Thinking about Life and the Lord!

The gospel writers tell us a great deal about that first Easter, but Matthew tells us something a little bit different that I believe is significant for our lives. What is significant in his story? It is these words: "Suddenly there was a violent earthquake, because an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and approached [the tomb]. He rolled back the stone and was sitting on it" (Matt. 28:2). Easter is an earthquake with a stone rolled away from the tomb and a dead person walking the streets, with an angel sitting on a now useless stone. It was at the least a major shake up. Easter is an earthquake that shook the whole world. It got everyone's attention that first Sunday morning, but has it captured much of your attention? We allow many stones to seal up our lives and to keep us from being all that God intended us to be. We get our lives sealed up with pride, greed, self-centeredness, blame, guilt, victimization, pain, hurt, and sinful practices. We allow our lives ...

The world in which we live has never been more connected. Companies are spending millions of dollars to lay millions of miles in fiber optic cables and shooting communication satellites into space just to stay connected. People all around the world share information instantly through their connection on the internet. Kids all around the world are texting each other and “tweeting” to each other information in real time on their cell phones- some even in the middle of jungles and deserts. Just today I was sitting in my office talking on my cell phone to a friend who was walking up a path with other Christian leaders in Brazil. In so many ways we are connected to each other instantaneously. While we seem to be more and more connected all over the world, as a pastor I continually meet people who actually feel more and more disconnected than ever before. They feel completely out of the loop or on the outside of life looking in. Many of these people are disconnected with family members...