Sweet Spots
Ideas and messages from Len Sweet.
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Are You a Lemming or a Lassie?
Are You a Lemming or a Lassie? Story Lectionary 16 October 2016 Abraham and God Discuss Sodom and Gomorrah’s Lack of Loyal People (Genesis 18) Stay Loyal and True to the Lord Your God (Deuteronomy 8) Psalm 24: Receive the Blessings of the Lord Psalm 62: Those Who Set Their…
Random or Related
Monday is Thanksgiving Day in Canada, as one of my Facebook friends posted, “Because Canada always has to be first!”
The Canadian national anthem got a wonderful makeover by Canadian retailer Lululemon in 2015 that helps to illustrate the metaphor that we’ve been considering for the past few weeks: immersion in the surround-sound of Jesus.
The music in this video is made up of a medley of sounds. The hundreds of sounds that comprise the video are unrelated to each other, but each one (and the image associated with it), reflect a particular, and sometimes stereotyped, part of Canada. By themselves, these individual clips make no sense. They are too short to provide much information; they are disconnected and unrelated. If you don’t know the music—when you don’t recognize the melody—you have trouble figuring out how the puzzle fits together. Everything seems random. read more…
Wanderlust!
Wanderlust! A Guest Sermon by Judge Jesse Caldwell Lectionary 16 October 2016 22nd Sunday After Pentecost Jeremiah 31:27-34 Psalm 119:97-104 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5 Luke 18:1-8 Text to Life About 40 years ago I became fascinated with genealogy, and sought out 93-year old Aunt Bert, my late grandfather’s only living sibling,…
The Power of Prayer –Preaching Tip for 16 October 2016
Never underestimate the power of prayer. Prayer doesn’t have to be one small part of the worship service, but should permeate the entire worship time, and it has a place in the sermon too! Don’t be afraid to incorporate prayer into your sermon. Be creative in making your sermon a…
The Disciple’s Letter to God –Pastor’s Prayer for 16 October 2016
Dear Father in Heaven,
May Your Name be always revered as holy!
May You Reign Victoriously on Earth and may Your Logos be seared upon Every Heart, even as Your signature adorns the Heavens and All You’ve Created!
We ask that you feed us each and every day with the true substance of your love and compassion, the sustenance we need to keep you first in our lives.
Forgive us our missteps, the times when we hold you at a distance, the times we mess things up,
in the same measure that we have forgiven others who have mis-stepped, distanced, messed everything up in their lives and with you.
Help us resist the temptation to follow the wrong leaders, go in wrong directions, do things we know we shouldn’t, stray from you.
And when we slip and do these things, please rescue us from ourselves and everything that pulls us away from You, your holiness, and wholeness. Bring us back into your loving arms and back on the straight and narrow path.
Because we know you can.
Because, You and only You have the power to keep us safe, to keep us straight and narrow, to hold us steady, to keep us close
always and forever,
Your Disciple
The Great Good Thing
The Great Good Thing:
A Secular Jew Comes to Faith in Christ
by Andrew Klavan
“I was forty-nine years old and about to be baptized a Christian. No one could have been more surprised than I was. I never thought I was the type. I had been born and raised a Jew and lived most of my life as an agnostic…”
These lines are from the introduction to a fascinating story of a modern, sophisticated city dweller’s conversion to Christ. The book, The Great Good Thing: A Secular Jew Comes to Faith in Christ, (Thomas Nelson, 2016), is a memoir by Andrew Klavan, American novelist in the “tough-guy” tradition of crime fiction, whose work has been praised by Stephen King, Clive Cussler and Janet Evanovich. Again from the introduction Klavan writes, “This memoir is, to some extent, [a five-month] meditation remembered. I don’t mean it to be an autobiography or a psychological confession….Nor am I trying to preach or argue with or prove anything to anyone. I’m not a theologian or a philosopher. I am just a barefoot teller of tales…” The tale that Klavan tells in The Great Good Thing is a soul-baring, passionate, and captivating account. read more…
Monsters Among Us
The Theology of Shalom
No hopers? Millennials have ‘very little’ confidence in major institutions including banks, the criminal justice system and the government, survey finds.
Utilizing the Hero’s Journey Agenda in Your Next Meeting
Worth Repeating: America is Experiencing a Monstrous Drug Epidemic read more…
Steeped and Soaked
Last week I encouraged you to think about immersion: being so engaged, enveloped, and engulfed in the song of Jesus-God-Spirit that everything you know and do echoes with the song of eternity.
Immersion is our reality. We are already embraced into the joyful, loving dance of the Trinity. Richard Rohr, in his weekly reflections on the Trinity, affirms this idea of immersion. “… Thomas Merton’s primary philosophy teacher, says he’s not sure if the human person can even legitimately be called a creation, because we are a continuance of, an emanation from, a “subsistent relation” with what we call Trinity. Wow! This is getting very wonderful and also very dangerous. He taught that the human person must see itself in continuity with God, and not a fully separate creation. We are “chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world” (see Ephesians 1:4).” read more…
The Balm of Gilead
The Balm of Gilead Story Lectionary 9 October 2016 The Lord’s Covenant With Abram of Chaldea and the Gift of the Land of Canaan (Genesis 15) The Story of Joseph and His Brothers from Canaan (Genesis 37) The Land of Reuben, Gad, and Manasseh is Established East of the Jordan…
When Breath Becomes Air
When Breath Becomes Air
by Paul Kalanithi
Paul Kalanithi’s memoir When Breath Becomes Air (2016, Random House), tells the devastating story of a brilliant young doctor who was diagnosed with cancer just as he was finishing his training to be a neurosurgeon. When, after some months, his cancer proved resistant to medical treatments, Kalinithi used his remaining time to write When Breath Becomes Air, and asked his family to find a way to publish it after his death. As of the end of September, 2016, When Breath Becomes Air has been on the New York Times Bestseller list for over thirty-five weeks. read more…