Today is the Feast of Ascension – the day that Jesus blessed His disciples and was taken up into heaven. It is probably something that we don’t give much thought to, which is unfortunate because the Ascension has a lot of theological connotations that we should probably not ignore. I bumped into one of those…

Last week I encouraged people to send in questions that might “stump the pastor” in the “Question of the Week” portion of the newsletter. I got, well, actually nothing. But someone did send in a question on the Sunday connection card, and that question was “What are cherubim and seraphim?” Connecting this with last week’s newsletter…

In popular culture, the term “Easter Egg” means something that is hidden or only observable to someone who is diligently looking for it. This can be like the fact that you can find the Star Wars characters R2D2 and C3PO in the hieroglyphs in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. Stuff that…

When I was growing up watching cartoons, the world was still Judeo-Christian enough that when a cartoon character died, it wasn’t surprising to see a “ghost version” of themselves, now clad in a white robe, with a halo, wings, and a harp, floating upwards towards the heavens. And had you asked me at that time…

I don’t know how much you like it, but I usually sigh when I get one of those “two factor authorization” messages when I’m trying to log into something. You input your username and password, expecting to be let in to whatever it is you’re trying to get into, and then you get a message…

One year I went on vacation after Christmas. Since I wasn’t going into the office, I decided that I wasn’t going to shave. By the end of the vacation time, I decided that I still wasn’t going to shave. The season of Epiphany came and went, and then we got into Lent, and by the…

Peeps. These sugar coated marshmallow baby birds (now outsold by their rabbit cousins) are sort of like the candy corn of Easter — not many people will confess to liking them, but they still sell well enough that they stay on the shelves. In fact, estimates say that every year the parent company of the…

Holy Week starts this Sunday with Palm/Passion Sunday. As we have done for the past few Holy Weeks, we are going to do a sermon series that stretches throughout Holy Week – a bigger picture look at the powerful services that happen during this zenith of the church year. This year our series will be…

The word “Lent” is derived from the Old English “lencten”, which was the word for “Spring”. You can probably see our modern English word “Lengthen” in the word as well – this is not by accident. The word for Spring sounds like “lengthen” because in Spring the days “lengthen” as the amount of daylight increases…

Woof. Today is one of those days. Last week I talked about the possibility of writing a newsletter article via ChatGPT, this week after a short day at work yesterday because of obligations, and then a dentist appointment that ran over time — well, I’m definitely still considering it. We have these days, right? These…