Month: January 2017

Last week, we learned that in order to kill vampires – the secret sins that leach life from our souls – we have to drag them into the light. Not only do they hate the light, they can’t survive in it. The preferred method for vanquishing vampires is confession. But we left an important question unanswered: how do you actually confess? The Bible does not specify a particular way of unburdening your soul. But I have heard quite a few confessions through the years and, being an experienced sinner, have made some mighty big ones myself. Here are some things … Read more…

I don’t mean to cause alarm, but you may be host to a parasite – an internal entity that is leaching your life away. I’m not talking about a physical creature like a ten-foot tapeworm (ooh) or a single-celled protozoa. I’m talking about a virtual vampire. A vampire of the soul. A sin you are hiding. A secret you are keeping. You know it’s there. God, of course, knows about it, but you try real hard not to think about that. Then some meddling biblical passage, preacher or blog post shines some truth on it and the vampire slinks into … Read more…

Some years ago, back when there was such a thing as a local, hard-copy newspaper, two death notices ran back to back in the obituaries. The curious thing about these particular notices was that they both had the same last name. A 77-year-old man and his wife of the same age. They had died on the same day, so one might assume they had been killed in a traffic accident. They had not. Another section in the same paper told the rest of the story. The husband suffered from acute leukemia, his wife from debilitating arthritis. Both died from single gunshot … Read more…

Our church has buried six members since November. We eulogized one brother between Christmas and New Year’s and another on January 4th.  Few things look more out of season than a funeral home tent in a December cemetery. Except for maybe devoting the first blog post of a new year to the topic of death. You’d think this would be a good time to write about how to make and keep resolutions, how to break bad habits and instill good ones. And it is. But as the wise man said, It is better to go to a house of mourning … Read more…