Sermons

So how many of us know what it means to be thirsty, not the “I just ate a bag of chips and now I’m thirsty” but the real thing? I’m willing to guess that not a lot of us have experience actual, real thirst. There aren’t all that many things that we require for life but ...

Whether we like it or not, we live our lives by metaphors. met•a•phor (mĕtˈə-fôrˌ, -fər) n. A figure of speech in which a word or phrase that ordinarily designates one thing is used to designate another, thus making an implicit comparison, as in “a sea of troubles” or “All the world’s a stage” ( Shakespeare). n. ...

Today is the first Sunday in Lent, so you may be wondering what is with a blog title like “Yippee!”? Lent is misunderstood. There is a tendency to look at Lent as a time where the whole point is to be miserable. You run into people who are giving things up for Lent just to give ...

There can be a tension between seeing and really seeing, much like the tension between hearing and listening. This tension came up when I began thinking of the Transfiguration. When the disciples who were on that mountain with Jesus witnessed the Transfiguration they saw Jesus in a new light but what crossed my mind was, could they ...

It is good to be back . . . again. I was away for a work retreat (it was in Mexico so don’t waste any sympathy on me) which meant that I missed two Sundays in a row. There is nothing like a bit of absence to help you remember how much you enjoy doing something, ...

Well it is nice to be back in Canada for a few days, which makes it sound like international travel is just a regular part of my life, which it most certainly is not. Notwithstanding it is nice to be back. I was away last Sunday watching Heather’s niece (which makes her my niece too ...

Okay, this post should probably be called “Language and theology . . . sort of” but I didn’t want to put that many periods into a title. As I mention in both of my sermons and as is completely and unavoidably obvious to anyone who knows me, I love language. I am limited to the English ...

Favouritism, partiality, no matter what you call it, NO ONE likes it. Even when the deck is stacked in our favour there is still a little something that we don’t like about it. When someone else gets ahead because of favouritism being directed to them then there isn’t a little something we don’t like about ...

It is a new year, or I suppose it should be written New Year, but capital letters or not it is very much a new year. Two thousand and fourteen, twenty-fourteen, 2014, no matter how I write it, it just seems weird. I’m not sure why 2014 seems weird in a way that 2013 didn’t ...

Christmas is one of the more evocative words in the English language. I don’t want to suggest that everyone’s immediate response to the word is warm and fuzzy but I’m pretty sure there aren’t too many people who don’t feel something when they hear it. For me, the word is a very pleasant one with ...