Churches in New York City that have been gathering for worship in public school facilities will no longer have that option available. The New York Board of Education has banned all use of public schools for “religious worship service” effective February 12th. The Court of Appeals has rejected attempts to have this ban lifted. And …
Last month, Vallejo International sang in the annual “Music Fest” of the Global Fellowship of Filipino Churches (GFFC). Each participating church presented two musical selections. For one of our selections, we ambitiously decided to sing the majestic “Hallelujah” chorus from G. F. Handel’s “Messiah.” I believe we did a pretty decent rendition of the classic …
One evening, almost a year ago, Grace and I found ourselves very close to the scene of a shootout … a little too close. On the street behind our house, which our bedroom faces, law enforcers cornered a suspect after a car chase. As it turned out, he had stopped before the fence that was …
Because of the overflowing generosity of our church family, Grace and I had the very rare experience of fine dining at a five-star restaurant for our 19th wedding anniversary last month. But our experience had an amusing flavor to it. Let me go back to the beginning. Church members had put together their resources to …
On January 4, 1809, Louis Braille was born into the world. When he was three years old, an accident resulted in the boy becoming blind. Yet he proved to be a person who had the character to overcome his disability. A priest recognized the boy’s potential and began to teach him, and succeeded in getting …
“Happy New Year!” What does this greeting mean? For many, it may simply be a declaration of the passing of time. The calendar shifts from 2011 to 2012. It’s a new year. Or perhaps it can be an expression of a wish that the coming year would indeed bring happiness. There are a number of …
What we celebrate on Christmas is the birth, not just of a great teacher, but of the Son of God. Jesus is God incarnate. He is Immanuel, God with us. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God … And the Word became flesh” (John 1.1, …
“Happy holidays!” This has become the standard greeting of the Christmas season. From all indications, it is the politically correct greeting that secularizes (removes all religious reference to) the season. It is designed to avoid offending those who do not care for the religious nature of Christmas. But all this doesn’t really make sense to …
An intense outrage erupted in Rockland County, New York. A second-grade schoolteacher had the audacity to “ruin” Christmas for her students. In a lesson about the North Pole, she told her students that there was no Santa Claus! She even shocked her 7 and 8 year-old students with the information that the gifts under the …
A while back I came across a statement that posed a very relevant challenge for the church. I do not quite remember where I read it, or who wrote it. Neither do I remember the exact wording. But the Lord recently unpacked the thought from my memory. In essence, here’s what the statement asserted: We …
