Acts 9:10-19a My name is Ananias. If you do not know my name I am not surprised and frankly, I am relieved. I was never an exceptional Christian like Peter, James, John, and the original Twelve. I came to follow Jesus but I had no need for any spotlight. Forgive me. I am getting ahead of myself. Let me first tell you more about me than my name. I was born and raised in Damascus, Syria. Have you ever traveled there? You should. Damascus is filled with beautiful gardens and orc

Text: Psalm 27 It is hard to walk in the dark. Despite my age and knowing better, I still often try it some nights. I wake up early, don’t want to disturb Jennell’s sleep, so I slither out of bed (as much anyone my size can slither) and I sneak off in the dark. Inevitably, I miscalculate my steps and stub a toe or trip over a shoe that I forgot to put away. It is hard to walk in the dark. It is even harder to live in the dark, much less to find God in the dark. I speak from e

Texts: Psalm 126:1; Matthew 2:18-23 I lived a somewhat schizophrenic childhood. The lessons I learned in school often did not jive with what I learned at home, in my neighborhood, in my church. In school, I sat transfixed watching the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wax eloquent on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. My heart sang with his vision of a land that would care more about the content of a person’s character than the hue of their skin. When I left school, though

Text: Matthew 2:1-3, 7-11 Fred Buechner once wrote: “The gifts that the . . . Magi, brought to the manger in Bethlehem cost them plenty but seem hardly appropriate to the occasion. Maybe they were all they could think of for the child who had everything. In any case, they set them down on the straw—the gold, the frankincense, the myrrh—worshiped briefly, and then returned to the East where they had come from. It gives you pause to consider how, for all their great wisdom, the