Harmony of Grace

The word p e r f e c t ion  comes with a whole lot of baggage. We all know that no-one is perfect, and yet we are told that practice makes perfect. To be a perfectionist is sometimes seen as a crutch, while at other times we are encouraged to strive for perfection. The founder of Methodism, John Wesley, taught about an idea called C h r i s t i a n P e r f e c t i o n and asserted that followers of Christ could experience this ideal. In Genesis, we read that God created the world and humanity and declared that it was good. Many claim that this implies that God's original Creation was perfect. D a n i e l l e S h r o y e r suggests that perhaps "a more appropriate view of creation would be not perfection but potential. God designed the world to develop and function in a certain way, while allowing for creation to live freely into its potential. Sometimes creation will live up to and into its potential, while other times it will renounce it.... Potential reminds us once agai...

I would like to share some exciting news with you all... I am moving all of my content over to my Patreon page! Now, the first thing you might be wondering to yourself is: "Does this mean I have to start paying to read your posts? What a rip-off!" Well before you write me off as a money-grabbing scrooge, let me emphatically say that no, you do not need to pay to follow me or see my posts on Patreon. Go to https://www.patreon.com/harmonyofgrace and click the button shown in the image below to follow my page without having to pay anything at all. You can easily create a Patreon account with your Google, Apple of Facebook Account. 99% of my Patreon content will be completely free to the public so please feel free to follow my page without any financial obligations at all. However, if for some reason you appreciate my content enough to support my work financially, you are welcome to become a paid patron. I will provide occasional, exclusive content for my paying patrons. All of ...

  "God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and in the flowers, and clouds and stars." - Martin Luther I have always been someone that connects with God through the beauty of God's creation. I regularly try to retreat into nature, but in recent years, these moments have been few and far between. No matter how busy we are and how much noise we fill our lives with, sometimes we are unexpectedly forced into situations where we will hear God's voice loudly and clearly as if spoken through a megaphone. Last Friday, I experienced one of these special occasions.  I was attending an art exhibition in Bethlehem with my wife and child. It was held in an airplane hangar at our local airport. While I am certainly not an art connoisseur by any stretch of the imagination, I thoroughly enjoyed walking through the exhibit, appreciating the beautiful paintings and the emotional responses that they brought up within me. Due to the late opening of the exhibition,...

Last week Sunday was our church's confirmation service where seven young folk publicly pronounced their faith in Jesus and committed their lives to follow in his footsteps, with God being their helper.  It brings me great joy to see young people experience the abundant life that God has to offer and choose to follow the way of Jesus. The most powerful part of the confirmation service for me is not the confirmees' promises to follow Jesus, but the congregation's response and promise to care for the confirmees. Here are some of the words that the congregation declares together: "With God’s help, we will surround these persons with a community of love and forgiveness, that they may grow in their trust of God, and be found faithful in their service to others. We will pray for them, that they may be true disciples who walk in the way that leads to life." It is in these beautiful words that we are faced with the wonderful reality of the church's true purpose - to be...