Letter from the Pastor

                 Someone has said that one effective way to measure the size of a person is by observing the size of  the things that make him or her mad. A good question to ask ourselves is: “What makes us angry?”  Think about the things that made you mad this past week. What were they? A car that cut into your lane? A rude clerk in a department store?  Having to stand in line a little longer than you thought  necessary? A phone call that interrupted your evening meal; and that from someone trying […]

          Some say that people today are losing, or perhaps have already lost, a capacity to be deeply moved by human suffering. The kind of world we live in inevitably has a numbing effect on the human spirit. One hour with a newspaper or thirty minutes in front of the television exposes one to an overwhelming amount of tragedy. Day in and day out,  we are served a steady diet of war, murder, terrorism, kidnapping, rape, robbery, and torture. The more we see of man’s inhumanity to man, the less we seem to be shocked by […]

             A little more than 50 years ago Dale Carnegie authored a book that made him a very wealthy man. The title of it is “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” It  has since been published in every major language of the world and has sold multiplied millions of copies. The popularity of the book lies in the fact that it recognized and deals with a very real human need – that is the necessity to relate to other people.           Of course, Dale Carnegie was not the first to […]

          “In the cities the wounded and dying cry out, but God ignores their prayers.”  This cry of Job must be one of the most poignant statements in the Scriptures.  Although the scholars keep telling us this is an anguished cry for help from a man in intense pain, it sounds more like a cry of despair.  After all, this is the same Job who also cried: “I give up, I am tired of living.  Leave me alone.  My life makes no sense.”  But the scholars must be right:  knowing Job, a man of faith, his outburst must have been […]

       Do you remember, from your childhood days, the neighborhood football game when everyone wanted to play quarterback?  Sometimes you’d stand around and argue and take forever getting started.  Usually the way it was     resolved was that the one who owned the ball got to call the plays.  But finally, everyone had to agree to play a different position, otherwise you could not even have a game.        Then, if you stayed with the sport and gave yourself a little time to grow up, you discovered that it can be just as much fun to throw […]