Generation Choose Your Own Adventure

Holy Trinity 2024 (Also Confirmation!)

Decisions, decisions, decisions!!

Life is full of decisions; for young people, each decision comes with so many options.  Their life feels very much like a “Choose you own adventure” story:  What to study, whom to befriend, whom to love, where to live, what teams to try out for…

This all sounds exciting, except that with many choices comes the potential to make wrong decisions.  This can lead to lots of anxiety — did I make the right decisions?

A reflection on a man with a decision to make – Nicodemus (John 3).  Turns out he doesn’t make the right decision, but God has decided that he isn’t done with Nicodemus!

(Note: The sermon today is especially targeted toward the 14 year-olds being confirmed, but it likely resonates with all of us who face decisions in life and worry about the past decisions we’ve made.)

Calm in the Fast Lane

 Pentecost 2024 (May 19)

Life speed is fast and only gets faster.

As life gets faster, making sense of life becomes harder and harder to do.  A reflection on where we go to find still waters.

(Hint:  Today is Pentecost, the birthday of the church!)

Also, an admission of what to do when, no matter what, it doesn’t fully make sense!

Does God want a lanyard?

Ascension 2024 (May 12)

Pastor Rob reminds us of the crafty gifts we gave to our mothers on Mother’s Day (and other such days) using a poem called “Lanyard.”  While such gifts are sentimental and cute, they really don’t adequately repay the mother for all that she has done.

The disproportional love of parent to a young child is a great illustration of God’s love for us, which is far greater than we can comprehend.  

On the Ascension Jesus gives his last instructions to his disciples.  Not surprisingly, he asks not for lanyards from them.  Rather, he asks for them to be his witnesses, those who speak the truth.

The truth we speak about — including on Mother’s day — includes the reality that sin and death are powerful forces in this life that grind away at relationships and bring us grief.  But chiefly we bear witness to God’s extravagant grace in Jesus Christ.