Viral Faith

"Living out God's love challenges everything"         --Terry Linhart Jesus entered a synagogue and found a man who was suffering with a deformed hand.  The writer of the Gospel of Mark, sets up the drama-filled encounter by sharing that religious leaders of Jesus' day were specifically watching for Jesus' response to the man. There were religious/political rules of the day that forbade any kind of work on the day of the Sabbath.  While the Sabbath was set up to establish the centrality of God in our lives, it had become a burdensome religious and political rule that made its reality significantly different than its purpose. Jesus wastes no time in asking the Religious leaders if the law permits doing good on the Sabbath or doing evil.   He challenges their sensibilities by boldly asking: "Is this a day to save life or to destroy it?" Those who were listening to Jesus' challenge could not and would not respond.  Yet, in our sancti...

"I refuse to believe the "isness" of humanity can not reach up to the "oughtness" that forever confronts him" Martin Luther King, Jr, 1964 in his Nobel Prize reception  He who was seated on the throne said, "I am making everything new! Revelations 21:5 Today, the United States celebrates the life and legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  There are so many things that could be said about him, that a blog entry can not even begin to skim the surface in describing his impact.  So, I want to share five ways that his life, his legacy, and his death have impacted me: 1. King demonstrated that faith was at the core of changing a society.  Rev. King never backed away from the moral outrage prompted by his faith while advocating for changes in a secular society.  In his writings from "A time for Freedom" in 1961, he quotes an elderly woman who walked several hours to work in sweltering heat instead of taking the bus durin...

"Many churches during the genocide became places of death instead of places of life" Bishop Samuel Kayinamera, Free Methodist Church of Rwanda Now these things occurred as examples to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did.  I Corinthians 10:6-7 I recently spent two weeks in the beautiful country of Rwanda.  Its hills, lakes and people make it a visually stunning place to witness and a loving place to experience..  It is a small, densely populated land locked nation in Central-Eastern Africa that has an agricultural basis of life that is often resource challenged.  Subsistence living is the way of life for the vast majority of Rwanda's people. Beneath the smiles, the tremendous hospitality, exuberant worship, and the sense of national hope, lies the horrific wound of genocide 18 years ago.  In this festering action from April through July of 1994, nearly 2 million of the 8 million inhabitants of Rwanda were systematically killed, ...