Category Archives: Uncategorized

Confident Prayer: Mockingbirds and the Goodness of God

I’ve been the Pastor of a small Presbyterian church in rural Kentucky for over a year now. In my time here, I’ve developed a lot of wonderful relationships with beloved saints, preached through Paul’s epistle to the Ephesians and most of Ecclesiastes, taken part in numerous other ministries through the church and in the community, etc. In other words, by God’s grace, I’ve done a lot of what would be expected of a Pastor.

But, unbeknownst to many of my people, I’ve also been doing something else – I’ve become over time a casual ornithologist; that is to say, I’ve been considering the sparrows, or, to be more precise, the mockingbirds. Continue reading

Pastoral Letter (04/09/20)

To my dear people,

I have been your Pastor for over a year now, and if you were to have asked me when I was leaving Pittsburgh if I thought in a year’s time I would be telling my people to stay home instead of coming to church, the answer would be a definite “no”. And that would have been foolish of me. We never know what is going to happen in the next year, month, week, day, hour, or moment. We make our plans, but it is the Lord Whose decree will stand. So, here we are, in the midst of this unexpected epidemic; and the best thing that we can do for ourselves and for each other is to be apart for now. Continue reading

Moral Exemplar or Holy Substitute?

“Because our minds are so poor and frail, we rightly discuss the theories of the atonement. But we must always remember that the atonement is not a theory. It wasn’t a theory that died for us on the cross. It was a man who took our very physical nature himself in his own body.”[1] Ultimately, when discussing any theological issue, the reality that must overwhelm us is that we are contemplating truths that in their fullness are beyond us; our minds cannot grasp the depths of the Incarnation, the Trinity, etc., nor can our words completely encapsulate their reality. The God Whom we so often discuss is the living God, Whose holiness and glory and being and thoughts are beyond the reckoning of man. Continue reading