Monthly Archives: November 2014

Thanksgiving Day 2014

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happy everything

The Master’s Table – offering God honoring, Christ centered blogging since 2008. On the one hand that’s pretty awesome. On the other hand that means annual activities, like Thanksgiving Day, have already been done. I’m not sure I have much more to say on that subject.

Here is a Thanksgiving sermon that I was looking at earlier this morning. I found it lurking in the dark shadows of the archives, all the way back from 2008. I preached a very similar sermon this year without even realizing this post existed. A key difference was the inclusion of Revelation 15:3-4 which relates the Song of Moses to the Song of the Lamb  solidifying Moses as a type of Christ and connecting the Old Testament to the New.

I did write something new this year on My Other Blog. #27 on my 30 Days of Thanksgiving adventure could alternately be titled I Am Thankful for Thanksgiving. I put on my history teacher hat and outline the ways in which Thanksgiving is and is not a religious holiday. Easter and Christmas are Christian holy days, Thanksgiving is sort of the 4th of July of religious holidays. It’s as American as pumpkin pie. (wink)

 

Happy Monday

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Happy Monday 2X

Every week the Happy Monday folder on my laptop gets things periodically dropped into it, and every weekend we pick out the 10 images, scriptures, quotations, comics and cute animals most likely to get your Monday and therefore your week off to a good start. There is simply too much to choose from! So if McDonald’s can Super Size your order, the movie plex can show a double feature and Payless can offer BOGO, why can’t we give you twice the Happy for lllthe same price? (Which of course is free!!!) Somebody tell Phil Robertson it’s Happy Happy Monday! 

faithful

Continue reading →

Looking Forward to Reading the Bible

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Bible store I have been bragging on the ESV Bible for a number of years, but my working philosophy is that to understand the message of scripture as fully as possible one needs to read a variety of translations. I grew up in churches that were “King James only.” Sometime around 2002 or 2003 I read through the Bible in the New Revised Standard Version. I was considering which version to read next – possibly even the NIV, if you can imagine such a thing – when I was introduced to the ESV. Mike Jones, the pastor at my ministry ordination, gave me a thinline ESV (after asking which translation I would prefer) and Michael Spencer later gave me an ESV Study Bible when that was released. Continue reading →

Can Your Bible Walk on Water?

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ESV, waterproofOkay, this Bible doesn’t literally walk. But the cover and every page is water proof.

When I was introduced to the ESV in 2003 it was pretty new to the market. There were few options and no other ESV products available. A few years later the ESV Study Bible was introduced; I have one of those really big ones from the first print run. Today you can get large print or compact Study Bible, Thinlines, New Testaments, Student Bibles, plus some rather unique editions. The waterproof ESV pictured above (available here) has a camo style cover. It also come in a pink for girls and a gender neutral style. You can submerge the entire book and the pages are impervious to damage from water.

My comment was that coffee stains would wipe right off it, and another customer on the same aisle laughed and said he was thinking the same thing!

30 Days of Thanksgiving

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NaBloPoMoNovember is National Blog Posting Month – NaBloPoMo – when bloggers commit to posting at least once each day for 30 days. I accepted the challenge in the form of 30 Days of Thanksgiving. While I haven’t posted much on this blog lately, I am up to day #13 on My Other Blog. The most recent post is about the annual Pastor Appreciation event in Atlanta hosted by Faith Talk 970/ 104.7 The Fish. Several SBC state conventions had their annual meeting this week and I will be writing about the Georgia meeting soon.

There is a My Other Blog RSS feed in the left-hand column of this page or click here to check out the latest posts. 30 Days of Thanksgiving because God is good all the time! 

Happy Monday

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give thanks

I know not what course others may take, but as for me and my blog we will have no part of Christmas anything until after Thanksgiving Day. Clark Bunch is blogging 30 Days of Thanksgiving; this will be Day 3 if you’re counting. Continue reading →

Before Abraham Was, I AM

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jesus_teachingIt’s quite a few verses but to get the full context we need read John 8:31-59. 

In an oft quoted verse of scripture Jesus tells his followers “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” Many of us are familiar with these words even those who have not read the Gospels. But the audience that day asks how they can be set free, claiming they have never been enslaved to anyone. Let’s think about that claim. The defining moment of Jewish history is the Exodus from Egypt and the way they encountered God at Mount Sinai. They had served as slaves for hundreds of years in Egypt. The nation of Israel was taken into Babylonian captivity and later by the Assyrians. In Jesus’ day their land was a province of the Roman Empire. To claim they had never been enslaved to anyone was an exaggeration at best, but what Jesus really meant was that anyone who sins is a slave to sin. He really riles them up by telling them their father is not Abraham but the devil, and they do what their father does which is try to kill him. They will then claim they have only one father and that is God! Jesus says if that were so they would love him for he came from God, but instead they are the offspring of murdering Satan who is a liar and the father of lies. They accuse him of being a Samaritan and possessed by a demon, and it all comes to a head when Jesus tells them Abraham rejoiced to see them in his day. Continue reading →

All Saints Day

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all saints Today is All Saints Day, which might not mean much if you are not either Catholic or Episcopalian. The November 1st date of All Saints is why Halloween was last night, and the reason Martin Luther nailed his 95 Thesis to the door of the church at Wittenberg on October 31st – he knew that practically every person would see it the next day as they attended mass to celebrate All Saints.

Whatever you may have heard about Halloween being the celebration of Satan’s birthday (a created being that was not born) the origins are uniquely Christian, whereas the celebrations of Easter and Christmas are actually pagan but that’s another story. Richard Donohue, vicar of Catholic Charities for the Diocese of Birmingham, offers the clearest explanation of Halloween, All Saints Day and All Souls Day I have ever read, including bits on the Book of the Dead and the Latin American tradition of “day of the dead” as well.

“All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day are related, but they are two separate celebrations,” Donohoe said. “On All Saints’ Day there’s a call to live as saints, to remind us how we’re supposed to live. On All Souls’ Day, we’re talking about all souls and asking God’s mercy for them. We’re talking about those people who have died before us, and their process of getting to heaven, through Christ.”

This article was written by Greg Garrison for AL.com based on his interview with the Rev. Richard Donohue. I highly recommend clicking the link and reading it in full.