Pastor's Column Mercy Sunday, 2019 I turned around to see who had spoken to me and when I turned I saw seven golden lampstands, and surrounded by them a figure like a Son of man, dressed in a long robe tied at the waist with a golden girdle. His head and his hair were white as white wool or as snow, his eyes were a burning flame , his speech like burnished bronze when it has been refined as in a furnace, and his voice like the sound of the ocean. In his right hand he was holding seven stars, out of his mouth came a sharp sword, double-edged, and his face was like the sun shining in all its force. Revelation 1:13-16 I don’t know about you, but this description of Jesus does not sound like the

Pastor’s Column Easter Sunday, 2019 This week, my yard has had regular visits from some uninvited (though cute) guests, just in time for Easter: two mallard ducks and two white bunnies. They come and go as if they own the place. All I need now are a few chicks, colored eggs and Easter lilies and I will have all the symbols most people associate with Easter. Yet Easter is so much more than chicks, ducklings, eggs and bunnies. The truth is more incredible than anything we could ever imagine. There exists another world, very close to our own, another dimension as it were, but invisible to our eyes at present. How do we know it exists? We know it because Jesus, who came from that world into

Pastor’s Column Palm Sunday, 2019 It’s funny how so many people pay strict attention to their health, finances, education, material possessions and well-being, but pay little or no attention to their souls (which last forever) and what makes us pleasing in the sight of God, like keeping his commandments. We tell ourselves that we would never be among the crowd that would crucify Our Lord, but our actions will tell us the real story. Every year we hear the account of Our Lord’s passion on Palm Sunday and then again on Good Friday. The various reaction of the crowd reminds me of a song by the Stylistics that has these lines in it: ”First you love me, then you hate me, that’s a game for fools

Pastor’s Column 5th Sunday of Lent April 7, 2019 For his sake I have accepted the loss of all things, and I consider them so much rubbish that I may gain Christ and be found in him. I depend on faith to know him and the power of his resurrection, and the sharing of his sufferings by being conformed to his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection of the dead! Philippians 3:8-14 When I was in Lisieux, France, I picked up a holy card of St. Theresa of Lisieux from her convent. There is a phrase of hers on it that can be a “Rule of Life” for us that says, Let us keep our eyes fixed on heaven, the one true object of our labors. In this frequently confusing and often difficult world that w