Have you ever felt abandoned and completely alone? Maybe you’ve even questioned the goodness of God in the midst of your distress. We tend to have a strong sense of justice, until negative circumstances start to befall us. Then we pull out our exemption excuses and start to blame God for our trouble.   Well, […]

In our continued reading of the day to day activities of Jesus leading up to His death we come to Thursday and Jesus final day with His disciples. During the celebration of the Passover meal, Jesus announces to His disciples that one of them is going to betray Him. This causes the disciples to wonder […]

Okay, okay. I’m taking a bit of liberty here in talking about the fig tree for a fourth time, but even though these events technically took place on Tuesday, I think that this particular teaching brings a nice bookend to our study so far this week.   Yesterday we saw the disciples walking by the […]

The day after Jesus cursed the fig tree the disciples notice that it had withered and died, but as is their nature throughout Jesus’ teaching, the disciples missed the point of the lesson. We too can miss what Jesus is saying if we pick this text out of its context.   Jesus tells the disciples […]

Mondays are hard. I’m not always on my best form at the start of the work week. I don’t like waking up after a long restful weekend. And if I’ve preached that Sunday, I’m even more exhausted. I understand now why most pastors take Mondays off. I often oversleep which means I don’t have enough […]

Every year we come to Palm Sunday and we hear the same story. It runs the risk of becoming common and familiar in a way that loses its impact on our lives. Furthermore, the Gospel of Mark withholds certain details about this first day of Jesus final week so that it leaves even less information […]