The image Matthew chapter 21 paints of Jesus doesn’t seem to fit with the rest of the gospel descriptions. (kinda like the game; “One of these things is not like the other”). Here Jesus departs from our familiar image of He with folded hands, holding lambs and softly touching sick people on the head. Here […]
In Luke 5:12-16 Jesus touched a man with leprosy. Rabbis would not violate the law in this way, to touch what was unclean would be self defiling and disrespectful to the Law of Moses and to the Lord of the Law. Yet Jesus (being a Rabbi) did so not because he was a rebel but […]
Ken Jennings (74 time champion winner of the game show Jeopardy) is a man of answers and decision. Sure, he has a mind that has has an amazing ability to store and retrieve trivial information, amazing! However, to be a winner he also had to be able to press the button and choose (decide) from […]
What Jesus said is vitally important, we love to read the red words in the Bible. Rightly so, we tend to focus on the words of Jesus. In this series however we will focus on what Jesus did (the action he took) in the ordinary interactions of everyday life. What Jesus did provides cues to […]
In Matthew 16 Jesus begins to share of his near future sufferings and death. Peter rebuked him and said “Never Lord!” Peter had one outcome in mind and Jesus had quite another. “It is not hard to grasp at particular outcomes, especially outcomes that we know to be worth pursuing. Even if Peter was the […]
Nearing the end of his gospel Matthew records Jesus asking his disciples a weighty question: “Who do people say that I am?” after a variety of responses ranging from John the Baptist to Elijah, Jesus asked another. “Who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter said: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the […]
Jealousy had trumped brotherly love and Joseph lost his brightly colored robe and freedom. He was sold into slavery. Bad went to worse where he was – wrongfully accused of rape and thrown into jail. Innocent, yet accused by powerful people he was in jail, in a foreign country. Even though things looked pretty bleak […]
Tug O’ War. A true test of who is stronger. Straining on the rope, pulling, leveraging and digging in, all part of the struggle. At first (if the contest is semi equitable) the struggle may be marked in inches and then after the lesser opponent has completely exhausted his strength, the loss is then measured […]