Talbot Davis's Blog, page 52
July 23, 2018
#BehindTheScenes, Week 3 — The “We Have Met The Enemy And HE IS THAT GUY!” Sermon Rewind
Yesterday’s message … Had some fun with the biblical name “Bigthana” by envisioning a younger brother named “LittleThana”; Pointed out again how often the children of Israel have been subjected to genocidal rage; Explored how frustrating it is when a reward YOU EARN goes to someone else; Landed at this bottom line / question: Can
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July 20, 2018
Behind The Scenes, Week 3 — “We Have Met The Enemy And HE IS THAT GUY!”
Most of you know the old chorus “He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands.” It’s pithy, child-like, and singable. But is it true? In the face of a whole lot of evidence that looks contrary, is it true? Midway through the book of Esther, you could be forgiven for doubting the accuracy of that
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July 19, 2018
Some Thoughts On Home
I spent Monday through Wednesday of this week at a United Methodist conference in Dallas, Texas. As a lot of you know, that’s the city of my birth, childhood, and adolescence. One of the first things I did on this trip — as I do every time on those rare occasions I go to Dallas
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July 18, 2018
Up From Cynicism
Over the past several years, I’ve gratefully emerged out of a fog of cynicism. I went through a season where I was so frustrated with the actions of people who described themselves as mature Christians that I almost threw out the notion of mature Christianity altogether. So I became skeptical of certain evangelical standards such
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July 17, 2018
Top Five Tuesday — Top Five Takeaways From Frederick Buechner’s “The Remarkable Ordinary”
I just finished reading Frederick Buechner’s The Remarkable Ordinary: How To Stop, Look, And Listen To Life. Buechner is a Princeton grad, Presbyterian pastor, essayist, novelist, and occasional preacher. He just turned 92 and so is not turning out much new material, but these little volume spoke, well, volumes to me. My motivation for tackling
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July 16, 2018
Behind The Scenes, Week 2 — The “Beauty And The Bleh” Sermon Rewind
Yesterday’s message … Introduced the squirm-in-your-seat concept of a “sexual audition” from Esther 2; Meditated on both the nature of the bible — why such a story in holy writ? — and the activity of God — does he cause stuff, respond to it, or something else altogether? Recognized the persistence of God’s enemies; Landed
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July 13, 2018
Behind The Scenes, Week 2 — “Beauty And The Bleh”
So there’s a beauty: Esther. And there’s bleh: her life situation, her predicament, her enemies. Why have both synagogue and church always included such a sordid, “godless,” story in their Scriptures? What does Esther 2 have to say to us in 2018. Quite a lot. It’s a message I am eager to give because I
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July 12, 2018
Methodist Experiment
With some frequency, our Next Step Membership Workshop will involve an experiment. A Methodist experiment. And while the people in the class change, the results of the experiment rarely do. Here it is. At the beginning of our third evening together, I ask the group, “what do Methodists believe?” The answers are always some
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July 11, 2018
Does Greatness Come In A Moment Or Must It Be Sustained? A Post Connecting Literature, Tennis, And Preaching
Way back in the spring of 1984, as I was winding up my English degree in college, I took a class on theories of literary interpretation. It sounds kind of high falutin’, and I suppose it was. The teacher was Louis Menand, who has gone on to a measure of fame as author, commentator, and
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July 10, 2018
Top Five Tuesday — Top Five (Or Six) Stories That Didn’t QUITE Make It Into Your Illustrated Children’s Bible
We’ve all seen these: And what’s inside most of those illustrated children’s bible tends to be a much-sanitized version of the real thing. By making Scripture palatable to pre-schoolers and pre-teens, we rob it of its wildness and unpredictability. Sometimes what you find when you actually open the bible up is shocking. Hilarious. Nuanced. Bloody. Rated PG-13.
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