As much as I loathed the idea of starting a new school year - the one thing I looked forward to every year was buying new school supplies.  There was nothing more satisfying than the crispness of a new notebook with the freshness of each blank page.  The clean white pages signified a new start with new opportunities and boundless possibilities.

As we closed out our series in the Gospel of Mark we discussed some of the clear proofs of the resurrection. We mentioned two in particular on Sunday (the eyewitness account of women and the shift in the disciples). I wanted to give more attention here to other evidence of the historical event of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

I remember when we received our first microwave growing up.  It was about the size of a mini-van and made as much noise as a NASA rocket.  But it cooked food fast.  One of the subliminal dangers of the modern day microwave is that it has now created the expectation that we can microwave everything.

I don’t like limits. Speed limits, cost limits, time limits, physical limits.  You name it my instinct is to push past it.  For years this has been a hard truth for me to not only admit but to address.  More recently (maybe as a result of turning 40) I have been working to understand AND appreciate my limits.

Emphasis matters. We know this to be true in common rhetoric and speech. Emphasising the right syllables in a given word makes all the difference in being able to say it correctly. When we think about our children and the church traditions that we practise involving children we want to ensure that we have placed the emphasis in the right location.