I had a couple of people ask me about it after services this week. Our Epistle reading from Romans 8:28-39 made reference to being “predestined” for salvation – and that always causes questions to bubble up along the way. Most of the time, we associate this biblical teaching with the ideas that were formulated by
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Jesus description of the Christian life in terms of a Vine and its branches is a favourite for many (John 15). It’s a cool image by which to think about the Christian life – even if we don’t always ‘get’ the details of what He’s getting at. And yet, it is an image worth digging
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“Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil prowls about like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). Lions can certainly be frightening – especially in the first-century world where ‘death by wild beast’ was not uncommon. So, simply hearing a distant roar would easily become the source of great
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King David once mused: “Who may ascend the hill of the Lord? Who may stand in His holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart…” (Psalm 24:2-3a). While the verse may give us pause to chuckle a bit, David’s reflections had more to do with our sinful character than our current COVID
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Our first reading from this past Sunday tells the account of the calling of Matthias to replace Judas as one of the Apostles. We don’t often talk about him though. After all, he never wrote a Gospel. We don’t have any epistles from him. He sort of comes in after-the-fact of the Gospel histories. Yet,
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Great things always start small. This is what Jesus reminded us of when He compared faith to a mustard seed. St. Peter, here too, reminds us that humility is one of the things that faith looks like. True, this letter was one reminding us as baptized Christians that we should not be surprised when we
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With news of Phase 2 here in Manitoba and the loosening of restrictions on group-gathering size, Council has discussed our next steps too. We will be looking at scheduling four service times throughout the week – limiting attendance numbers to match Manitoba Health recommendations. This will start up on June 7th – do keep in
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Sometimes we get so caught up with cultural forms of Christianity that push their own spin on these points – and yet, a simple reading of 1 Peter 3:13-22 highlights how the first Christians (the Apostles no less!) did indeed understand Jesus to be ‘God in the flesh’ and that Baptism was God’s appointed extension
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I’m not sure how much time you spent looking at the ‘Collect Prayers’ week after week. It’s easy to overlook them – as just another prayer that the pastor usually prays and while the rest of us are waiting for the sermon. And yet, there is a treasure-trove of wisdom hidden in these little petitions
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