Micah 6:8

Mark 2:22: And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, he pours new wine into new wineskins. What a curious scripture we have here today.  I ran across this in my daily reading and I began pondering on it.  Jesus is talking about the sabbath with the Pharisees and then all the sudden he pulls out two pithy statements about new patches on old cloaks and new wine in old wine skins.  Curious indeed. The religious powers that be of Jesus day where the Pharisees.  They were the keepers of the law and they kept to it very strictly.  Jesus is bringing a fresh, new way of experiencing God that if was kept to this old way of doing religion would make the wineskin burst.  There are two challenges to us in this scripture.  The first is the fact that we can't let our faith get stale.  Anyone who has exercised can tell you that you can not keep doing the same exercises in the same way if

I have been captured by the world cup this year! I could not help but be captivated by the US team that has faced adversity but persevered.  In their second game, the referees disallowed a goal that should have counted and given the US a win.  That goal and another goal in the third game almost cost them a chance to advance.  Instead, with less than three minutes left in the game the US was able to score a goal, allowing them not only a chance to advance but to win their pool.  Perseverance.  The team lived it, and we as Christian can learn a little something from their actions. This life that we live is full of hard knocks, difficult times that leave us questioning how it is that we can continue.  Paul, the writer of much of the New Testament, understood adversity.  In speaking to his student Timothy he says: "For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time has come for my departure. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the

The world can change. We can change. I truly believe this, and I think that it is an important concept of Christianity.  There are many Christian world views, but one of the most common is the idea that the world is the way the is and that is how its going to be.  This idea was the dominant theme for Medieval Christianity.  The King was the King because God made him that way.  The surf was poor, because God had made him that way. We still have vestiges of this thought in our current spirituality.  In popular Christianity, the entire goal has become to 'convert' or 'save' souls for the afterlife and not worry too much about changing the world.  I believe that if we examine some things that Jesus said we will see that Jesus was not just about life eternal after death, but in creating a kingdom of God on Earth through divinely inspired human actions. One example is something we all are probably familiar with, the Lord's prayer (where Jesus says pray this). Christ s