FIRST PRESBYTERIAN

Moses, Moses! …put off your shoes from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.  Exodus 3:4-5 Are we as curious about the burning bush as Moses was? His landmark encounter with God would take him from tending sheep in Midian to masterminding Israel’s exodus from hostile Egypt. If our curiosity sends us to the Bible dictionary, we find that the information listed under Vegetable Kingdom cannot deliver the spark of illumination that leaps from the plai

Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.  John 8:58 If we bring our inborn naivety as “world view” to Christ’s Nativity, we readily concede that the baby lying in a manger in Mozambique should be dark-skinned. Chinese Christians should not have to travel west for a white infant. We are fine with people in the north who lay their Inuit baby Jesus on a seal skin. Most newborns turn red as a beet when they scream. Some show up bald and wrinkled; some emerge with a f

And there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; and this man was righteous and devout, looking for the consolation of Israel…And there was a prophetess, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher.  Luke 2:25;36 “And at the end of eight days, when he was circumcised, he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb” (Luke 2:21). An angel also told Joseph in a dream that Mary’s son was to be named Jesus, “for he will save his

And there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; and this man was righteous and devout, looking for the consolation of Israel…And there was a prophetess, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher.  Luke 2:25;36 What is the difference between “waiting for” and “waiting on”? Far from being a trick  question, it hints at a language lesson Luke might have wanted to insert to enhance his exhaustive telling of the Nativity story. So we brace for some New Testament