Thoughts and Musings from My Faith Journey
Over at Red Letter Christians, a former Tennessee Prison Chaplain named Michael McRay has written an article explaining why he opposes the death penalty. I’ve read a lot and written a little about this subject and I thought I knew all the arguments. It turns out that I didn’t. I commend the article to you.
Link: http://goo.gl/swEnfH
I started re-reading Works of Love by Søren Kierkegaard over vacation and I wanted to share this quote with you. It’s part of his excellent exposition of Luke 6.43-45:
“Yet it remains firm that love is to be known by its fruits. But those sacred words of that text are not said to encourage us to get busy judging one another; they are rather spoken admonishingly to the single individual, to you, my listener, and to me, to encourage him not to allow his love to become unfruitful but to work so that it could be known by its fruits, whether or not these come to be known by others. He certainly is not to work so that love will be known by the fruits but to work so that it could be known by the fruits.”
A Service of Death and Resurrection for Mike Ford will be held Saturday, July 12, 2014 at 10 am in the Sanctuary. Jenny and I will officiate.
This past Sunday I asked three questions of my own at the 8:15 service and promised that I would share them on this blog. Here they are (slightly refined):
Please let me know if you have any thoughts.
During my vacation, I moved this site to a different hosting service. Now that it’s hosted by wordpress.com (just like the church website). This shouldn’t make any difference to you, but let me know if you have any problems.
This morning there weren’t any questions from the congregation at first service (so I asked a few of my own) and then there were way more than I could get to at second service. Jenny and I will try to get to all of the others via sermons or blog posts in the weeks to come.
Jenny and I are looking forward to the baptism of Addison Elizabeth Duey, daughter of Mary and Wesley Duey, tomorrow (Sunday, July 6, 2014). This baptism will take place at the 10:30 service. Hope to see you there. Addison is the granddaughter of Barb and Randy Leckron, and the great-granddaughter of Melvin and Dolores Leckron.
Jenny has pointed out to me that I began officially serving as a pastor at the Piedmont and Climax United Methodist Churches on July 1, 1994. This means that I’ve completed 20 years of pastoral service in the United Methodist Church. It is a wonderful thing to be at Abilene First and I’m looking forward to spending year 21 with all of you.