Give Me A Break!

This blog will not be updated for the next month or so.

See you in August!

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The Broken Church: Reformation Part 2

Read Part 1  here . This past week was the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, when Martin Luther famously posted his 95 theses , a list of topics of debate that had been bothering him. He was not expecting to start a new denomination of churches, he just wanted to start a conversation about some problematic aspects of the Medieval Catholic Church. I wonder if he would have still posted them if he knew that this one act would splinter the Church and result in the loss of millions* of lives? Luther posted those theses because he saw a need for reform in the Catholic church, and he was not alone--other contemporaries of his, such as Erasmus, were also calling for reformation within the Church. Eventually even the leadership of the Catholic church recognized a need for reform, and initiated a Counter-Reformation, beginning with the Council of Trent in 1545. But it was too late. The Church had already splintered. Pandora's Box had been opened. The  documentary series  we watc
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Hearing God

This weekend, I attended a seminar on hearing God held at my church. Some might think that such a seminar is an exercise in wishful thinking, and yet, I believe nearly everyone who was there was able to share at some point some story of how God had communicated with them. Sometimes it was through circumstance, sometimes it was through someone else, sometimes through a dream or vision, and sometimes through the Bible, but the most common way was through the 'still, small voice'; an authoritative prompting or strong sense that one ought to be doing something, and somehow you just know it came from God.  "The  Lord  said, 'Go out and stand on the mountain  in the presence of the  Lord , for the  Lord  is about to pass by.'  Then a great and powerful wind  tore the mountains apart and shattered  the rocks before the  Lord , but the  Lord  was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the  Lord  was not in the earthquake.   After the earthquake ca
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Advent Week 2: War and Peace

Lately, every year, around this time, we start seeing people post angry rants on social media about a so-called "War on Christmas." This is especially ironic, considering that, on the first Christmas, angels appeared to the shepherds proclaiming peace ( Luke 2:8-20 ), celebrating the birth of the one who was called the Prince of Peace ( Isaiah 9:6-7 ). A friend of mine shared on facebook a month or so ago an article on The Guardian , chronicling the backlash against a British grocery chain's Christmas ads. One of the issues people had with the commercial was their portrayal of a Muslim family celebrating Christmas. At first, I have to admit, I did think it was a bit odd... and I started to wonder why  it didn't seem incongruous to everyone to have people of one faith celebrating a holiday from another faith, when I realized something. Christmas is really three different holidays that have all got mixed up. I don't mean Hanukkah and Kwanzaa; I mean three differ
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