Cornerstone Community Church, San Jose Ca

Of all the words that are hard to say, these are probably the hardest: “I’m sorry.” Three simple words. Doesn’t take long to say them. Not hard to pronounce. But, oh, so very, very hard to say. For most of us our first experience with giving an apology was probably when we were kids and our mom or dad made us apologize. Maybe we broke a neighbor’s window, or we ran over their flowers with our bike. And when our parents found out what we had done, they made it very clear what we were supposed to do – we needed to march right over there (walking not being an option, apparently) and tell Mrs. Olson that we were sorry we had wrecked her petunia garden. It was the last thing in the world we wanted to do. There had to be some other way, we argued. She probably wouldn’t even notice that her flowers had been run over. Or she probably thought some dog had done it – dogs mess up flower beds, you know. But mom and dad would have none of it. S

Napoleon Bonaparte was one of the great military leaders of all time. His military campaigns are still studied at military academies around the world. Napoleon was the Emperor of France from 1804 to 1814. The Napoleonic Code has influenced civil law jurisdictions worldwide. Napoleon made many enemies along the way, and if you recall your history, you remember that he was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 and spent the last six years of his life in a British prison on the island of St. Helena.

Gratitude is not our natural attitude. Philosopher Erik Hoffer wrote, “The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.” Counting our problems comes fairly easily to us, but counting our blessings seems to require more of an effort. One little boy came home from a birthday party with his arms full of trinkets and candy and party favors. His mom said, “Wow! Did you say thank you to your host?” “Well,” he replied, “I was going to, but when I was in line at the door and the girl ahead of me said ‘Thank you’ to the lady, the lady told her, ‘Oh, don’t mention it.’ So I didn’t.” Problems, we like to talk about; blessings, those we don’t mention.

Allow me this morning to begin with a short reading from a classic novel written by the incomparable Charles Dickens. It’s called “Oliver Twist.” Written in 1838, it was made into a play and then a movie titled “Oliver!” and in fact won the Oscar for Best Picture in 1968. But even if you’ve never read the book or seen the movie, you’ve probably heard something about this particular scene, a scene in which young Oliver, an orphan living in a home for boys picked up off the street, gathers the courage to ask his cruel master for more food.

A mom and dad were getting ready to go to a wedding. Their four year old son didn’t really understand the concept, so the dad got out the pictures from their own wedding. Together they went through picture after picture as the dad explained what a wedding is all about. When he finished the father asked his son, “Now do you understand?” “I think so,” the little boy said. “So is that when mommy came to work for us?”

Have you ever heard someone’s name and thought to yourself, “now that’s a name!” It was a name so powerful that no matter how hard you tried you couldn’t get rid of the name. I am drawn to a movie from the early turn of the millennium that won multiple Academy Awards including best picture and best actor; the movie in question is Gladiator. The main character is played by Russell Crowe the star of the recent controversial film Noah. In the movie Crowe’s character is certainly a man to look up to and a man who indeed has a powerful name; his name is Maximus. I am assuming considering the age of the movie most of you are familiar with the plot line so I’m not worried about having to post a spoiler alert. Maximus served the Roman Empire as a general of the armies of the North. The murderous new Caesar Commodus sends Maximus away to be killed because of his knowledge of Commodus’ evil deed in killing his own father. After narrowly escaping death at the hands

Cornerstone Community Church, San Jose CA

“I believe.” Two simple words. Not at all hard to pronounce. They’re words we’ve said with some ease many times before. “I believe in love,” we’ve said. Not controversial – most everyone we know would say the same thing. “I believe in love at first sight,” some say. A bit more controversial – some of us would agree and some of us wouldn’t. But there’s not much risk in saying you believe in love at first sight; people might disagree with you, but they’re not going to shun you for your romanticism.

Did you ever wish you were somewhere else? If you’ve been in a traffic jam, then you know the feeling. We’ve all been in them at some time or another. For some reason all traffic has come to a stop, and you have no idea why. At first you just sit and wait. Then you get out of the car to see if you can figure out what’s wrong. Then you try to see if there’s any possible way to turn off onto an off ramp or a side road. But eventually you accept your fate – there’s nothing you can do but wait. And I imagine you’ve been in some traffic jams that seemed like they’d go on forever. But have you heard about the world’s longest traffic jam? It was on the road from Beijing to Inner Mongolia. I know – why would anyone want to go to Inner Mongolia? But this traffic jam, caused by construction, was 60 miles long. Some drivers spent five entire days in their cars, unable to get off, unable to turn around, unable to do anything but wait. Ha

A couple of years ago our small group went through a study by author Philip Yancey called “Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference?” The book is well over 300 pages, so obviously Yancey has a lot to say about prayer. But I’ve always remembered how he boils the topic of prayer down to the basics. Here’s what he writes: “If I had to answer the question ‘Why pray?’ in one sentence, it would be, ‘Because Jesus did.’” (p. 50)

I never felt sorrier for my dogs than when the vet put them in what is officially called the Elizabethan collar but what we learned in the movie “Up” is called in dog world “the cone of shame.” You’ve all seen them, even if you haven’t owned a dog, those plastic cones the vet puts on the dog to keep the dog from licking and biting and scratching at their stitches or at the site of an infection. It looks both hilarious and humiliating at the same time. I know that it’s medically necessary, but just looking at my dog in the cone of shame would make me feel claustrophobic.

Cornerstone Community Church, San Jose CA

My one-year old granddaughter McKenzie has a number of adorable characteristics that make it easy for me to love her, but she has one trait in particular that endears her to me – she likes to clean. Now I’ll be honest – she can make quite a mess, and she can do it pretty quickly. But she has this obsession with wiping down tables that can’t help but make me proud. If we sit down in a restaurant and hand her a napkin, she’ll spend the next few minutes furiously wiping the table over and over again. And when the napkin she’s using gets too crinkled up, she’ll reach over and steal my napkin so she can clean the table some more. There’s just something in her that says, “I really need to get this table clean.”

There are a slew of reality shows on TV, but only two of them have really captured my interest – “The Biggest Loser” and “So You Think You Can Dance.” I find myself being inspired by many of the contestants on “The Biggest Loser,” who work so hard and so diligently to get healthy. But I’m not sure I can explain why I like a reality show about dancing, because I assure you – I don’t think I can dance. Once upon a time I was an athlete, so I very much admire the athleticism involved in dancing. And I enjoy a fair bit of contemporary music, so it’s fun to watch the contestants dancing to music I enjoy. I probably don’t enjoy the show as much as my wife does – I can sometimes be caught checking out the score of a basketball game on my iPad while she’s watching the show. And for the most part I don’t enjoy the comments of the judges on the show, who – in my opinion – take themselves way too

It’s an odd time of year to be thinking about the classic Charles Dickens’ story “A Christmas Carol,” but there’s a scene from that story that comes to mind whenever I think about the topic of hope. You remember the story, I imagine. Ebenezer Scrooge, a surly old miser, is visited one Christmas Eve by three ghosts – the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future. First Scrooge goes back in time to revisit his life as a youth; some of his past Christmas Eves were quite happy, and others were quite sad. Then the ghost of Christmas Present takes him to see how the family of his employee, Bob Cratchett, is celebrating Christmas that year, and Scrooge is moved to see how the family experiences so much joy despite their challenging circumstances. Finally the ghost of Christmas Future pulls back the curtain to show Scrooge his future, and what Scrooge sees is horribly upsetting. Not only is Scrooge dead, but rather than mourn his death, the people of his community ce

Because my grandparents and parents lived through the Great Depression way back in the 1930s, we kids were taught from an early age that it was a sin to waste anything. The opening of presents on Christmas Eve became something of a marathon in our family because my Grandmother insisted we not tear the wrapping paper because that would be wasteful. Instead we had to use scissors to carefully cut the tape, then slowly unwrap the present and give the paper to Nanny so she could neatly fold it up and save it for next year.

“WHEN PAIN WEARS YOU DOWN: MAKE A PLACE FOR GRACE” How To Handle Pain Without Becoming One February 16, 2014 Cornerstone Community Church The game, my older brothers told me, is called “99.” Actually it was only a game to them; it certainly wasn’t a game for me. They would pin my scrawny body to the ground and hold my arms down by placing their knees on my elbows, and then they would proceed to administer 99 light taps to my sternum. They weren’t hard blows, mind you; I could not honestly complain that they were “hitting” me. They were just taps – one after another after another. But by the time the count got to about 60 or 70, those taps began to take their toll. My bony little sternum got sorer and sorer. And by the time they got into the 90s, each tap felt like I was being slugged. One or two taps was no big deal. Thirty or forty taps I could handle. But 99 taps – that was misery.

I know I’m a pastor and that I preach and teach about the supernatural every Sunday, but I have to admit something to you – I am often a little slow when it comes to taking seriously the work of Satan and his demons. Part of it is a reaction to some people I knew growing up who had a tendency to blame everything they didn’t like on Satan. If the weather was too hot or too cold, it was Satan’s fault. If they didn’t get a convenient parking spot, it was the work of Satan. If the wrong candidate won the election, it was clearly the hand of Satan. And my thought when I would listen to them was usually, “Really! Don’t you think there might be an explanation for the cold you caught other than Satan’s supernatural intervention?”

I love reading conversion stories. One of the magazines I subscribe to – Christianity Today – regularly includes a first-person account of a particularly interesting or dramatic conversion. Last year, for example, one of the accounts was written by an English professor named Rosaria Champagne Butterfield. Here’s how she starts her conversion story: “The word Jesus stuck in my throat like an elephant tusk; no matter how hard I choked, I couldn’t hack it out. Those who professed the name commanded my pity and wrath. As a university professor, I tired of students who seemed to believe that ‘knowing Jesus’ meant knowing little else … Stupid. Pointless. Menacing. That’s what I thought of Christians and their god Jesus, who in paintings looked as powerful as a Breck Shampoo commercial model.” The title of Ms. Butterfield’s conversion story is “My Train Wreck Conversion,” and here’s the subtitle: “As a leftis

“WHEN NOBODY DID IT: HANDLING NATURE’S HICCUPS” How To Handle Pain Without Becoming One January 26, 2013 Cornerstone Community Church Our son was about four years old at the time. My wife was hard at work in her office upstairs in our home when Ryan came running into the room. He had something to tell her – something important. Pausing to catch his breath Ryan began with an announcement: “Nobody did it, Mom; nobody did it.” And then, before running back out of the room, Ryan said as calmly as he could, “I need a towel.”