|
|
|
Most recent blog entries |
 |
|
| Faith and Politics | Brad's Blog Mid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on1/31/2008 9:19 AM | |
| Okay: enough. This stuff is starting to bug me now.
Never have religion and faith been such talked about issues in our political process. Oh, there were questions in the 1960 election as to whether a practicing Roman Catholic could be President and be trusted to do what was best for the country rather than follow the “instructions” of the pope. Just about the time that the question began to seem very antiquated, the same questions now surface with a candidate who is a devout Mormon. Reporters begin asking questions like, are Mormons really Christians or is it a cult? Will the power structure of the Mormon church dictate their wishes to a Mormon President? Then, we saw a candidate come on the scene who was once a pastor and a self-declared evangelical Christian. Suddenly there was a flurry of activity among reporters and pundits talking about “the evangelical vote” and their power in this election. Then a candidate who had a non-Christian father has had the “authenticity” of his Chris ... |  | |
| More... |
| | Sunday January 27, 2008 "Praying For The Impossible" Acts 12:1-11 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on1/28/2008 11:39 AM | |
| The implication is clear, isn’t it?
If we pay attention to this story of Peter’s escape from prison, we are clearly led to believe that there is a direct connection between the escape and the fact that “the church prayed fervently to God for him.”
We want to believe it, don’t we? You know, that God answers our heartfelt prayers. Of course we want to believe it. In fact, there are times when we simply ache to believe it. But sometimes, when we are at our lowest, when danger seems to be closing in, we may have our doubts.
If you haven’t been there, I dare say you will. A situation seems completely untenable and beyond our control. A dear friend or loved one is gravely ill and doctors don’t seem to know what to do. Someone we care about is caught in the throes of addictive behavior and refuses to see the problem. We are desparately lonely in the wake of loss and not sure where to go for a comforting presence.
And ... | | |
| More... |
| | Resolved | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on1/24/2008 9:56 AM | |
| Well, we are now firmly into the New Year and let me be the first to ask: how are your resolutions going? It’s a loaded question, isn’t it? We sometimes make grand plans that have little hope of being fulfilled, then we get frustrated and pretty soon we have dropped the whole thing altogether. So, I’m not trying to rub salt in the wound; I only bring it up because I have had a few of you ask me about something I said in a sermon the last Sunday of 2007. It had to do with a resolution that I had pledged myself to this year, and challenged the congregation to do the same. For those who asked (and for those who didn’t) here it is: In 2008, I resolve to honor God, to do what God would have me do, so that I might be the person God would have me be.
This could take in a whole lot of things, couldn’t it? Exercise, eating right, stopping smoking, spending more time with your family, learning something new… they all involve a similar thing. That is, being a good steward of what God has gi ... | | |
| More... |
| | Sunday January 20, 2008 "The Disciples' Prayer" Matthew 6:9-13 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on1/22/2008 3:39 PM | |
| Each week in worship we say a variation of today’s scripture. You may have heard it called “The Prayer of Jesus”, or as Jennifer’s beautiful solo indicates, “The Lord’s Prayer.” Both of those are right, I suppose, but 2000 years later, I think it is clear that it is OUR prayer, the Disciples’ prayer. Oh, I don’t mean big D Disciple as in Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), but rather little d disciples, followers and students of Jesus. All across Atlanta, this country, all over the world, Christians everywhere, small d disciples, are reciting this prayer as a communal part of their morning worship. It doesn’t matter if it’s high church formal, low church informal, or somewhere in between, hard shell Baptist or Book of Common Prayer Episcopalians, if they consider themselves Christian, there is a good chance they are reciting it this morning.
So many questions rise up around this. Is it specifically a Christian prayer? Couldn’t a Jewish person say this prayer just as easily as ... | | |
| More... |
| | Remembering | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on1/16/2008 3:48 PM | |
| It’s funny how something simple like a certain smell, a song, a not-often-heard phrase, a ray of light through a colored window, can take you back to a certain time or place in our lives. Today, I have experienced that feeling in a couple of ways.
First, when the weather forecaster laid out what might be in store for us over the next 36 hours, I was taken right back to getting up early when I was a boy and waiting to hear on the radio whether our school district was one of those that had called off school because of a snow storm. It is a wonderful sense of anticipation as they slowly go through the names of the different districts and they are on the “b’s” – Bloomfield Hills, Birmingham…then they finally get to the “c’s” – Canton, Clarkston…. “C’mon,” we would say, “get to the “d’s” already!” And then they started…Davison, Dexter…wait, that means they went right by “Detroit”! The sad truth is that Detroit schools almost never shut down. Most of us could walk to school, so why would they? But ... | | |
| More... |
| | Sunday January 13, 2008 "What Do You Want?" 1 Kings 3:1-15, 4:29-34 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on1/14/2008 5:22 AM | |
| Overall, Solomon’s heart seems to have been in the right place. We are told early on in this scripture lesson that “Solomon loved the Lord.” That sounds pretty good. If people were to talk about you or I and one of the first things they said was “they love Lord”, we’d be pretty pleased, wouldn’t we? After all, it says something important about who we are, about what we think is important, about what we strive to do in our lives.
Well, at least that is what I think it says.
When I think about people I have known that fall into the category of folks who “love the Lord” it is usually because of their actions, their deeds, the way they conduct themselves. They are selfless people. They seem to be always on the lookout for people who might need assistance. They are people of integrity. They do what is right.
Those people who are comfortable in their faith seem more likely to me to be “good people.” Maybe it’s because they know all good things have come to them through God’s grace ... | | |
| More... |
| | “Light” | | Jennifer's Blog
| By Jennifer Heinz on1/10/2008 12:14 PM | |
| At the very beginning of our faith story is light: “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.” | | |
| More... |
| | "What Now?" Luke 2:21-40 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on1/2/2008 10:42 AM | |
| “What now?”
It’s a common question, isn’t it? After a big event that we have anticipated with great excitement, it is not unusual for us to ask, “What now?” And certainly that is a question that many of us in the church are asking after we have spent the advent season waiting for the celebration that comes with Christmas. And for too many of us, the celebration ends with Christmas.
A former professor of mine is fond of saying, “There is nothing so over as Christmas.” She would point out the great speed at which we could clean out the trappings of Christmas, get rid of the Christmas tree, put away the presents, file away the Christmas pictures, use up the leftovers and get things back to normal, as soon as Christmas was over. And, when that happens, we find ourselves asking, “What now?”
It is also true of the church. Soon, the decorations will be down, the Christmas carols will be a memory, and we will continue on in what the church calendar calls “ordinary time.” And ... | | |
| More... |
| | "When Love Came to Town" Luke 2:1-20 | | Brad's BlogBrad's Sermons | By Brad Miller on12/24/2007 11:23 AM | |
| In the documentary “Rattle and Hum”, the popular Irish band U2, meets up with American blues legend B.B. King to practice a song that they will sing together in a U2 concert in Fort Worth, Texas. B.B. King is impressed with the strength of Bono’s songwriting and even shows a little hesitancy in playing such a song with them. But play they do, and the song became an instant classic. The name of that song? “When Love Comes to Town”.
In one way, this song is a typical love song. Each verse details a different situation where the singer has done something - or someone - wrong, but in each chorus he owns up to his mistake: “Maybe I was wrong to ever let you down, but I did what I did before love came to town.”
It’s a common theme in pop music, isn’t it? True love comes like a flash of lightning, a thunderbolt out of the sky, and then things change, in a big way. When love comes to town, we are changed people. Never again will we be the people we used to be. Our ... | | |
| More... |
| | A New Beginning...Again | | Brad's BlogMid-Week Missive | By Brad Miller on12/19/2007 12:44 PM | |
| Greetings!
I bet you have heard the old brainteaser that asks, “Do Christmas and New Years Day ever fall in the same year?” Our first inclination may be to say no, but of course they do – every year! Still, there is something appealing to me to look at Christmas as happening “this year”, while New Years Day will always be “next year.” And this is not just because I am a baseball fan and “next year” is the eternal cry of everyone who didn’t win the World Series this year. (Although, we Detroit Tigers fans have every reason to believe that “next year” is finally going to be “the year”. Witness the trade that brought Miguel Cabrera AND Dontrelle Willis to the Tigers last week…it has Peter Gammons calling the Tigers “a modern era ‘Murderers Row’…the team to beat in 2008.” But, I digress…)
There is no doubt that the new year offers us a psychological new start in lots of ways. New Years resolutions abound on January 1st as we all try to use this important, if artificial, starting poin ... | | |
| More... |
|
|
|
 | |