Psalm: 60 Meditation Luke: There is something about the idea of the Temple. It was regarded as the holiest place on earth to the Jews as being where God dwelt. The LORD, in His first commandment, forbade the worship of anyone (or thing) above Him. Solomon’s Temple was destroyed during the Babylonian Captivity. The “second” …
Tag: Worship
Friday, November 5
Psalm: 107 Meditation Ecclesiasticus: First dreams then sacrifices. I have heard it said that we all dream. When I dream (or if I dream) I can only manage to salvage but snippets of the phantoms. As Sirach tells us dreams are but fantasies and nothing of worth unless sent by God as in Joseph’s, Daniel’s …
Jesus Fixes Broken People
Craft Ideas Read Mark 1:21-34 The reading has a lot of different broken people. What do we do with broken things? Have you ever had something that broke? What happened? Usually, if it is inexpensive we throw it away - if worth a lot we try to fix it. Right? Do we see Jesus throwing people away or fixing them? How …
Thursday, November 5
Psalm: 74 Meditation Ezra: Ezra was commissioned by King Artaxerxes (or Xerxes) to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple; to make it ready for worship. This letter is Ezra’s bona fides (his credentials or authorization) and Artaxerxes’ endorsement. He is to get as much gold and silver as needed and any free-will offerings as …
Finding God in the Big, Beautiful World
Listen. If you missed the Children’s Message on Sunday, you can listen to a recording of it here: http://www.pacificunionchurch.org/churchsmall starting Monday. Review If you get to know a musician by listening to their music, and a carpenter by looking at what they build, or a dancer by watching them dance, what is one way that …
How Can We Sing?
A group of shell-shocked refugees stood in the midst of an unending plain under the hot scorching Babylonian sun. Their homes were piles of ash hundreds of miles to the West. Their temple, the center of their worship, was a pile of rubble. Then one of the refugees began to sing a mournful tune: Psalm …
John Gray and Stephen Furtick
Conversations about race are even more terrifying than talking about politics. They are fraught with emotion. There is the fear of being misunderstood. So we say nothing and over the years the church has largely been silent. The result is that we live in a country where our churches are segregated on Sunday and violence …
Tuesday, August 18
Psalm: 121, 122, 123 Meditation Acts: This is an intriguing event in that it shows how desperate people can get because of fear. These “Christians” are upsetting the Jewish status quo and the Jews fear a challenge to their deeply held traditions. Jesus faced the same issue: His disciples were caught eating something without first …
Community Worship
It may seem to be an odd time to be talking about the necessity of community worship when we have not been meeting together in person for several months. But then again, perhaps at no other time have we felt the importance of gathering together with fellow followers of Jesus more than right now. Sometimes …
The Lord’s Prayer
Prayer is one of two daily spiritual practices that are key to keeping spiritually fit. We learned in our last post that prayer is a two-way conversation with God that involves both listening and speaking. We already covered silence as the listening aspect of prayer, this week we will look at our part of the …
Pacific Union Connect 