Opening the Gate
Today we commemorate three men who accompanied Paul on his missionary journeys and shared in his hardships and sufferings for the sake of the gospel.
Today we commemorate three men who accompanied Paul on his missionary journeys and shared in his hardships and sufferings for the sake of the gospel.
When looking at a baby, we don’t generally wonder how they will die.
By the time I was confirmed in the Methodist Church, I knew a lot of Bible, and, because the pastor who led our confirmation classes was a history buff, a good deal of church history, too.
I was twenty-five years old before I finally realized my birth in 1964 had been the result of an unplanned pregnancy.
Now, I understand that it is now considered problematic to use the Hebrew Scriptures as Phillip did in this passage, as proof-texts of the divinity of Jesus, but that is not the problem I’m interested in here.
Jesus not only called Matthew to be a disciple, but received many of his friends and associates with kindness and acceptance.
“Nothing human’s not a broth of false and true.” —Frederick Buechner, Godric