01/29/2026
Not If, But When, the Crisis Comes
One of the best Bible commentators alive today is N.T. Wright or Tom Wright. When reflecting on the parable of the wise and foolish maidens, he wrote this:
“What matters is being ready; being prepared; being wise; thinking ahead, realizing that a crisis is coming sooner or later and that if you don’t make preparations now, and keep them in good shape in the meantime, you’ll wish you had.
“… And in this new era, no less than in the unique time of Jesus and his first followers, we need as much as ever the warning that it’s easy to go slack on the job, to stop paying attention to God’s work and its demands, to be unprepared when the moment suddenly arrives.”
It reminds me of the Spirit’s critique of the Laodicean church when it says that the people of God started our strong but “have forgotten their first love.” They’d taken the grace of God they found in Jesus for granted. We don’t know when Jesus will return, nor do we know if our next doctor’s visit will bring a troubling diagnosis, or if our loved ones will stay happy and safe, or if our job might not give way to AI. The crisis and its timing can’t be known, but we should all prepare for one crisis or another right now.
And for us that means building a stronger and deeper faith that can stand up to hardship, grief, and disappointment. Again, let me mention 21 scriptures and reflection questions that are out on the Welcome desk. It’s a good place to start!
Archived Posts
Not If, But When, the Crisis Comes
One of the best Bible commentators alive today is N.T. Wright or Tom Wright. When reflecting on the parable of the wise and foolish maidens, he wrote this:...
What I wanted to say
but ran out of time this Sunday
Here is the benediction I was going to use before discovering the excellent MLK Jr. video.
The Storm that Comes To Us as Helplessness
I want to share with you a small portion of my conversation with Artificial Intelligence online. Some of you know, I use Chat-GPT as a thoughtful sounding board for the questions and insights I’m working with on whatever scriptures I’m studying each week. What follows is an example of those discussions...
One Final Scene About Scrooge
There was one more scene in Dickens’s novel that reveals something of what has happened to Scrooge over the years. I did not have time to share it on Sunday, but I believe it reveals a great deal about the regrets in Scrooge’s life....
What Jacob Marley Would Do,
If He Could Do It…
I thought about using the following for a benediction—since Jacob Marley was warning Scrooge about the danger of loving money and what it could buy. Ends up with the Cantata and everything else going on, I didn’t have the time. So here is what you might have heard if the sermon itself was 5 minutes shorter!
A Confirming Word on Old King Herod
I just want to echo what Rick said in his fine sermon yesterday (Nov. 23). Herod was a ruthless tyrant and skilled politician. When the Magi don’t report back to him, he decides to kill all the male children of Bethlehem under the age of 2. That’s one paranoid dude.
Power Without Conscience?
I ran out of room for this vignette in Sunday’s sermon. Remember the quote that could be the headline for Ahab and Naboth: “All that’s needed for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.” The following reinforces that truth.