Pastor Tom's Community

  1975 – Virginia Tech computer lab. A stack of punched cards 9 inches high or higher is in my hand, each with one statement of code. After waiting in line at midnight, I insert them into the feeder for the giant computer. Within a few minutes the printer sends out pages and pages and…

We either treat our leaders with blind trust and awe or with disrespect, contempt, and disgust. It is hard to find the middle ground where we honor them, recognize their limitations and humanity, and see them as temporary occupiers of a role that they will one day surrender to another. FDR did not finish the…

  In contrast to trust, dependence, reliance and subjugation to human leadership that always dies, even our own leadership with its termination date in the future, God models leadership that lasts. Do you want to leave a legacy? Check out the priorities of God from Psalm 146. To the extent that our leadership, and any…

  What do I see when I look a person in the eye? Jesus saw people with their potential and their pain. He saw through their masks. He looked beyond their labels and arbitrary categories. His eyes were keen in meeting their eyes, for the there is no ethnicity nor affiliation in the eye. He…

The great test of how deeply our hearts are submitted to His will may come when we are called upon to love our enemies.

  Before the rooster crows, three times thou wilt deny.Three times you'll disavow my name and swear by earth and sky.Three times, not one or two or three,you'll vow we've never metThree times you'll protest, shout, and curse,three times, three times, and yet … And yet I know your love is realas real as fear,…

  The day calls.It cries with harsh urgency.It commands and harasses us into submission to get up and going …… yet, where?So …We pause.We wait.We connect and collect.We listen.We lift up our souls.Then we move. " Let me hear in the morning of your steadfast love,for in you I trust.Make me know the way I…

So… here is Jonathan's inventory … Audacious, if yet, tentative faith in God to save by many or by few.One sword.A friend. That was it and that was enough. What is in your inventory? " Jonathan said to the young man who carried his armor, “Come, let us go over to the garrison of these…

 “I speak not by commandment, but by occasion of the forwardness of others, and to prove the sincerity of your love.”   – II Corinthians 8:8 There is something within you that is full of sincere love, something that desires to give of yourself completely to God and others. It is that new nature imparted by…

".. He said 'No more of this…" and he touched his ear and healed him." No more of this … No more violence.No more retaliation.No more waiting for the moment of our calling.No more delay for redemption with all its cost.No more games.No more betrayal.No more sell-preservation at all costs.No more deciding who our enemies…