Soul Sister Time

              As we Journey from Ash Wednesday through Lent to Holy Week and land at our destination of Easter Sunday, let’s consider some of the people who were assigned to the space and time that these events took place and how their choices and experiences related to their experience of Jesus.  In our attempt to understand their statements and actions, we might see our own reaction to Jesus.               The first three were missing during Easter week.  It seems they may have gone into hiding while all of Jerusalem was in a frenzy about whom He was and where He went that week.  Yet, their significance to the Easter story cannot be forgotten.  Jesus Himself stated that every time the story of Easter is told, their story, especially Mary’s actions, should be recounted.           ...

              I was a little bewildered when the Holy Spirit chose to alert me to a deeper meaning of the Sermon on the Mount.  Do you ever have those moments when you read something in the scripture that causes you to want to shut the book and not read further?  As I read this familiar passage, God pointed out that I was guilty of the sins Jesus exposed in His sermon.   I thought to myself: Surely this is not what the Holy Spirit is saying to me .  I even read back through it, looking for something else I could focus on.  But no, it was clear God was guiding me to reflect on how this sermon exposed my personal sin in ways I would rather not consider.                I didn’t like the feeling of reading a sermon that exposed my sin.  I wanted my Bible reading to point out how I could do better, or even how much bett...

Do you panic when you become overwhelmed by the conflicting demands of life?  Life has a way of piling one thing on top of another all at the same time.  You never see it coming until, like an avalanche, you are buried in competing loyalties mixed with harsh realities that cannot be avoided.  My most recent intersection of overwhelmed and caught off guard was caused by the truth that there was absolutely no way I could possibly fulfill my responsibilities without the help of God.  Rather than panic, I fully embraced that I was utter incapable of doing everything my life was asking of me.  I recited Psalm 121:1-2 I lift up my eyes to the mountains— where does my help come from?  My help comes from the Lord , the Maker of heaven and earth . This helped remind me that there was absolutely no way that I could accomplish all that was required of me. Could this be the reason that God sends me more than I can handle?  Is this the...

              Our lives on earth will require accepting the unacceptable.  Every single human being must face that they cannot get their own way all the time.  And, thank God, we cannot.  There are two reasons to be thankful that we cannot get our own way.  I thank God I cannot get my own way because my way may be harmful to myself and others.  I don’t always know for sure that my way would not cause unintended damage to other people.  I am limited in my understanding and do not have full view of all the ramifications for my choices.  This was the case for the very first sinners.  Eve did not disobey God and eat of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil because she wanted to sin against God.  Adam ate because he saw that nothing had changed for Eve, and the idea of being like God, whom he admired, was more desirable than obeying His command not to eat....

Recent days have revealed the worst in people on social media.  My Facebook feed that was once filled with cute babies and fun vacations pictures has become a venue for crude debate and accusation. I have found myself amazed at the comments from people I admire and people I know in a different setting to be level-headed and kind as they share their views about the political changes in America.  If an alien were reporting back to his planet about what how people with different opinions treated one another, he would have an unfavorable report to make for sure.  The culture of the United States has moved far away from the instructions God gives us in His word about how to live.  Even our churches are yielding to the culture and slipping from the orthodox teaching of the Bible handed down to us from the Apostles.  Rather than calling Christians out of a former way of life and live a life transformed by the Holy Spirit inside of you, the church is ignoring t...

              In his famous book, Confessions , one of the books I believe every Christian should read, Augustine states: The familiar evil was more powerful than the unfamiliar good .  The context for this statement was his description of how he finally relinquished his soul to the care of God and became a Christian.  Augustine was so entrenched in his life of sin that he struggled to give up his mistress and other vices in order to surrender to God.               Once he yielded to the power of God, the unfamiliar good became a way of life.  He became one of the most influential Christians writers, and his books are still relevant today. As I re-read his salvation story in Confessions , I recognized that I could relate to his statement even as a Christian.  Evil remains too familiar to me.  I am not talking about the familiar...

              I love that it is the Apostle Peter who insists the absurdity that we can be holy as God is holy in his letter to Christians (1 Peter 1:10— For it is written:  Be holy, because I am holy ).  Peter of all the apostles had a hard time pulling off holy.               A rough fisherman with a big mouth, he was the guy who was always getting himself in trouble by saying what was on everyone else’s mind.  Jesus rebuked him more than once—when Peter told him that he would not die on the cross, Jesus said Get behind me Satan (Matt.6:23)!  When Jesus wanted to wash Peter’s feet, he refused at first (John 13:8); when Jesus was surrendering to the soldiers, Peter cut off one of their slave's ears causing Jesus to heal one last time on the way to the cross (Matt. 26:51).  Of course, the most famous failure of Peter was his den...