Isaiah 11:1-10 A stump speaks of what has been. A long time ago an acorn lay in the ground. It was buried under the leaves and other debris of the forest. It disappeared from sight until one day a tiny shoot came up out of the ground. It managed not to be stepped on or…
Isaiah 9:2-7 I was an Emergency Medical Technician during my years as a pastor in Ohio in the early 1980s. EMTs are trained to arrive at an emergency and stabilize the person injured or sick and then take them to the hospital. When there was an emergency, the siren went off and we were called….
Malachi 2:17-3:5 For just about two thousand years the church has been expecting the return of Jesus. The early church expected Jesus to come soon. Generation after generation has expected Jesus soon. From time to time people have been so caught up in this expectation that they sold all they had and waited on a…
Isaiah 40:1-11 All over the western world and maybe elsewhere at this time of year at thousands of concert halls or churches or school auditoriums, this scenario is being played out. You may have been an observer or maybe even a participant in one of these events. The audience is assembled and then the musicians…
Matthew 2:1-2, 9-11 In a Christmas devotional, Brennan Manning makes the point that Jesus is for the shipwrecked. From time to time I take the ferry from Ceuta to Algeciras. We drive our car onto the ferry and walk upstairs where we sit in comfortable chairs drinking a soda and eating a snack and reading…