Deuteronomy 30: 9-20 (links validated 6/23/22)

New Resources

  • Epiphany 6A (2023)

    by Juliana Claassens
  • Making Wise Choices

    by Bob Cornwall
  • L'Chaim

    by Kathy Donley
    Michael Jinkins, is a former president of Louisville Presbyterian Seminary. His book, Called To Be Human, is a collection of letters to his adult children. In one he writes, “The purpose of Christian faith is for us to become human. I’ll put it even more bluntly Christians believe that God became flesh and dwelt among us. And I do not for a moment think that God went to all the trouble of incarnation - let alone the trouble of being crucified, just to make us religious. God became human to make human beings out of us.”...
  • Sermon Starters (Epiphany 6A)(2023)

    by Scott Hoezee
    Too often we make the mistake of thinking that God’s laws are like speed limit signs–they are just arbitrary hoops God has decided people should jump through. But as the people of God, we need to know that God’s laws are like gravity–God gave us these guidelines and rules as a kind of owner’s manual for life on earth. These rules describe the way things simply are. All in all, you will be far better off in life if you respect the law of gravity–when dealing with hammers, ladders, staircases, and the edges of cliffs, it’s a really good idea to know that gravity is not a law that depends on circumstances to take effect. So also with God’s law for the Israelites: God wanted his people to be safe, healthy, and well. But God knew that for shalom to come, it would come best and easiest and the most quickly when people followed the owner’s guide for life in the Promised Land.
  • Klepto Fish and a Dying Prophet

    by Jim McCrea
    Perhaps the oddest story to appear in the news recently came out of Japan, where a man set up an electrical grid by his fish tank and connected that grid to motion-tracking software. That software then described his goldfish’s swimming patterns as if the fish were pushing buttons on their owner’s Nintendo Switch. He wanted to see if his fish could complete a video game by themselves. And they succeeded in a mere 3,000 hours. That’s 125 days if you’re curious. Take that, all you proverbial monkeys pounding typewriters in the attempt to recreate the works of Shakespeare! In fact, the fish went even further than the game. They managed to access the console’s store and order a $3.83 download. All this was captured on a webcam broadcasting live on YouTube and, in the process of making their purchase, the fish also exposed the owner’s credit card information to the world. Perhaps that was their protest over their lack of privacy!...
  • Releasing Our Grip

    by Jessica Mesman
  • A Story of the Heart

    by Glenn Monson
  • Choosing Life by Grace

    by Leslie Scoopmire
  • Epiphany 6A (2023)

    by Matt Tuszynski
  • Epiphany 6A

    by Howard Wallace
  • Epiphany 6A (2023)

    by Samuel Zumwalt

Resources from 2022

Resources from 2019 to 2021

[If you have any questions about navigating through the site (and for some helpful tips even if you don’t!), please check out our video guide. Just copy this link (https://www.loom.com/share/afe3352a69f44bff814af8b695701c5e) and paste it into your favorite browser.]
  • Proper 10C (2019)

    by Valerie Bridgeman
  • Proper 18C (2019)

    by Marissa Coblentz
  • Proper 18C (2019)

    by Phil Heinze
  • The Choice God Offers

    by Kelley Land
  • Sermon Starters (Epiphany 6A)(2020)

    by Stan Mast
    Frank Stockton’s classic short story, “The Lady and the Tiger,” is a perfect example of the murkiness of so many choices in a world where evil is so strong. A cruel king, a star-crossed lover and his jealous girlfriend, and two doors concealing a beautiful woman or a ferocious tiger. Which to choose? Whom to believe? What will be the consequences when the man finally has to choose? In a world filled with moral grayness, our text is a refreshing or jarring exception. An example of the moral complexity of our world is the way the words of our text have been claimed by opposite sides of the great abortion controversy. Our text urges us to “choose life,” but one side of the debate is “pro-choice” and the other is “pro-life.”
  • Epiphany 6A (2020)

    by Tyler Mayfield
  • The Promise of Dynamic Life

    by Jim McCrea
    Jeff Whillock tells of a time he was out driving and a car passed him. The driver of the other car had his seatbelt over his shoulder and the buckle hanging in front of his shoulder. Whillock realized that the man must have wanted it to look as if he were buckled in so he wouldn’t get a ticket, even though he didn’t really want the protection of actually being buckled. Thinking about that Whillock wrote: “The way that man dealt with his seatbelt is the way many people deal with their faith, with their relationship with God. People sometimes put one arm into the church…. So at a glance it looks like they are indeed secure in their faith, but really they are not buckled up. For in order for the seatbelt to work, the buckle has to […] be latched and fastened securely. That’s the way it was designed, that’s the way it works, that’s the way it saves your life. “So, too, it is with faith. In order for faith to work, in order for faith to really make a difference in your life, you can’t just wrap it around your shoulder. Your relationship with God has to buckle up. You have to allow the spirit of God to wrap around you. “Think about your own life, your own faith. Do you just kinda have one arm in the church so it looks like you’re wrapped in faith or do you allow God to penetrate your life […]? So too we must allow God to penetrate our lives to be alive and secure in our faith.”...
  • Choosing

    Art and Faith by Lynn Miller
    Blues musician Robert Johnson (b. 1911) wrote, sang, and played the blues, though not very well at first. Playing for tips on street corners, Johnson sought out musicians like Son House to teach him how to play. In the early 1930s, Johnson disappeared for about a year from the juke joints and house parties that were home to music and musicians playing the blues. When Johnson reappeared, his playing had unnaturally improved. And the legend arose: Johnson had gone to the crossroads* and sold his soul to the devil in exchange for the ability to play and sing the blues better than anyone. And he did. By all accounts that midnight choice at the crossroads led to the skill and fame that were promised, but it didn't solve Johnson's problems. Not by a long shot. In 1938 Johnson became a member of the 27 Club, a list consisting mostly of popular musicians, artists, or actors who died at age 27...
  • Choosing Life

    by Glenn Monson
  • A Heart for God

    by Glenn Monson
  • Epiphany 6A (2020)

    by Brent Neely
    Robert Frost once famously wrote in a poem “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.”...
  • Proper 18C (2019)

    by Carolyn Sharp

Resources from 2017 and 2018

  • Epiphany 6A (2017)

    by Doug Bratt
    As Frederick Buechner and others have observed, the word “law” can be used a couple of different ways. Sometimes a law reflects the way someone decides things should be. So the sign that tells you to drive 55 MPH on a certain stretch of highway is the law, but it’s rather arbitrary. Maybe it used to be 45 MPH and maybe someday a Department of Transportation committee will decide to move it up to 65 MPH. Similarly, if you own a patch of forest, it’s up to you whether or not to grant access to hunters. You can post either a “No Trespassing/No Hunting” sign along your fence line or a sign that says, “Hunters Allowed with Permission.” It’s up to you, and either way it is, as it were, the law for your property. Speed limit and trespassing signs are “law” in the sense of how we decide things should be.
  • My Night on the Mountain

    by Edwina Gateley
  • Epiphany 6A (2017)

    by Phil Heinze
  • Epiphany 6A (2017)

    by Brett Holmes
  • Epiphany 6A (2017)

    by Cameron B. R. Howard
  • Choosing Life

    by Janet Hunt
  • Happy Ever After

    by Russ Levenson
    In his later years, Leo Tolstoy wrote a book entitled Confessions. An autobiography of sorts, he shares that he had rejected Christianity as a child...so...he left the university and entered the social world of Moscow--drinking heavily, living promiscuously, gambling, and he found that did not satisfy. Ambitious for money--he had inherited a large amount, and he made a lot on his books--but he found that also did not satisfy. So he turned to success and notoriety and wrote what the Encyclopedia Britannica describes as "one of the two or three greatest novels in world literature." But he was left asking, "Well, that's fine. So, what now?" Then he tried family. He married in 1862 to a wonderful woman. He had 13 children--which, he said, did distract him from his overall search for meaning. He had achieved it all and yet one question brought him to the verge, actually, of suicide. He wrote, "Is there any meaning in my life which will not be annihilated by the inevitability of death which awaits me?"
  • Choose Life

    by Peter Lockhart
  • Choose Life

    by Jacob Waldrip
  • Here and Now the Choice Is Made

    by Bob Warren
    Did you ever see the 1996 film Trainspotting? If you had, then you’d remember the opening “Choose Life” monologue of Ewen McGregor’s character in which he admits that he and his circle of heroin-addicted friends living in the Leith district of Edinburgh have given up their right to choose. Why? McGregor’s character puts it this way: “Who needs reasons when you’ve got heroin.”

Resources from 2014 and 2015

  • Life Well Lived

    by Dan Bollerud
  • You Will Pass It On

    by Dan Bollerud
  • Epiphany 6A (2014)

    by Phil Heinze
  • Choose Life

    by John Holbert
  • Choosing Life

    by Janet Hunt
  • Epiphany 6A (2014)

    by Tyler Mayfield
  • Choose Life

    by Rick Miles
    To choose Jesus is to choose life. That was the choice Melvin Trotter had to make. For much of his life Trotter was a hopeless alcoholic. He came home after one ten﷓day drinking spree to find his baby dead in his wife's arms. His child had been deathly ill, and he had not been there to help or even care. "I'll never touch another drop." he vowed. But two hours after his baby's funeral, Trotter staggered home; drunk again. He had taken the little white shoes off his baby in the coffin and pawned them for money to buy drink. In utter despair he headed along a Chicago street for Lake Michigan. He saw no way out of his miserable self but a watery death. But on the way the strong arm of Harry Monroe, Superintendent of Pacific Garden Mission, pulled him inside a hall where the Gospel was being preached. That night suicidal Trotter heard that there was the way to life in Christ. He became a Christian and for the next 40 years served as superintendent of a rescue mission in Grand Rapids, Michigan. From this base he started 60 other gospel missions in U.S. cities, including the one in Fresno where I frequently sang an spoke in my college years. He counseled thousands of would﷓be suicides, putting them on the road to happiness and Heaven. Mel Trotter chose to turn from death to life...
  • Epiphany 6A (2014)

    by Wesley White
  • Life Is for Everybody

    by Carlos Wilton

Resources from 2010 to 2013

Resources from the Archives

Children's Resources