Pastor Tom's Journal

Increasing Daily Ask and Answer Accept Advance Admire     Growing Stronger And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon him . .– Luke 2:40   Jesus grew.   He was not born strong, wise, and full of grace.   He was born who He was: the Son of God, but the Son of God, God the Son had emptied Himself and taken on Himself the form of a servant.   Therefore, it was required that He submit to the process of maturation physically, emotionally, relationally, intellectually, and spiritually.   We, when we were children, often wanted the privileges of adults. When we became adults, we longed for the care free life we enjoyed as children.   Seldom have we relished the gut-wrenching, humiliating, submissive, and painful experiences that are sometimes associated with growing up. In the quest to avoid some of these, there are among us those who have never grown up or hav...

  Christmas Thoughts   Tom Sims Madonna and Angels, Fra Angelico  (1387-1455, Italian)   Christmas Is Not for Cowards   6 "This is what the LORD Almighty says: 'In a little while I will once more shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land. 7 I will shake all nations, and the desired of all nations will come, and I will fill this house with glory,' says the LORD Almighty.   (Haggai 2:6-7, NIV)   There is nothing inherently soothing about Christmas. Experience teaches us that chestnuts roasting on an open fire is nostalgic aspiration. Christmas is a time of stress, hurry, guilt, and fatigue. It takes courage to shake loose from the expectations of our idyllic images and experience what the shepherds first embraced: glory! In its rawest form, the word glory refers to weight. As we said in the sixties and seventies, “That’s heavy man.” God said that in fulfilling His promises, He would shake things up to the very foundatio...

Good Tidings, Great Joy! … I bring you good tidings …” - from Luke 2:10 Christmas is about good news. It is the gospel message delivered by God’s messenger to all who will hear. There was nothing frightening or negative about the message the angel brought to these shepherds Nor was there any indication that they received the word because of any particular merit or worthiness on their part. It came to them by grace and God knew that they would respond with spontaneous, childlike faith, and inquisitive wonder. God knew that they would receive the message as good tidings. How do we receive words from God? To be more specific: How do we receive the Word of God that comes to us with great regularity and is always available to our eyes, ears, and hearts? Have we grown cold, indifferent, and spiritually grumpy in our familiarity with the good news? It is no mere concession to secularity that we should say, “Merry Christmas!” It is the ancient wisdom of the Word of God that says, ”a merry hea...

  Malachi 3:16-4:6 Then those who revered the Lord spoke with one another. The Lord took note and listened, and a book of remembrance was written before him of those who revered the Lord and thought on his name. They shall be mine, says the Lord of hosts, my special possession on the day when I act, and I will spare them as parents spare their children who serve them. Then once more you shall see the difference between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve him. See, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble; the day that comes shall burn them up, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. But for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. And you shall tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet, on the day when I act, says ...

I had a terrible night of dreaming. I can usually resolve my dreams to some extent, as I dream them, and then wake up with some sort of peace. It was time to get up and all I felt was a sense of longing to get it resolved. As it turned out, that sense of longing was the missing piece to bring what I thought was my well -prepared sermon together this morning. That sense of longing was unifying them. The first Sunday of Advent. There will be signs, All of our Christian holidays and calendars were created by human beings who were longing for God, for meaning, for community, and for some sort of order in their thinking. They are based upon the Bible and written revelation, but they are not mandated, and they are not essential to the faith. You can practice them, disagree about how to practice them, experiment with them, or ignore them completely and still be a Christian, but they are useful tools for meditating on meaning , for gathering as community, , for ordering our thoughts and teach...