Can prayer actually bring about physical healing in a person’s life? Is it right to pray for someone to be healed? How do we make sense of those times when we pray and the person is not healed? Are “divine healings” really just fraudulent parlor tricks?
Let’s start with Jesus. Continue reading
A Facebook friend of mine shared a video of a “divine healing” this morning. His comment on this video was simply “smh” – internet shorthand for “shaking my head.” The video showed a well-dressed preacher praying for a young boy, who apparently had one hand significantly shorter than the other due to some kind of abnormality. The preacher had the boy put his hands together, palm to palm, and then he adjusted the boy’s hands so that his fingertips were offset by a couple of inches. After calling on the name of Jesus and on the power of the Holy Spirit, and after encouraging the congregation to pray in the same way, the unbelievable happened:
The boy’s fingertips slowly moved closer and closer to each other. Continue reading
Sometimes we pray and expect God to answer our prayers. Sometimes we pray and hope God will hear us. Sometimes we don’t even know how to pray.
Fifty people died in a shooting rampage in Orlando early yesterday morning. The twenty-year-old son of Pastor Bill Greiner, the senior pastor of our sister church Eagle Ridge Church of God in Midland, died in a car collision last week, early on Sunday morning. And ten years ago last week, I wrote a blog post in which I tried to process the shooting deaths of seven people across the alley from our apartment in Indianapolis, which came just a month after the deaths of five people from our college in another auto collision.
How do we make sense of the tragedies in our lives? Where is God in all this mess?
Yesterday afternoon, Tara and I had the opportunity to sing in a “choral evensong,” a formal worship service in which most of the service is sung by a choir and accompanied by a pipe organ. This took place at Trinity Episcopal Church in Bay City, a church where we have sung on several occasions in the past few years. It’s a beautiful historic building with a high vaulted ceiling and wonderful acoustics. Prominent throughout the sanctuary, like many buildings of that period, are several stained glass windows.
I found myself looking up at one of these stained glass windows at the end of this evensong service. We choir members had walked down from the choir loft to the back of the sanctuary, where we sat to listen to the last piece of music from the pipe organ. As I looked up at the stained glass, I was amazed by the beauty of what I saw: not just the picture displayed in the window, but the way the glass shined in the sun. Here is something completely material – a window comprised of many different shapes and colors of glass – that shines with the light of something beyond itself, something immaterial. The beauty of the window cannot be seen completely until the light shines through the glass. Continue reading
“You know, it’s like I always said… the more things change, the more they stay the same.”
These were the final words spoken in my favorite television series of all time, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. After seven years of stories, conflicts, battles, and drama, the space station called “Deep Space Nine” comes to a place of peace and stability. The local bartender (a Ferengi named Quark) finds himself tending to his shop there once again as he had done for many years. And as the final episode draws to a close, Quark speaks the above words, which has become a favorite quote of mine over the years.
Life is full of transitions and adjustments. We leave one place or situation in life, and we move on to other challenges. One relationship ends, and another begins. Sometimes, when we’re experiencing many changes, we can feel a little out of sorts – as if the world is somehow unstable or unpredictable. For some people, this kind of unpredictability can be invigorating and exciting. For others (like me), big changes are a bit stressful. Continue reading
God is present and active in every situation of our lives. Sometimes we don’t always recognize God’s presence and activity within us and around us. But occasionally we catch a glimpse of what God is doing, and that can propel us forward in our journey of following Jesus. I had one such experience toward the end of our mission trip to Guatemala earlier this month. Continue reading
Jesús es el mejor. Jesus is the best.
On our mission trip to Guatemala, I had the special privilege of speaking during the Sunday morning worship service at “The Tracks.” Pastor Walter, the pastor of that congregation, graciously gave up his sermon time so that Pastor Jerry and I could both share thoughts from scripture that might be inspiring or challenging for the congregation. I’ll admit the truth: normally I prepare a new sermon for each speaking engagement I receive, but this time, for various reasons, I reused a sermon I had preached at Mt. Haley a few weeks earlier. Continue reading
I learned something very important on this year’s mission trip to Guatemala: coming home on a red-eye flight while changing time zones during the “spring ahead” change to Daylight Saving Time is not very much fun at all. This past Sunday, we took off from Guatemala City at midnight Central Standard Time, and four hours later we landed in Washington, D.C., at 6am Eastern Daylight Time. That was, in a word, rough.
Of course I learned more important things on this trip, as well. In the next few posts, I would like to share some of my reflections from this week-long mission trip to Central America. My hope is that this will give you a good sense of what took place during this trip, as well as how this trip’s lessons can connect to our everyday lives back at home. Continue reading
Today is “Super Tuesday,” a day in which some presidential candidates will vault ahead in their pursuit of their party’s nomination, and others will experience great disappointment. As a nation, we are waiting with bated breath to see what happens next.
Today is also the day of another snowstorm here in central Michigan. We are projected to see 6-10 inches of snowfall by this evening. Looking outside right now, I see a snow-covered road and beautifully dusted pine trees. It’s beginning to look a lot like winter. Time will tell how much today’s snowstorm will affect people’s lives, in terms of cancelled events, power outages, and auto accidents.
Today is March 1, as well – the first day of a new month. Who knows what this month will hold? The presidential race will surely change; hopefully our weather will, also. As one Facebook friend wrote today, “March truly comes in like a LION.” An old adage suggests that if March comes in like a lion, it will go out like a lamb. If the weather looks horrible on March 1 (like it does today), then in a few weeks it will look much better. One can hope, anyway.
But I see another layer of meaning in that saying. On this “Super Tuesday,” we are focusing our collective attention on a few individuals whose names appear on ballots in thirteen states. Many lions are competing for supremacy in the power struggle of our political system.
If March begins like a lion, how will it end? Continue reading
Rachamim. That’s an ancient Hebrew word pronounced “rah-hah-MEEM.” In the Old Testament, it is often translated to mean love, mercy, or compassion. Rachamim comes from the root word rechem (“reh-HEM”), which refers to a mother’s womb. So this kind of love and mercy is a motherly kind of love, the kind that loves you before you realize it, the kind that loves you even before you are held or seen or named. And this is one of the ways that the Bible describes God’s love for us. Continue reading