power ⁽¹⁸⁷⁾

Numbers 16:1–50, Romans 16:17–20, 1 Corinthians 1:10–17 Most of us have heard John Dalberg-Acton’s quip, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” What is most often missed is Acton’s “tends”. David Brin takes a slightly different tack, “It is said that power corrupts,…

Exodus 6:1–13, Psalm 37:1–24, 1 Corinthians 3:18–4:5 “I want you to walk up to your estranged family (who just so happens to be the world power at the moment) and tell them to release their biggest labor force.” Hmm. We are so accustomed to Moses’…

Psalm 50, Isaiah 58, Matthew 6:1–18 Humankind is always trying to figure God out. Humankind will often take a human role/position and apply it to God. It is not wrong to do this, in scripture we see, “Lord of lords.” There is an explicit understanding…

Isaiah 58:1–12, Psalm 51:1–17, Matthew 6:19–21 Ash Wednesday is the start of Lent, the reflective Christian journey to the cross. One of the symbolic pieces are the ashes themselves. The “official” tradition is that the ashes are from last year’s Palm Sunday. Palm Sunday is…

Psalm 35:11–28, Exodus 35:1–29, Acts 10:9–23 Sometimes the greatest evidence that we are doing well is those that oppose us. Another way of perhaps saying that is that the measure of one's success is the quality of one's enemies. Some scholars have claimed that part…