I never thought that I would be blogging about President Obama giving eulogy. But life does surprise us, doesn’t it? And this one was a very pleasant surprise. I truly liked what President Obama said in eulogy for Reverend Clementa Pinckney last Friday in Charleston, South Carolina. Who would have thought that Obama’s theology echoes Dietrich Bonhoeffer? Or St. Paul? For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift…
This message will be short and sweet but extremely important: Don’t let anything keep you away from God. Don’t let anything keep you from receiving the gift of faith. Don’t let anything keep you from embracing grace day by day. There’s nothing in your past that could make God love you less. Don’t give in to shame. There’s no mess that big that would keep God granting you grace. Don’t give in to shame. There’s nothing that makes you unqualified…
The Bible is very clear that we are all called to be holy like God is holy. It does not happen without effort but by God’s grace it is possible. To be holy is to be transformed into the image of Christ. What bothers me is the fact that people think that holy people are boring, repressed, stiff-necked,and self-righteous. But Jesus was not at all that kind of person! What’s gone wrong here? We are called to be like Jesus,…
Somehow we humans want to be better than we are. We’d like to be perfect. But we are not. There’s no one without fault. “There’s not one totally good person on earth, Not one who is truly pure and sinless.” (Ecc. 7:20, MSG) God knows this. That’s why he sent Christ to the world. So we would have a way back to him. Because we could never make it on our own. Why is then that we’d like to fake…
What is the name of the ruler of your heart? Shame? Fame? Game? Or a significant other? Sometimes shame keeps us from coming to Christ with the mess we’ve made. We think we are not worthy of God. So we keep away from Christian gatherings and God himself. But here’s the news flash: no one is worthy of grace! Just listen to Jesus: “Who needs a doctor: the healthy or the sick? I’m here inviting the sin-sick, not the spiritually-fit.”…
Did you know there are beach pebbles that need water to stay white? If you take them away from beach they turn boring grey and they lose their whiteness? It is the same way with Christians. If we stay away from baptismal water and daily renewal we become grey, we lose our whiteness. I got an email yesterday from a new friend asking about “how does one saint not be also a sinner”. We all have experienced how difficult it…
