The Sample family has a lot of traditions around Christmas. Most fall under the heading of waiting. We would wake up Christmas morning and we couldn’t open our stockings until all the kids were awake. Which required some waiting. Because some of the us kids liked to sleep in. Then, once the parents woke…

How many of you, in order to truly enjoy a book or a movie, you need to know the end of it? I will try not to hold a grudge against ya’ll. Some people try to tell me what is going to happen, and I don’t want to know. I take that back. There are somethings that I do want to know before hand. Like, the…

There’s an Andy Griffith episode. Barney once to invest and so he tries to jump into the record making company. An agent for a record company comes into town to make a record of North Carolina blue grass music. Barney keeps floating the term diversify, so that he wants to put his money in many different…

Technically, I should probably have preached this sermon last week, but I had to finish up the previous passage. It’s now a week and a half since the election. Half of the nation is happy. The other half is not. When I was preparing this sermon, I had no idea what the result would be. I just knew that…

Solomon is discussing wisdom and folly in this passage. We gave the first part of this sermon two weeks ago, and basically covered the main point of the whole thing. We find our joy not in our circumstances and how we can manipulate them, but in the God who loves us. Solomon continues discussing wisdom…

Tuesday is election day. I’m not going to stand up here and tell you who to vote for. But, if you want my opinion, I’ve got strong opinions that I’ll tell you about if you ask. Especially for the election for school board in the Neligh-Oakdale district. But, I’m not going there right now. Election day…

Solomon was a prolific author. If he lived today, he would be on the New York Times best seller list, multiple times. People would be lining up to read his next book. His songs would be on the top of the charts, just because of the amount of things he wrote. He spoke three thousand proverbs and his songs…

The first funeral I remember was for my mother’s mom. I was five years old. My grandfather chartered a bus so that we that the family could ride together from Illinois to the funeral and burial in Minnesota. I knew that she had died, but I didn’t fully know what it meant until a few years later, when…

Have you ever read quotes of people’s last words? It’s fascinating. Some are funny. Actress Joan Crawford yelled at her housekeeper who was praying as Crawford died. She said: Don’t you dare ask God to help me!” When Wilson Mizner was on his deathbed, a priest said, “I’m sure you want to talk to me.”…