High Tech Religion

From my Facebook page:

"I watched an area church service on the internet.  Wow, what a high tech production .  Put network TV to shame.

How about a holy hug, babe

Church is a good place to cop a feel if it's one of those where everybody runs around hugging each other.  Come on, don't get all shocked and self righteous and say it doesn't happen.  You know it does.

Fathers Day 2014

I have no difficulty thinking of God as a father or  "Heavenly Father." Maybe that's because I am a quite terribly old male person. So do I think God is an old guy with a beard up in the sky?  Of course not. Maybe I would feel different if I were were a young female into current political, theological and sociological correctness or if my earthly father had been a bad man who did awful things.

Remember Fulton J. Sheen?

A long time ago Fulton Sheen said "salvation begins when the ego dies." I am still wrestling with that one.

EASTER...The Will of God

My favorite sermon  illustration of the Easter story is still the one I read many many decades ago from a book of sermons on The Will of God preached by Leslie Weathered to his war weary congregation in London.  

"A young woman, widowed in an accident, says to me, 'My man has been killed and my two little children are fatherless.  I'm young and life stretches on in infinite loneliness. How  can God ever reach, in my life, His ultimate will?  His intentional will was surely home and married happiness.  His will is destroyed forever."

'Let me tenderly say one or two things.   On Good Friday night eleven men, in their deepest gloom felt like you.  They said in their hearts, 'We trusted him, we followed him.  It was his will to establish his kingdom.  He told us so.  And evil has been allowed to take him from us. It's the end of everything.'

"But they were wrong, weren't they. It was only the end of their mistake and the most wonderful use of evil which God has ever effected.  And if you give way one day to despair, you are wrong, too.  And one day, like them, you'll find out how wrong you were and be sadder at your despair than at your loss.  "

"For you know your loved one is not lost.  He is alive. He is working out a plan.  And God is still using him in his plan.  Maybe from the other side he is helping you."

"Big words, these,  but underneath them is the evidence of all the saints and the supreme evidence of the crucified that God is a father, and that the ultimate meaning of the whole universe is love, and that God will never fail one of his family unless that one opposes Him forever."
                                           -------------------------
Isn't that glorious?  It's in the little book, "The Will of God" by Leslie Weatherhead, available in religious bookstores and online.  

No No Noah!

I do not propose to tell God what to do.  But I sorta kinda hope He will richly bless those who refrain from making a big religious thing of the "Noah" film, asking silly questions like "Is it Biblical enough?"

MY Bible says ......

I turn off when I hear  "My Bible says."  Using the Bible to prove you're right about something is a pointless exercise.