countless ways in which our desires are out of line. We love less what should be loved more. We love more what should be loved less.
Our first reading comes from a book of the Bible largely neglected in the Church today, namely the Song of Solomon––also known as the Song of Songs, or in other words, the best song of them all. This book from the Old Testament was not always neglected.
The original-language title of this book (Song of Songs) is a Hebrew way of talking about the FINEST song just as “king of kings” means the greatest king. The book is comprised of the love songs sung by a man and a woman who can see only each other.
Ecclesiastes 8 Funeral Sermon: Four Necessary Tasks (Molin). We have gathered in the place today to do four things. Grieve. Celebrate. Fellowship. Worship.
We can’t change the seasons of life, but we can make decisions that will affect how we live in those seasons. This is the perfect time to throw out the trash in our lives. Perhaps you need to let go of some grudge against another person.
Strong, hot, black coffee and plenty of it helps to sober up a drunk, or so it is said. I’d suggest that Ecclesiastes is the strong, hot, black coffee of the Bible that can sober us up when our religion ignores the countless forms of human folly.
This one loved God so much that obedience to the rules had become beside the point. This one, this ten percent-er, was so grateful that he could do nothing other than give 100 percent of his thanks to Jesus. Have you ever been that grateful? So grateful that it overwhelms you?