Why be thankful? We’ve been talking throughout Lent about the gifts we can give Jesus, the gifts that come as a part of a living faith and trust in Jesus. And the one we’re going to talk about today is thankfulness. But the first question we need to ask ourselves is, “why be thankful?” I mean, we live in a world that seems to be coming apart at the seams. Leaving aside what’s going on in our own Methodist denomination, things are crazy out there. Lest we forget, the Cold War has been reborn but this time involving a real shooting war between Russia and Ukraine. Read the full text.

Who’s on the throne of YOUR life? Back during Advent, we talked about the gifts Jesus gives us. Things like peace and hope and joy and love. It’s interesting, then, isn’t it, that Jesus’ life started out with people giving HIM gifts. That’s what our sermon series is about this Lent. The gifts WE give Jesus. And here, in this story, we’ve got an example. Did you ever take a second to think about the gifts the wise men gave Jesus? I mean, why did they give him gold, frankincense, and myrrh? Some people say these gifts symbolize and foreshadow Jesus’ life. Gold is a kingly gift, and he was born to be a king. Read the full text. 

He was a bad guy. He knew it. The whole town knew it. But it hadn’t always been that way. As he sat, uncomfortably awkward in the lower branches of that tree, he thought about his life. He was raised in a good Jewish household with good Jewish parents and good Jewish friends. He studied the Torah, the law of his people. He grew up, along with the rest of his people, loving God and hating the Roman oppressors. Read the full text here.

I LOVE ice cream. I started my working life at a Baskin Robbins. We got free ice cream at every shift and I never got tired of it. I also LOVE pizza. Not too long after the Baskin Robbins, I worked at the original Conan’s Pizza on 29th Street in Austin. We got to make ourselves a free pizza every shift, and I would make myself the biggest possible pizza with pretty much every ingredient on it. I would take home the leftovers for breakfast and lunch the next day. I pretty much lived on nothing but pizza for two years. Read the full text here. 

Have any of you ever had a really good idea and then, once you’re in the middle of it, said to yourself, “What was I thinking?” We’re now in the third and final week of our sermon series on money, Money Can’t Buy Me Love. And I’m having one of those moments. We’ve been following along with John Wesley’s famous saying on money: make all you can, save all you can, and give all you can. And I was all in on the first 2 weeks. Making all we can and saving all we can. But now that we’re here at the giving part, I’m having second thoughts. Read the full text.