Pastor’s Weekly Letter

In the middle years of the nineteenth century, a clergyman named Charles Kingsley was the personal chaplain to Queen Victoria of England.  He was a man whom she greatly admired.  The story is told that one day she asked him the secret of his beautiful life.  To which he replied, “I had a friend.” Most of us would not think of describing our own lives as beautiful.  And we would probably be embarrassed if someone else should do so.  But we would doubtless agree with him that whatever beauty there is within us is largely attributable to our friends.  People […]

Do you know that a sickness of the soul, no less than a sickness of the body, can become a chronic condition?  Look, for a moment, at your own life and tell me if this isn’t true.  Could you not put your finger on an unhealthy spiritual condition that has remained unimproved year after year?  It doesn’t take an expert to analyze this kind of problem; all it takes is honesty. Were you touchy, overly sensitive and difficult to live with years ago?  Look at that area of your life today.  Has anything changed?  Has the condition improved at all?  […]

In the course of our daily lives, it is such an easy thing for us to lose our awareness of God.  There are so many things that can come in and obscure His presence.  Trouble can do it and so can success.  Sometimes it’s just plain business at home or at work.  In the hectic pace of modern living, God somehow gets pushed out of our thoughts and seemingly out of our lives.  Then one day, something happens to remind us that we need Him; so, we start to look for Him.  And at times like that He can seem […]

Today is Easter Sunday.  It is a day in which the message of Easter tells us:  Don’t give up; don’t quit; don’t throw in the towel.  This life is not all that there is.  Stay tuned.  There is much more to come. You and I need that message, probably more than we know.  I suspect that this is the  reason more people return to the Church on Easter than any other day of the year.  Somehow, we know that human life cannot find its total expression within the limits of time.  Everything here, everything around us and within us cries […]

Today is Palm Sunday, 2018.  This week started with Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem and ended with his tragic death on Calvary.   In a sense, it is very strange that this week should be called holy.  As we walked through it, unfolding before our eyes was a scene of deception and dishonor, betrayal and denial, political expedience and religious corruption, all of which culminated in the greatest crime of history.  Judged by the scenery, this could easily be called Hell Week.  But the strength and courage of one man took those seven days of shame and transformed them into […]