UBC Wed For Life

                                        If for some reason, you ever want excuses to be depressed, you need only watch the news for five minutes, and you’ll find more than enough. It seems like America and humanity in general just can’t get it together. Between the various social issues, geo-political conflicts, and existential crises looming on the horizon, it can sometimes feel like we are all hurtling towards oblivion. To make things worse, we don’t see a trend of people turning to God in these trying times. Unfortunately, people are abandoning the faith. This blog has noted that fact on several occasions. There are probably a variety of things to blame for the trend, but whatever the cause of people turning away from God, we can be sure it’s not something that pleases him. It’s easy for us to look at today’s world and feel like things are uniquely bad, but the truth is the worl...

                                       A rapper named Killah Priest has a song that includes the following line: When you pray you talk to God. When you meditate God talks to you. To be clear this isn’t really a Biblically based statement, and the song is secular not Christian rap. Still, the perspective is interesting. At United’s Sunday Encounters, Pastor Pope is in the midst of delivering a series of sermons that explain how we should pray. His sermons revolve around the following acrostic: T - Thanksgiving A - Adoration C - Confession O - Others S - Supplication TACOS is a very useful tool for remembering everything that should be included in our prayers. It helps ensure that we consistently say everything we need to say to God when we pray. However, therein lies part of the problem. We can use TACOS to guide how we talk to God, but if we consistently just go through that chec...

                                    Several weeks ago Laruen Boebert, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives gave a speech where she referenced a verse from the Bible and seemingly used it to wish death on President Biden. Anyone who calls themselves a Christian should be disturbed by what she said. A politician using God’s Word for such a vile purpose shouldn’t be acceptable. Unfortunately, as has been mentioned on this blog before, it’s increasingly common in today’s world to hear politicians and other famous people who claim to be Christians using the Bible to push their own agendas, spread hate, and promote things that are not Christlike. Often these poor uses of the Bible go unchecked, at least on a public level, but this time was different. In response to Boebert’s comments, almost 20,000 Christians have signed a petition asking for the Congresswoman’s resignation . Whether or no...

                                When we think about the New Testament, the teachings of Jesus and Paul are probably the first to come to mind. Jesus, of course, is the focus for the whole New Testament. The Gospels cover his life and death while his teachings, resurrection, and the advent of the Holy Spirit are what provide the foundation for all the other books in the New Testament. Paul, on the other hand, was the prominent figure in the New Testament responsible for the spread of Christianity from the Jews to various groups of Gentiles throughout the Mediterranean Sea coast and Middle East. There is good reason that those two are the stars of the New Testament, but we shouldn’t forget that other voices are also present within the New Testament books. Jesus had twelve disciples and several of them have books that appear in the New Testament. They each bring interesting perspectives. When we learn ab...

                                         Several prophets have short, often overlooked books, dedicated to them in the Bible. Jonah is one example, though his name is more well-known among believers and others who have a casual familiarity with the Bible. It’s not that Jonah’s work was more important than that of the other prophets. His story simply had a component to it that made for better storytelling. We’ve heard about Noah and the Ark, David and Goliath, and Daniel in the Lion’s Den. They are all stories that illustrate who God is in fantastical fashion. Jonah and the Fish is a story that fits right along them. The problem is that in boiling Jonah’s story down to his experience with the fish, we miss out on a lot of what the Book of Jonah is trying to teach us. That’s unfortunately a mistake that we sometimes make with the Bible as a whole. We try to find the big lesson ...

              With the holiday season drawing to a close, almost everyone has observed some sort of long held tradition over the past couple weeks. America, the melting pot that it is, has citizens that celebrate a number of different holidays during this season including Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, New Year’s Day, and Christmas. Christmas, in particular, is an interesting case as it is like a mixed bag of several different holidays. Of course, for us believers, Christmas commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ. Given Jesus’ importance to us and our faith, there’s no surprise that Christmas is one of the most important holidays to us. That said, Christmas is no longer a holiday solely celebrated by Christians. Many people who do not even believe in Jesus still celebrate Christmas. As a result, Christmas has a number of attached customs and traditions that don’t have anything to do with Christ’s birth. Does that mean we shouldn’t observe any of those cust...

                                    It’s Christmas time again. Christmas is a holiday celebrated by both religious and nonreligious people. The Christmas season is supposed to be a time of joy, love, and generosity, all of which are undoubtedly good things. Still, as we Christians like to say: Jesus is the reason for the season. He’s what it’s all about. Sending Jesus to earth was God’s greatest display of love, generosity, and mercy, and our joy during this season should come from our reflection over what Jesus’ birth means for us. He wasn’t just a very special person. He was and is our savior. You’ll probably hear that sentiment a lot. “Christmas is when we celebrate the birth of our savior.” What does that really mean though? We say it. Many of us believe it, but do we really comprehend what it means? We live in a time where the movie theaters are ruled by superhero movies - stories...