Marriage is the foundation of family life. So, if a marriage doesn’t make it, the family is shaken. Jesus had something to say about the permanence of marriage. In this message, we’ll focus on two core principles from his teaching. Hope you’ll listen in or watch!

Genesis, the first book of the Bible, tells the story of three families. Spoiler Alert! They’re all a mess. In fact, if the National Transportation and Safety Board did crash investigations on families, they’d have files on all three. Here’s the good news – God brings something good out of the mess. Join us this week as we kick off our series on the family – Good & Messy.

Eleven of our young people are about to graduate from high school. We have one last message before they head off on their next adventure.

Four-thousand hungry people. Seven loaves of bread and a few fish. One prayer. Problem solved. There are lessons to be learned in this story. Lessons about compassion. Communion. And about the confusion we often experience at the intersection of human need and God’s power.

Some people love crowds. The more the merrier. But for others, a big crowd is a little bit of hell on earth. They’d rather stay home to watch the big game or drive 15 hours instead of boarding one of those flying cattle cars we call an airplane. For some people, a crowd doesn’t produce a feeling of connection. It italicizes their isolation. It underlines their loneliness. Mark tells a story about that in chapter five of his gospel.

Easter Service 2017

Many of the things we do start with the push of a button, the click of a mouse, the turn of a wheel or the press of a pedal. We have an enormous amount of control right at our fingertips. Until the power goes out. Or the computer freezes. Or the engine dies. Control, for us, is always provisional and temporary. Not for God. His control is unconditional and eternal. And that’s good news. Here’s why . .,

(additional Bible verses used: James 4:15,

Job 42:2,

Psalms 115:3,

Proverbs 16:33,

Daniel 4:24-25,

Proverbs 16:32,

Jeremiah 3:7,

Jeremiah 2:30,

Matthew 23:37.

You can cross a continent in less time than it took our ancestors to ride into town. Video telephony technologies like FaceTime or Skype put us in the “presence” of a loved one or business associate immediately. And our smartphones make us ubiquitously available. It’s almost like we have overcome all space/time limitations. Except we haven’t. We can still only be in one place at a time. God, however, is different. He’s everywhere. All the time.