Good morning, Community UMC family! Happy Sunday! Let me begin with a simple question: How many languages can you say “thank you” in? English: Thank you, Gracias in Spanish, merci in French, danke in German, or arigatou gozaimasu in Japanese. I am so thankful for your presence here today. So I want to ask you a question: If you could describe “following Christ [...]
Getting Your Mind Right (Philippians 2: 1-16) I know I’ve mentioned this before, but one of my favorite movies is Cool Hand Luke starring Paul Newman as Luke. Luke is a petty criminal, and not a very good one, as he got caught cutting the heads of parking meters in order to steal the [...]
Church vs. State (Romans 13: 1-7) I guess that if there is anything positive you can say about our political cycles is that they often call into question where we stand as Followers of the Way of Jesus Christ when it comes to deciding who will represent us in a government of the people, [...]
Look Up, Not Down Romans 14: 1-12 After being voted out of office the first time, Teresa and I moved three hours away to Tyler, Texas where I landed a job as an Assistant District Attorney for Smith County. We were pretty excited and lucked into a cute little pre-war two-bedroom, one bath house [...]
Gospel Loopholes Romans 13: 8-14 Back when I practiced law, I would have the occasional client come in with a problem wanting me to see if there was a way around the law, and it didn’t matter if it was a civil case or a criminal case. They were looking for a way around [...]
No Strings Attached (Romans 12: 1-8) In the world of social media, it’s called: Click Bait. Something pops up on your Facebook feed that looks interesting, tempting and possibly too good to be true. For me, it’s usually some quick and easy way to improve my guitar playing short of going down to the [...]
Speaking Truth to Power (Matthew 15: 1-20) One thing that took me a while to learn about the Houston Police Department was that the more things changed, the more they stayed the same. An organization that lives and dies upon maintaining the status quo will do whatever it can to resist change, especially if [...]
Sink or Swim (Matthew 14: 22-33) When my granddaughter was little, before she got into kindergarten, one of my duties was to travel over to Edmonds and take her to swimming lessons. It was an organized chaos to say the least and I have to give credit to her instructor, a woman with an [...]
Supply and Demand (Matthew 14: 13-21) Last Sunday we talked about that part of Paul’s letter to the Roman church where he assured them that: God works all things together for the good for the ones who love God, for those who are called according to his purpose. I can think of no better [...]
Practicing criminal defense in Smith County, Texas was challenging to say the least. My friend Richard Kennedy used to say that the milk of human kindness was not to be found in the Smith County courthouse. For elected officials who were a part of the criminal justice system mercy and forgiveness were seen as [...]