Psalm 107.1-16

This coming Sunday we will be focusing on Psalm 107.1-16. In this passage we hear a common theme ----- crying to the Lord. We find this particularly in verse 6, "Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress." As I have been thinking about crying to the Lord, I thought of the baby birds that cry out to their parents for food. They make quite a racket. While the birds are little, the parents will spend countless hours working to feed these criers. Recently I read a blog post that was encouraging supervisors / managers to not be enablers of the crying baby birds in their work places. But instead they needed to show tough love so that these people that refused to grow in their careers would be given the chance to fly. I understand the point ----- but for the Christian there is always the place of crying to the Lord in our distress and in our trouble. That might be summed up most succinctly in the prayer "Our Father". The Lord is our Father and we can ask him to provide our daily bread. For just a moment, consider if you need to spend some time crying out to the Lord? ----- rather than trying to handle situations by yourself. Always remember that God hears our prayers.

Yesterday's sermon

I got this as an email this morning. This is pertaining to yesterday's sermon.

Psalm 106.1-6 & 19-23

This coming Sunday we will be focusing on Psalm 106.1-6 & 19-23. In this psalm the writer comes back to the story of Israel in the wilderness. During Israel's time wandering in the wilderness they rebelled against God and made the image of a golden calf to worship. The psalmist writes in verses 19-20: "They made a calf at Horeb and worshiped a cast image. They exchanged the glory of God for the image of an ox that eats grass." Here we can see that the Israelites created an image that had to be fed ----- rather than worshiping the one true God that fed them manna in the wilderness. But, the psalmist hesitates to pronounce judgment on these past sins ----- because he judges himself along with Israel's mistakes. He says this in verse 6: "Both we and our ancestors have sinned; we have committed iniquity, have done wickedly." In this verse we can see the proper response to reading from the Bible. Instead of casting judgment upon the people of the Bible ----- we should realize that we have sinned and committed iniquity and done wickedly. Have you all ever cast judgment on the sins of those who have gone before us?

Sermon from last week

I have had a number of folks tell me that the sermon that I preached from last week really hit home. As a result of this there has been much discussion about it. I would encourage you to listen to it if you haven't had a chance. I am sorry that there is a little background noise on it. We are working on that problem. Also, please add to the discussion. Are there traditions and stories that we need to do away with so that we can live into God's story? You can listen to this sermon either by clicking on this link to the church's sermon page. Or you can see a link over on the right hand side of the blog page (a little further down), but here is the link to that as well.