This is the day after Easter. As I sit in my usual chair at Starbucks, on my second refill, I'd like to share a few Easter reflections with you.  In no particular order, sort of like my sock drawer. The message of Easter never gets old.  As one of my preaching friends (@collinpacker) said, "If you can't preach on Easter, you can't preach."  In other words, there is no need to create a clever sermon -- just tell the Easter story.  Letting people know that God still raises the dead is the most hopeful message I know of.  That alone should be enough to get a preacher fired up. We have a great team of volunteers.  On Easter weekend, our normal attendance doubles.  This means twice as many kids, twice as many communion cups, greeters, cars, trash bags, programs, etc.  Many of the people who come to an Easter service…

Even if you've never read the book that inspired it, you've have certainly seen a bumper sticker, t-shirt, or bracelet that read "WWJD?" For the snarky among us, it does not stand for What Would Jesus Drive? but for What Would Jesus Do?  Hybrid owners have been misled. WWJD comes from a book by Charles Sheldon entiled, "In His Steps."  It is the story of how Sheldon challenged his church to constantly ask themselves the question, "What would Jesus do?"  If faced with a difficult decision or choice, "What would Jesus do?"  It is a question that forces people to remember that they serve a higher purpose than just their own desires. But the question is not entirely accurate.  We can certainly ask "What would Jesus do?" and find examples of how he treated people, handled their criticisms, and treated the hurting with compassion. But what if we also asked,…

As I've been preparing my Easter sermon, I've been thinking about life and death, and then life again. One of the best ways to understand the meaning of Easter is found in Romans 6.  In this great passage, the apostle Paul uses the act of baptism to drive home what God sought to accomplish in the death and resurrection of Jesus. We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. -- Romans 6:4 When we respond to God's grace in baptism, we are experiencing our own death; in fact, we are being buried into death -- just as Jesus experienced when he was taken down from the cross and placed in the tomb.  We are crucifying our sinful nature, counting ourselves dead to its desires and ways. But…

At this moment, I have multiple receipts in my wallet.  My wallet functions as my mobile filing cabinet, holding receipts for everything from pizza to office supplies (I can hear someone already, "There's an app for that!").  It may not be the most sophisticated system, but it works.  Most of the time. What is the purpose of a receipt, whether it is printed out or comes by email?  The purpose of a receipt is to confirm that the proper payment has been received. At the cross, Jesus paid our debt.  Through our sinful rebellion, we had rung up an astronomical debt with God.  A debt that we could never repay, no matter how hard we tried. In the resurrection, God printed out the receipt for our debt.  He provided proof that the payment had been paid in full. Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel…

“From a spiritual perspective, getting lost is unavoidable. Human nature is fundamentally flawed by sin. If people live their lives apart from God and follow their intuitions, they stay lost. That is because getting lost — physically or spiritually — is easy.” -- John Kramp That is so true.