Sermons · Wilson Pruitt

Illustration Index

383 min read

Illustration Index

2160 distinct illustrations. Your ‘have I used this before?’ tool.

♻️ Reused illustrations

All illustrations (A–Z)

  • “The Church of Christ in Every Age” hymn (literary) — Hymn quoted (the church Spirit-led amid change, the servant church as partner in Christ’s sacrifice) to ground the call to be Christ’s body without bearing the burden of saving anyone. → Who Do You Say That I Am?
  • “Thousands of future Hitlers” thought experiment (other) — Tests whether imagining the slain children as future monsters makes their killing less horrendous → The Holy Innocents and the Problem of Evil
  • ‘Do I have to or I’ll go to hell?’ (other) — Reducing faith to bare necessity (‘will I go to hell?’) misses Jesus, who says not ‘do this or else’ but ‘do this in remembrance of me.’ → Maundy Thursday
  • ‘Give Me Jesus’ spiritual (literary) — The old spiritual frames starting each morning by choosing Jesus. → Follow Me, Follow Me
  • ‘Hell’ from Norse mythology vs Gehenna/Hades/Tartarus (historical) — the English ‘hell’ imposes a structured system the Bible’s varied terms don’t support → Legion
  • ‘If I don’t do this, will I go to hell?’ (personal) — Reducing faith to bare necessity (‘not for me unless required’) misses Jesus’ invitation to do this in remembrance, not under threat. → Maundy Thursday
  • ‘If you cannot preach like Peter’ hymn (literary) — The old hymn verse illustrates that ordinary believers, not just apostles, can tell the love of Jesus. → Miriam, Miriam
  • ‘No’ song lyric (pop-culture) — The pop refrain ‘my name is no, my sign is no, my number is no’ voices the rational refusal Mary could have given Gabriel. → Saying Yes to God
  • 1 & 2 Enoch and Jubilees on the origin of demons (literary) — Non-canonical texts (not the Bible itself) are the actual source of most popular ideas about where demons come from. → Jacob’s Ladder
  • 1.4 Times a Month Attendance (current-events) — The shift from weekly attendance a generation ago to 1.4 times a month shows worship becoming a fickle, low-priority duty. → On the Third Day, He Rose Again
  • 168 hours in a week (other) — Reminder that only 1 hour is spent in Sunday worship versus the other 167 hours, pressing the question of what convictions are actually lived out. → Faith the Size of a Mustard Seed
  • 1744 Methodist conference agenda (historical) — The doctrine/discipline/practice questions and ground rules from the first Methodist conference model holy conferencing as shared storytelling of ministry. → Holy Conferencing
  • 18th-Century French Bread (historical) — Pre-modern peasants baking bread once a year and eating it stale all year illustrates how radically the human diet has changed. → Reset Your Body
  • 18th-century Methodists accused of antinomianism (historical) — Early Methodists wrongly charged with lawlessness shows that true faith deepens, not erases, the consequences of our choices. → What do we hope for?
  • 18th/19th-century spiritualists, theosophists, and Freemasons (historical) — Popular fascination with spiritualism, Swedenborgianism, and Masonic symbolism (the pyramid and eye on the dollar bill) shows people have always had unanswered questions about the spiritual realm. → Jacob’s Ladder
  • 19th-century factory synchronization buzzwords (historical) — Trains, factories, and clocks made ‘synchronization’ a business buzzword like synergy or ROI, birthing chronos dominance. → When will he come?
  • 2.7 seconds on a bull named Fu Man Chu (pop-culture) — Bucket-list thrills like riding a bull are mere imprints of Christ’s love found at the table. → The Bread of Life: What Are You Hungry For?
  • 2006 Rose Bowl, Vince Young and the Texas Longhorns (personal) — The preacher’s lifelong fandom culminating in UT’s last-second national championship win shows how real and joyful celebration feels. → Jesus Likes to Party
  • 2019 Nationals Sleep Consultant (current-events) — The Washington Nationals’ World Series run, aided by a sleep consultant who reconfigured locker rooms, blue/red light, and travel sleep, illustrates how good rest prepares you to perform when the moment comes. → Come to Me and Find Rest
  • 2019 World Series Game 7 loss (personal) — The Astros leading then losing Game 7 to Juan Soto’s hits shows how disappointing and not-fun losing is. → Last Place
  • 2021 Astros World Series loss (personal) — Knowing the Astros would lose once Yordan Alvarez stopped hitting illustrates life moments that feel like a blowout rather than a close game. → A Sermon on Endings: The Patience of Simeon
  • 2021 F1 title decided on the last lap (current-events) — The race director changing rules so Verstappen could pass Hamilton illustrates injustice and a bad ending decided at the very end. → A Sermon on Endings: The Patience of Simeon
  • 23andMe DNA test on Jesus (other) — A genetic test on Jesus would show neither Joseph’s nor the Spirit’s DNA, illustrating that covenant names, not blood, mattered. → Who was conceived from the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary
  • 30 Rock handsome doctor (pop-culture) — Liz Lemon’s handsome but incompetent doctor boyfriend who coasted through life and became lost, showing how being shielded from consequences leaves us lost. → When You’re Lost, God Will Find You
  • 30 Rock’s handsome incompetent doctor (Jon Hamm) (pop-culture) — A man never rejected never learns his faults, showing we are shaped by the no’s more than the yes’s → The Harvest
  • 350-square-foot apartment with no microwave (personal) — Reheating coffee on the stove in a near-empty apartment shows the meager circumstances that did not define his future. → What is Hope?
  • 3am nights with kids and 10pm crying phone calls (personal) — Everyday moments of joy, grief, and friendship are cited to show that human experience matters beyond mere chemistry. → Christmas Eve Service: Is the World Flat or Overflowing?, Christmas Eve: Is Reality Flat or Overflowing?
  • 80/20 organization (other) — The 20%-do-80%-of-the-work pattern illustrates what the church must transcend by everyone responding to God’s yes. → The Church in the Present
  • 9/11 at UT and the Candlelight Vigil (personal) — As a freshman in the gym under DKR he watched the tower burn; at the mall vigil singing Amazing Grace he felt an unseen hand and a peace that God is God amid a broken world. → Come and See
  • 9/11 candlelight vigil at UT (personal) — As a UT freshman the preacher saw the towers burning and at a candlelight vigil felt an unseen hand and a God-given peace while singing Amazing Grace, showing how God meets us in tragedy. → Come and See
  • 99 out of 100 odds (other) — Sports and business success rates (basketball, baseball, sales) show 99% is great by human standards but God won’t settle for losing one. → When You’re Lost, God Will Find You
  • A Boss Who Made Bad Decisions (personal) — Trusting a leader’s decisions even when they seem to turn out badly, like Jesus’ and Stephen’s deaths appearing to be failures. → Discipleship
  • A child learning to speak and read (nature) — The astonishment of a child picking up words and learning to read shows the power of naming to open up the world. → God Told Adam and Eve
  • A Colonel whose only order is ‘receive this gift’ (other) — Imagining a commander whose sole order is to receive a gift illustrates the nature of Jesus’ mandatum. → Maundy Thursday
  • A decade of peanut butter and jelly (personal) — Eventually losing his taste for PB&J shows how fading desire turns enjoyment to displeasure, unlike the redeemed desires of eternity. → New Creation
  • A failed 1970s real estate deal becoming the church (historical) — Bee Creek’s origin in a failed seventies real estate deal turned ‘beacon on a hill’ shows God redeeming the church’s past. → The Church of the Future
  • A few ups and downs with his brother (personal) — Same words mean something light or deep depending on the hearer, like communion’s words → Communion
  • A Roman legion (6,000 soldiers) compared to a US Army brigade (historical) — concretizes how vast the demonic force possessing one man was → Legion
  • A teacher’s saying about the resurrection (personal) — A former teacher’s remark that if you believe Jesus rose, believing the rest of the Bible isn’t hard, anchors faith in the resurrection. → Shining
  • A Teacher’s Words on Learning to Die (personal) — A former teacher’s warning against worshiping a series of truths rather than Jesus reframes faith as learning to die. → Discipleship
  • A Viking with a Chihuahua (historical) — Old Norse Rakki had no concept of a Chihuahua, a humorous image showing names develop within the limits of their world. → God Told Adam and Eve
  • A year spent too much at home (current-events) — The COVID year of being stuck at home grounds the call to reset the home and stay home to begin the practice. → Reset Your House
  • Abide With Me (hymn) (literary) — Henry Francis Lyte’s evening hymn opens the sermon, framing the plea for Christ to stay near as darkness deepens, echoing the Emmaus travelers’ ‘stay with us.’ → Abide With Me, Love Abides
  • Acoustic resonance of the triad (nature) — The physics of C, E-flat, and G frequencies resonating after notes are played pictures how the lives of saints keep resonating with us. → God’s Song of Love
  • Acts 29 Network (Village Church, Mars Hill) (current-events) — The Reformed church-planting network’s name (disagreeing with its Dort theology) illustrates God writing ‘Acts 29’ through the church now. → The Church of the Future
  • Adam Bede / Dinah Morris (literary) — George Eliot’s female Methodist preacher character illustrates the historical reality of women preachers Wesley sent out. → Holy Conferencing
  • Addict’s first day sober (other) — Being sober one day shows the first step is not the last step in salvation’s ongoing transformation. → What is Salvation?
  • Adjusting Eyes in a Dark Room (nature) — The slow, wall-crashing process of eyes adjusting in darkness illustrates how we dimly see Jesus until moments of bright clarity. → Priest, Prophet, King
  • Adrian Newey’s How to Build a Car (literary) — The Red Bull designer’s book and his four chassis goals (stable, light, low-drag, balanced downforce) model what a strong church foundation must be. → The Chassis, Aerodynamics
  • Advice for the Graduate (personal) — The flood of advice given to young people (what to study, where to go to college) frames how to discern good counsel from bad. → You Are Strong
  • Aerodynamics as the church meeting the world (other) — Extended metaphor: the church, like a car, meets the world’s air; minimizing drag on the Holy Spirit and maximizing downforce lets it move and handle better. → Aerodynamics
  • Aesop’s boy who cried wolf (literary) — The boy who lost credibility by raising false alarms illustrates fear as respect that is forfeited when one cannot be heard when telling the truth. → Be Still
  • Aesop’s tortoise and the hare (literary) — Contrasts fables with exhaustible morals against parables, which can be preached again and again without exhausting their meaning. → One Straw Revolution
  • Aggie and Longhorn arguing over fans (other) — Rival-fan bickering illustrates how unreasonable online political dialogue has become. → The Church in the Present
  • Aggie symbols: Century Tree, Aggie Ring, Reveille (personal) — Campus symbols show how signs help members recognize and bond with one another. → Symbols and Signs
  • Aggies in the building (personal) — A joking aside about Texas A&M fans present shows the congregation is not united by shared affinity but by Christ. → Wherever You Go
  • Aging and the deficit mindset (other) — As bodies change, people dwell on what they used to do rather than who they were created to be. → Every Act of Faith
  • AI as the ultimate cheating tool / Bill Gates AP Bio bet (current-events) — OpenAI built to pass tests (Gates’ AP Bio wager) shows banking-model education’s emptiness versus real transformation. → The Parables
  • Air-conditioners, chairs, children, skies and sparrows (nature) — Everyday existing things prove there had to be a source of all things. → The Gift of the Trinity
  • Airport arrivals pickup line (personal) — Everyone in the no-parking arrivals line thinks they are the exception to the rule, illustrating the human tendency from original sin to see ourselves as the exception. → Justification
  • Al-Khwarizmi, Origin of ‘Algorithm’ (historical) — The word ‘algorithm’ derives from a 9th-century Persian mathematician, demystifying the ‘magic box’ of social media. → Tell Everyone That Jesus is Alive
  • Alanis Morissette “Ironic” (pop-culture) — The song (and the endless “well, actually it’s not really ironic” debates about it) illustrates how irony is a disconnect between what we see and what is really there, like the cheering crowd that will soon shout “Crucify him.” → Palm Sunday: From Hosanna to Passion
  • Alasdair MacIntyre on justice as virtue (literary) — MacIntyre’s three-fold account (desert, practices, common good) frames justice as a cultivated virtue, not mere theory. → Justice
  • Alaska plane crash survival (other) — Surviving an emergency crash long enough to be rescued shows survival is aimed at rescue, not the journey. → Rescue
  • Albert Schweitzer on the Mirror-Image Historical Jesus (historical) — The Nobel-winning scholar-doctor’s observation that seekers of the historical Jesus tend to see a reflection of themselves (liberal German, conservative Texan, liberation theologian), warning that our Jesus can be a construct of our own minds. → The Transfiguration
  • Albert Schweitzer’s Quest for the Historical Jesus (historical) — Schweitzer’s observation that the historical Jesus becomes a mirror reflecting the seeker’s own ideology, showing ‘who was Jesus?’ is really ‘who are we?’ → Priest, Prophet, King
  • Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus (literary) — Schweitzer’s point that seekers of the historical Jesus find a face resembling their own (conservative, liberal, radical). → I Believe in Jesus Christ, His Only Son, Our Lord
  • Albert Tucker’s Prisoner’s Dilemma (historical) — The classic dilemma where rational betrayal beats silence, used to contrast real life’s countless small chances to love a neighbor. → Love of God, Love of Neighbor
  • Aldersgate heart strangely warmed (historical) — Wesley’s experience hearing Luther’s Romans preface embodies assurance that ‘even I’ am loved by God → The Calling and the Called
  • Alina’s Catholic school Mass and the host (personal) — Seventh graders can’t leave once the host is revealed, illustrating eucharistic reverence → Communion
  • All Quiet on the Western Front and Wilfred Owen (literary) — The only reading material left was war literature and Owen’s ‘Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,’ which did nothing to relieve the suffering. → Restless with Suffering
  • All Saints Day candles for five departed church members (personal) — Candles for Bob Bowen, Bill Kiely, Elzie Williams, Susan Williams, and Dick Littleton embody remembering the saints of the congregation. → Saints and Sinners
  • All Saints Day tradition dating to Charlemagne (historical) — The 1200-year-old tradition frames the day’s act of remembrance. → Saints and Sinners
  • All Things Considered realization at age 10 (personal) — A childhood one-time realization that ‘All Things Considered’ meant all things being considered, contrasted with faith as an ongoing continuum rather than a single moment. → Trinity Sunday
  • All-You-Can-Eat Buffet and Diminishing Marginal Utility (other) — Trying to game a buffet with avocado and sushi runs into the law of diminishing marginal utility, illustrating that worldly satisfactions have limits while God’s love is inexhaustible. → You Can Never Have Too Much Love
  • Always room for pie (personal) — Kids too full for broccoli always have room for ice cream, showing the gap between need and want. → The Bread of Life: What Are You Hungry For?
  • Am I my brother’s keeper? (biblical) — Cain’s evasive question used to name the temptation to fixate on ourselves and refuse to help nearby neighbors in need. → Ash Wednesday
  • Ambrose’s defense of Abraham and Hagar (literary) — Ambrose’s four reasons (pre-Law, zeal for progeny, Sarah’s request, Pauline allegory) defending Abraham’s union with Hagar. → Hagar, Sarah, and the Birth of a People
  • American Graffiti and the keep-it-real rebel (pop-culture) — The rebel who does what he wants in a small town illustrates the cultural celebration of rebellion that John reframes as sin against God. → Sin as Rebellion: The Freedom Not to Rebel
  • American Republic Without a King (historical) — The U.S. as a kingless commonwealth/republic frames how we should understand praying for Christ’s kingdom. → Thy Kingdom Come, Thy Will Be Done, on Earth as It Is in Heaven
  • Amos uninvited from dinner parties (biblical) — Imagining people dodging Amos’s harsh prophecies shows that the truth we need to hear about our direction is often unwelcome → Ask Me Anything
  • Amos’s plumb line (biblical) — The weighted string testing whether a wall is upright illustrates righteousness/justification as being built straight before God → Ask Me Anything
  • Amy Kenny, My Body Is Not a Prayer Request (literary) — Kenny renames the unnamed blind man ‘Zach’ to humanize him and reframes disability as a place of encounter with God’s glory rather than a symbol of sin. → In the Presence of God
  • Amy Laura Hall and the Texas Wesley three at Duke (personal) — Dr. Hall’s talk drew only three students, all of whom ended up at Duke, weaving the pastor’s path into the church’s origin through DS Robert Hall. → What is our sacred story?
  • Ananias and Sapphira and church stuff (biblical) — Acts 5’s deception shows the early church going off the rails, paralleling the painful ‘church stuff’ in every congregation. → The Church in the Past
  • Ananias and Sapphira withholding the proceeds (biblical) — The couple struck dead for keeping back money illustrates the sin of churches and Christians who put limits on what they give to God. → Pentecost
  • Ancient Cornerstone Masonry / Joseph Aspdin and Portland Cement (historical) — Ancient masonry cornerstones (Psalm 118:22) had to be perfectly square or the whole building failed, until 19th-century English bricklayer Joseph Aspdin invented Portland cement, replacing scarce volcanic-ash concrete. → A Foundation of Water
  • Ancient Egyptian glass beads (historical) — Illustrates the ancient origins of glassmaking, older than most written languages → The Ten Commandments
  • Ancient generals and battles (historical) — Alexander the Great, Hannibal at Cannae, Scipio, Marius, Sulla, and Julius Caesar exemplify the worldly military victory that Jesus deliberately refused. → Who Suffered Under Pontius Pilate
  • Ancient Greek Orator with Pebbles (historical) — The tradition of an orator shouting at the sea with pebbles in his mouth to train articulation, linked to debate practice of talking with a pencil in the mouth. → Come to Me, All You Who Are Weary
  • Ancient sun-reckoned hours (historical) — First hour at dawn, sixth hour at noon shows pre-modern time was set relative to the sun and seasons. → When will he come?
  • Ancient Virtue of Prudence (historical) — The ancients’ practiced virtue of prudence illustrates judging good from bad as a learned skill, not an inborn trait. → You Are Strong
  • Andrew of Crete on spreading ourselves before Christ (literary) — Andrew of Crete urges spreading not withering olive branches but ourselves, clothed in Christ’s grace, before his feet on Palm Sunday. → Palm Sunday, The Star
  • Andrew of Crete on spreading ourselves before Christ (literary) — Quoted homily urging believers to be the garments spread before Christ, clothed in him rather than waving withering branches. → Palm Sunday
  • Andrew of Crete on the centrality of the cross (historical) — the church father’s meditation that without the cross there is no immortality, freedom, or paradise underscores Christ’s saving action → The Crown of Salvation, Take Up Your Cross
  • Andrew of Crete’s Palm Sunday homily (literary) — Quoted patristic call to ‘run to accompany’ Christ toward his passion, prostrating ourselves by humility rather than spreading garments and palms. → Waving from the Sideline
  • Andrew Tate on Jesus not being manly (pop-culture) — The social-media influencer’s claim that Islam is better because Jesus isn’t strong or manly enough exemplifies the false desire for a conquering rather than suffering savior. → Who Suffered Under Pontius Pilate
  • Andy Williford’s life (personal) — Eulogy of Andy: Shreveport upbringing, Air Force service, 25 years as DFW air traffic controller, family, and golf at Lake Tahoe, witnessing to a full and happy life. → A Service of Death and Resurrection for Andy Williford
  • Anesthesia and aesthetics share a Greek root (other) — Both derive from Greek aesthesis (judgment); anesthesia is the impairing of judgment, illustrating how judging others numbs our own self-judgment → A Sign
  • Angels dancing on the head of a pin (historical) — The medieval question masks a real distinction about whether angels are material or non-material beings. → Distinctions: Message and Messenger in Creation
  • Angels dancing on the head of a pin / TikTok (other) — Mocking overcomplicated angel cosmologies to recover the plain meaning of angelos as simply ‘messenger.’ → Easter: He Is Not Here Among the Dead
  • Animal House character epilogues (pop-culture) — The 1978 film’s closing cards (Bluto becoming a US Senator) show resolved conflict revealing who characters become. → Who am I in Christ?
  • Anna Jarvis and the founding of Mother’s Day (historical) — The Methodist woman who founded Mother’s Day to honor others’ grieving mothers, not herself, illustrating love that does not seek its own. → Love Does Not Seek Its Own, Ascension Sunday / Mother’s Day: Where Did Jesus Go?
  • Anna Jarvis, Methodist founder of Mother’s Day (historical) — A Methodist laywoman started Mother’s Day over a century ago to honor her mother, showing the day is about reaching out to another, not oneself. → Aerodynamics
  • Anna Karenina opening line (literary) — ‘happy families are all alike’—contentment is less dramatic than struggle, like sanctification vs justification → Sanctification
  • Anna the prophetess (biblical) — Anna, who prayed in the temple for years, becomes the first evangelist sharing the redemption found in Jesus. → Three Ways of Saying Thank You, Three Ways of Saying Thank You
  • Anna the prophetess, first evangelist (biblical) — Anna sharing news of redemption models thanking God by proclaiming the good news. → How to Say Thank You
  • Annual Conference as a dull word (personal) — The pastor’s own unexciting experience of UMC annual conferences sets up the contrast with conferencing at its best in Acts 2. → Holy Conferencing
  • Anonymous early Christian on the infinite river (historical) — An ancient writer marvels that the unfathomable fountainhead of life was immersed in the shallow waters of this transient world. → Waters Above, Waters Below
  • Anselm on Mary the mother of re-creation (literary) — Anselm’s meditation that God is Father of creation and Mary mother of the re-created world. → Magnify
  • Anthony Burgess Acts novelization (big lungs) (literary) — A novelized Acts suggesting Jesus survived because of big lungs, used to dismiss the swoon theory and affirm a real death. → Was Crucified, Died, and Was Buried
  • Anthony Burgess, ‘The Kingdom of the Wicked’ (literary) — The novel’s premise that Jesus didn’t really die, cited as a way of answering ‘no’ to the resurrection. → 12 Ways to Avoid Resurrection
  • Anthony Burgess, Kingdom of the Wicked (literary) — The swoon theory in novel form-Jesus didn’t really die-as a way of answering ‘no’ to resurrection. → 12 Ways to Avoid Resurrection
  • AP physics vectors and forces (personal) — His high-school physics memory of centripetal/centrifugal forces becomes a metaphor for life’s constant directional movement and the inward-curved heart turning outward. → Who am I in Christ?
  • Apologetics: addressing misconceptions (personal) — The preacher’s own reflection that he can’t make a non-believer believe but can clear away misconceptions, illustrating how the church ‘makes it easier to be good.’ → Sacred Story: Aligning Our Lives with Who We Claim to Be, Our Sacred Story
  • Appalachian Trail backcountry shelters (personal) — Hiking Maine-to-Georgia, he ditched his own tent to use public trail shelters, illustrating that real shelter means accepting community and strangers. → Shelter
  • Appalachian Trail blisters and bog logs (personal) — Hiking the hundred-mile wilderness in Maine, waterproof boots trapped water and caused festering blisters that only healed once uncovered and dried out, illustrating how sin must be uncovered and healed by love rather than ignored. → Love Covers a Multitude of Sins, Love Covers a Multitude of Sins
  • Appalachian Trail thru-hike (personal) — The preacher’s southbound AT hike from Mount Katahdin shows how preparation transforms experience → Communion, The Far Country: God’s Journey to Us
  • Appalachian Trail thru-hike and caloric density (personal) — Hiking 25 miles a day with a 12-pound base pack changed his relationship to food, forcing him to seek calorie-dense junk (18-inch pizzas, grape soda, peanut butter Ben and Jerry’s), illustrating how survival reshapes desire. → Food
  • Appalachian Trail water hiking (personal) — The preacher’s post-college months hiking south from Maine, learning to trust abundant mountain springs after Texas water-scarcity, illustrating thirst, suspicion, and appreciation for water. → Give Me Water
  • Apple/orange tree maturation time (nature) — An apple tree takes 7-10 years and an orange up to 15 to bear fruit, showing fruitfulness requires patient investment, not a rush job. → Fruitfulness
  • Appreciating indoor plumbing (personal) — How sustained outdoor life renewed his wonder at simply turning a faucet to drink, illustrating gratitude for water as gift. → Give Me Water
  • Apprentice plumber/woodworker (other) — An apprentice plumber’s goal is to become a plumber, illustrating that the disciple’s goal is to become like Jesus. → Not to Us
  • Aquinas’s Five Ways (historical) — The classic proofs (Prime Mover, First Cause, etc.) Russell tried to dismiss, vindicated by an expanding universe. → The Gift of the Trinity, Trinity Sunday: In the Beginning (Song of Creation), I Believe in Jesus Christ, His Only Son, Our Lord
  • Archaeologists finding Noah’s Ark (current-events) — News reports of finding the ark prompt the point that faith rests in God, not in wooden remains. → Big Boat
  • Archimedes in the Bathtub (historical) — Archimedes discovering volume by water displaced becomes the central image for how God’s kingdom displaces worldly kingdoms and our desires. → Thy Kingdom Come, Thy Will Be Done, on Earth as It Is in Heaven
  • Archimedes shouting Eureka (historical) — God’s time is NOT like bathwater displacing us; rather we live and move in God, the source. → When will he come?
  • Aristotle’s Four Causes and the Table (other) — Aristotle’s material/formal/efficient/final causes illustrated by a table, used to name Christ as the formal cause of all humanity. → Priest, Prophet, King
  • Aristotle’s golden mean (historical) — the right path lies between Manicheanism and pure rationalism → Legion
  • Arrowhead hunting with Dave (personal) — Chris and Dave loved getting away to find and trade arrowheads, lingering because it was so nice out there, illustrating shared joy and her zest for life. → A Service of Death and Resurrection for Christine Renée Jarl
  • Asterisk by ‘Catholic’ in the old Methodist hymnal (historical) — The hymnal’s footnote marking ‘Catholic’ as ‘universal’ frames the sermon’s central word-study. → I Believe in the Holy Catholic Church
  • Astros 2024 playoff elimination relief (personal) — The pastor’s anxiety over the Astros’ playoff run vanished once they were eliminated, showing how expectation breeds worry and its removal brings peace. → How We Fill Our Waiting
  • Astros and dead sports heart (personal) — His joy in sports replaced by stress (Astros losing the World Series, Duke in the Final Four) illustrates why he sought a fresh start, paralleling not building the church on old baggage. → The Chassis
  • Astros and Longhorns (personal) — Wilson imagines Jesus asking him to lay down his sports teams—‘Anything but that!’—naming the everyday loyalties we cling to. → Walking Along
  • Astros Game 7 2019 with Zach Greinke (pop-culture) — Pulling Greinke too early cost the Astros the World Series, illustrating history’s contingency. → The Church in the Past
  • Astros rout the Dodgers 18-1 (current-events) — Dave Roberts ‘flushing it down the toilet’ shows healthily letting a rejection/loss go → The Harvest
  • Astros World Series Game 7 (personal) — The preacher’s lifelong Astros fandom inherited from his father and the painful Game 7 loss frames his love of baseball. → Not to Us
  • Astros World Series Game 7 loss and earlier win over the Dodgers (personal) — Cheering for one team while the other’s fans grieve illustrates how ordinary celebration is zero-sum, unlike the joy Jesus offers. → Jesus Likes to Party
  • Atonement as ‘at-one-ment’ (literary) — The old English word atonement broken into ‘at-one-ment’ to show how we are made one in Christ. → Justification, How We Are Saved
  • Atrophying the heart by not serving (nature) — Failing to serve the hurting atrophies your heart of love like an unused muscle, making it harder to lace up your shoes and go out again. → Palm Sunday
  • Attendre and Attention (literary) — The French attendre (to wait) is the root of attention, showing holy patience means actively attending to Jesus. → Waiting
  • Augustine on conversion (historical) — Augustine’s image of conversion as turning from being curved in on ourselves to standing upright to see the world rightly. → God’s Love: A Deal Too Good to Be True
  • Augustine on God Loving Us First (historical) — Augustine teaches that we can only love because God loved us first and pours love into us by the Holy Spirit. → A New Commandment
  • Augustine on holy desire (literary) — Quoted line that the Christian life is an exercise of holy desire, preparing us to see and be satisfied when Christ comes. → The Transfiguration, The Transfiguration
  • Augustine on loving God (literary) — We could not love God unless we already possessed him — inclusion is through Christ, not despite him → The Portico of Solomon
  • Augustine on saving for the children (literary) — Augustine’s sermon mocking the endless ‘saving it for my children’ excuse shows that hoarding across generations is nothing new and not true freedom. → Freedom: A New Covenant for a New Year
  • Augustine on the absurdity of the cross (historical) — Augustine’s image of Christ subjecting kings not with a proud army but the absurdity of the cross shows victory by self-sacrifice. → Last Place
  • Augustine on the Lord’s Prayer (historical) — Augustine’s claim that every petition of Scripture is contained in the Lord’s Prayer, so we may use different words but not say different things. → Future Sermon Notes: On Thomas and Prayer
  • Augustine on the millennial age (historical) — Augustine read the millennium as the church’s ongoing struggle between sin and grace, with Satan bound in human hearts and the Antichrist seen wherever people deny Christ by loveless words and actions. → Revelation Notes
  • Augustine on the woman at the well (literary) — Augustine’s reflection that Jesus is both needy and rich, using veiled language to gradually enter the woman’s heart, illustrating how God draws us toward living water. → Give Me Water
  • Augustine’s ‘little easters’ (historical) — Calling Sundays little easters shows weekly worship lets us re-enter the resurrection beyond linear time. → When will he come?
  • Augustine’s ‘make me chaste, but not yet’ (historical) — Augustine’s famous prayer captures the appealing delay of the ‘not yet’ before grace. → Screening God’s Call
  • Augustine’s Ascension Sermon (literary) — Quoted passage that because we are Christ’s body we are already in heaven with him while he still suffers on earth in his members. → He Ascended into Heaven
  • Augustine’s curvatus / curved inward (historical) — Image of humanity born turned away from God, straightened by grace through baptism → The Holy Innocents and the Problem of Evil
  • Augustine’s curvatus in se (historical) — Augustine’s image of the heart curved inward (curvatus) versus standing upright (rectitudo) frames life before and after Christ. → Who am I in Christ?
  • Augustine’s love-commandments rule (historical) — Augustine’s rule to read scripture seeking love of God and neighbor as an interpretive guide. → The Bible
  • Augustine’s prayer for chastity ‘but not yet’ (historical) — Augustine’s ‘Lord make me chaste, but not yet’ illustrates our readiness for new life that we keep postponing. → Christmas Eve: Why Now?, Restless with Our Future
  • Augustine’s restless heart (literary) — Augustine’s prayer that we are restless until we rest in God — our goal is to be with God, not to collect power. → Reset Your World
  • Augustine’s restless heart prayer (literary) — Augustine’s ‘our hearts are restless until they rest in You’ frames the whole series’ theological basis for restlessness. → Restless, Reset Your Soul, Restless with Our Future, The Bread of Life: What Are You Hungry For?
  • Augustine’s Restless Hearts (literary) — Augustine’s ‘our hearts are restless until they rest in you’ names humanity’s search for meaning. → Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread, Come to Me and Find Rest
  • Augustine’s vestiges of the Trinity / footprints in the sand (historical) — Vestigium as footprint shows God’s presence glimpsed in fleeting traces held onto by faith. → Symbols and Signs
  • Augustine’s wonderful exchange (literary) — Quoted Augustine on the exchange where we give Christ the power to die and he gives us the power to live. → Easter: He Is Not Here Among the Dead
  • Augustus Caesar (historical) — The imperial leader-of-kings Jesus was born under, contrasted with the obscure Jesus of Nazareth. → Follow Me
  • Augustus Caesar and Virgil’s Aeneid (historical) — The emperor’s cultivated image as ‘the leader’ sets a foil for Jesus of backwater Nazareth. → Follow Me
  • Augustus statues compared to pagan gods (historical) — Roman emperor sculptures promulgated to rival pagan god statues show the idolatrous God-language Rome used, framing biblical citizenship against empire. → The Gate
  • Aunt Laura’s long blessing and the premature Amen (personal) — The preacher as a child blurting ‘Amen’ mid-prayer illustrates how knowing when to stop praying is harder than knowing how to begin. → Lead Us Not into Temptation
  • Austin skyscraper foundations built square (nature) — A tall building must be built at true 90-degree angles (‘justified’/square) from a deep foundation; a crooked building cannot be straightened after the fact without demolition, illustrating that justification is God tearing us down to the foundations to rebuild us upright. → Justification
  • Avett Brothers, ‘The Ballad of Love and Hate’ (pop-culture) — Song where Love waits patiently and Hate returns repentant illustrates love undeceived on the far side of the epiphany. → Love Believes All
  • Avoiding people over the election (current-events) — Post-2020-election estrangement is named as a place to practice reconciliation rather than blocking people. → Sacrifice
  • Azusa Street revival from Methodism (historical) — Pentecostalism, the fastest-growing Protestantism, was born at Azusa Street and traces back to the Wesleyan/Methodist movement. → Show Us the Father
  • Azusa Street revival out of Methodism (historical) — The 1906 birth of Pentecostalism grew out of holiness traditions and Methodism, proving revival requires continuity, not total rupture. → Revival, A Burning Sensation (Summit Fever: A Pentecost Sermon)
  • Babies and Delayed Gratification (nature) — Babies are born hungry and tired without delayed gratification, showing patience must be cultivated, not assumed. → Waiting
  • Baby, It’s Cold Outside (pop-culture) — The ‘creepy’ pop song shows that some seasonal songs’ lyrics don’t match the Christmas spirit. → The Gift
  • Bacchanals after Bacchus/Dionysius (historical) — Associating partying with pagan abandon shows how celebration got redefined as losing inhibitions rather than rejoicing. → Jesus Likes to Party
  • Bach in Cöthen (historical) — Bach wrote his great instrumental works under a Calvinist non-liturgical ruler yet still signed them ‘to the glory of God,’ showing holiness apart from the church calendar. → God’s Song of Love
  • Bach’s Fifth Cello Suite (C minor prelude) (other) — The C-minor suite, played live by Daniel, illustrates that a sad/minor key is still beautiful, like grief that remains real. → God’s Song of Love
  • Back-to-school traffic on 620 (current-events) — Changing traffic patterns when school starts illustrate life transitions and the call to keep growing and learning. → Living Hope
  • Backpacking in the Colorado mountains (personal) — Waking to fresh snow, bird tracks, and stream coffee illustrates the joy of the journey over comfort. → Don’t Panic
  • Backyard barbecue temptation conversation (other) — An imagined awkward cookout chat shows how temptation is too intimate a topic for casual conversation. → Restless
  • Bacon as personal aversion (personal) — The preacher finds bacon disgusting though society loves it, showing temptation is particular and unique ‘to you.’ → Eating Stones
  • Balaam and his donkey (biblical) — In Numbers, the wise man Balaam fails to see God’s angel but his donkey does, paralleling Herod who cannot see the star the Magi follow. → Reset Your House, Reset Your House
  • Band of Brothers where-are-they-now epilogue (pop-culture) — The HBO series showing the real WWII veterans behind the characters illustrates wanting to see who people become after their story. → Who am I in Christ?
  • Bandwagon fan (other) — Christians can join late, in the fourth quarter, and still be part of the team because Christ already won the victory. → Not to Us
  • Banking model of education (other) — Education as mere knowledge deposit, contrasted with Jesus’ aim of transformation rather than knowledge transfer. → The Parables
  • Baptism as a one-time car wash for the soul (other) — Baptism is not a single car wash that keeps the soul clean forever but an entrance into ongoing community. → Anoint the Dust
  • Baptism is not a paint job (other) — Baptism is not a paint job needing touch-ups but a new person buried and risen in Christ — hence no rebaptism. → The Baptism of the Lord
  • Baptismal pall over the coffin (other) — The cross-marked pall covering every coffin alike witnesses that all are equal before the table of the Lord, recalling baptism into Christ. → A Service of Death and Resurrection (Funeral/Memorial Template)
  • Barbecue pit shaped like an ark (other) — Since God permits eating animals after the flood, a clever welder could build an ark-shaped barbecue pit—illustrating the first ark’s promise. → Big Boat
  • Barefoot Sunday Ministries Connection (personal) — A planned tie-in to the congregation’s Barefoot Sunday and its ministries as a lived expression of being found and giving back. → Lost & Found: Found
  • Barmen Declaration (historical) — Barth’s six theses rejecting Nazi control of the church model refusing to subordinate Christ’s lordship to earthly powers. → The Cost
  • Bart Ehrman losing his faith but keeping his fundamentalism (historical) — The scholar’s faith collapsed over textual variants because it rested on fundamentalist perspicuity rather than encountering the living Christ in worship. → Lost & Found: Lost
  • Bart Simpson ‘I’m going to be punching’ (pop-culture) — Bart tells Lisa he is going to be punching and if she gets in his way it is her own fault, illustrating the self-as-sole-judge narcissism of choosing your own story. → Who Sits Upon the Throne
  • Barth on Christians who wake up (literary) — A theologian’s quote that Christians are those awakened by God, not who wake themselves, illustrating the call to wake up for Advent. → The Four Questions: Who Is Coming?
  • Barth’s Strange New World of the Bible (literary) — Karl Barth’s phrase: if Scripture doesn’t feel strange and new, you’re reading it wrong. → Go From Your Country
  • Barton Springs hidden source (nature) — The hard-to-locate source of Barton Springs illustrates how the Trinity’s origin is difficult to pinpoint. → Wisdom’s Call, Trinity Sunday
  • Basil of Caesarea, On the Holy Spirit (historical) — Basil’s 364 treatise against the neo-Arians, quoted to describe what the Spirit does — raising, enlightening, and transforming souls. → A Burning Sensation (Summit Fever: A Pentecost Sermon)
  • Basket of Summer Fruit (biblical) — Amos’s vision of ripe summer fruit signals that the end has come ripe upon Israel. → Ordinary Time
  • Battle in Germany Where Romans Were Defeated (historical) — Major events like Rome’s defeat in Germania dominate the histories of Augustus’s reign, while Bethlehem, Mary, Joseph, and Jesus never appear — yet that is where God acts. → Christmas Eve: God Enters History
  • Be still as keeping your sword sheathed (other) — The Hebrew military root of ‘be still’ means a hand on the hilt that does not strike, so stillness is intentionality, not passivity. → Drop Your Nets
  • Bearded Christ catacomb fresco (4th c. Rome) (historical) — Earliest images of Jesus reveal their culture more than reveal Jesus himself → If Jesus Drew a Portrait of You
  • Beating the brother-in-law (personal) — Racing to beat his older, more athletic brother-in-law illustrates the competitive scarcity mindset grace overturns. → The Race
  • Beatitudes inverting expectations (biblical) — Jesus’ teaching flips our expectations: blessed are the poor in spirit, those who mourn → If Jesus Drew a Portrait of You
  • Beautiful complex snowflakes / describe yourself in one thing (other) — Opening thought exercise showing no one is reducible to a single attribute, framing the sacred story. → Our Sacred Story
  • Beautiful things that overwhelm — Matterhorn, Pietà, David, St Peter’s, Grand Canyon (nature) — Standing before these sublime sights evokes humility, not self-pity — the proper response to beauty that reveals our smallness. → The Baptism of the Lord
  • Bede’s sevenfold outline (historical) — Bede divided Revelation into seven parts tracing the general flow of church history from the seven Asian churches through conflicts to the New Jerusalem. → Revelation Notes
  • Bee Creek discernment conversations (personal) — The abundant resurrection life is offered now, even amid the ongoing discernment conversations at Bee Creek. → I Believe in the Resurrection of the Body and the Life Everlasting
  • Bee Creek mission statement and values (other) — The church’s corporate-style mission/values statements illustrate the move from stated values toward lived habits. → Restless
  • Bee Creek Village and Christmas offering (personal) — The 9,600 survey bid, a sign of the church’s call to build local community for those in need. → Freedom for Neighbor
  • Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony (pop-culture) — Begins in C minor and resolves to C major, picturing how all chords of human history finally resolve in God. → God’s Song of Love
  • Being ordered around by a stranger (personal) — Our instinctive resistance to commands from strangers sets up the question of why we obey Jesus’ command at the table. → Maundy Thursday
  • Benedictines vs. Franciscans (historical) — Medieval dispute between asset-gathering Benedictines and poverty-vowed Franciscans, illustrating the freedom of material detachment in imitating Jesus. → Walking Along
  • Bernard Williams and the Tedium of Immortality (literary) — Williams’s philosophical argument that a changeless immortality becomes miserable sets up the contrast with new creation that transforms our very desires. → New Creation
  • Bernard Williams on the tedium of immortality (literary) — A non-Christian philosopher’s essay arguing endless life-as-is would become hellish, illustrating how fixating on eternity wrongly makes the present eternal. → Glorification
  • Bertrand Russell vs. Aquinas and the Big Bang (historical) — Russell’s 1927 book denying the universe needed a beginning was undercut by Hubble and Lemaître proving cosmic expansion, vindicating Aquinas’s First Way. → Trinity Sunday: In the Beginning (Song of Creation), Three Whats?
  • Bertrand Russell’s 1927 book refuting proofs of God (historical) — The atheist’s claim that the universe needs no beginning sets up the contrast with later cosmology. → The Gift of the Trinity
  • Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian (literary) — Russell’s use of the turtle retort, invoked as the skeptical infinite-regression challenge to belief in God as creator. → Christmas Eve: Is Reality Flat or Overflowing?
  • BFF (best friend forever) (pop-culture) — The term ‘BFF’ that emerged for younger generations illustrates the longing for friendship as an eternal, next-level relationship. → Wherever You Go
  • Bible app reading plans and audio Bible (personal) — Downloading the Bible app to listen while doing dishes or driving shows a practical, accessible step toward entering Scripture. → The Power Unit
  • Big Bend Backpacking Trip (personal) — Wilson and Alina taking the kids backcountry into the Chisos Basin in winter 2019, packing too much of some things and not enough of others, illustrating how we set out unprepared. → Notes from the Pastor: Resetting Yourself with God in the New Year
  • Big Bend Hitchhiking Fisherman (personal) — A woman cyclist the pastor’s family gave a ride to in Big Bend, an Alaskan fisherman planning wilderness counseling on a boat, illustrating how doing hard things together builds trust and opens people up. → Laborers in the Vineyard: Grace, Community, and Mortality
  • Big Bend honeymoon javelina (personal) — He and Alina spun off the road avoiding a javelina on their honeymoon and needed a park ranger to pull them out — we all need outside help. → Be Opened
  • Big boy / big girl pants (other) — Facing the consequences of our actions and picking up the pieces → Original Sin
  • Big Sky Daddy (other) — The image of God as a distant ‘sky daddy’ who orders and punishes is rejected in favor of God being fully present and for us. → Credo: I Believe in the Holy Spirit
  • Big Yellow Taxi (Joni Mitchell) (pop-culture) — The ‘paved paradise’ lyric underscores the hardened, efficiency-trampled road as ground no longer capable of growth. → Growth
  • Bill Murray in Groundhog Day (pop-culture) — a selfish man’s turnaround illustrates the dramatic conversion climax of justification → Sanctification
  • Billboard on Highway 71 (current-events) — A billboard definition of ‘life’ put up by fellow Christians on Highway 71 that misrepresents the biblical Greek. → Fragments
  • Biography of Pontius Pilate (historical) — Pilate’s name, equestrian Pontius family from Samnium, military career, and 26-36 AD prefecture under Tiberius anchor the incarnation in verifiable secular history. → Who Suffered Under Pontius Pilate
  • Birders identifying birds by sight and sound (nature) — contemplation as a practiced habit, like the patient, trained stillness of experienced birdwatchers → Prayer
  • Birthday memory of Dominic and Ephraim (personal) — Recalling his sons’ births and gifting Alina who did the work shows how memory functions as kairos, not linear chronos. → When will he come?
  • Bitcoin and GameStop stock (current-events) — Chasing the next hot investment exemplifies the world’s wisdom always seeking ‘the next thing.’ → Restless with Foolishness
  • Bitcoin, Apple stock, and Super Bowl bets (current-events) — Wishing to turn stones to bread is like wanting perfect foreknowledge of markets or games to always get what you want. → Freedom for Neighbor
  • BJJ competition victory (personal) — Winning his one jiu-jitsu match with an arm triangle felt validating, then Jesus ‘ruins it’ by challenging that desire for worldly vindication. → Last Place
  • Black swan events and financial speculation (other) — Unpredictable black-swan events illustrate the downward spiral of anxious speculation about an unknowable future. → The Church of the Future
  • Blaise Pascal and the Pensées (historical) — Pascal’s life, mystical conversion, and wager argument supply the sermon’s core framework for betting one’s life on God. → The Wager (Part 1)
  • Bleeding without noticing (personal) — Finding blood on your pants before feeling pain shows how we can be wounded, especially spiritually, without realizing it. → Healing Wounds
  • Blogging and the Australian Atheist Biologist (personal) — A comment-section exchange on an atheist biologist’s blog about a death, showing that secular worldviews lack habits for grieving while the church has practices for death. → Jesus Wept
  • Blue Laws and the Inflated Sunday Church (historical) — Southern Sunday business-closing laws artificially boosted church attendance because church was the only thing to do. → On the Third Day, He Rose Again
  • Bluey vs. Citizen Kane (pop-culture) — Judging the gospel as modern history is a genre mistake, like critiquing Bluey as if it were Citizen Kane → Remember and Be Thankful
  • Boarding a plane and missing the flight (other) — Once you board you’re ‘in’ and latecomers are out of luck, the kind of human grouping the parables refuse to endorse. → The Next Thirty Seconds
  • Boaz as kinsman-redeemer (biblical) — In Ruth, redemption is a concrete economic transaction over family land, not eternal salvation. → I Believe in the Forgiveness of Sins
  • Bob Dylan ‘Gotta Serve Somebody’ (pop-culture) — Dylan’s line that you’ve got to serve somebody—the devil or the Lord—illustrates that there are no neutral positions in discipleship. → I Believe in the Communion of the Saints, Come to Me, All You Who Are Weary
  • Bob Dylan, ‘Gotta Serve Somebody’ (pop-culture) — the real question of sanctification is not what experience you had but whom you serve → Sanctification
  • Bob Dylan, ‘Gotta Serve Somebody’ (pop-culture) — Quoting Dylan’s song to underscore that everyone serves someone, so serve God rather than deceivers. → Advent: Don’t Be Deceived
  • Bob Dylan, ‘Gotta Serve Somebody’ (pop-culture) — Dylan’s line that ‘you gotta serve somebody’ illustrates that no choice is itself a choice about following God. → The Wager (Part 2), Rest
  • Bob’s unwelcome advice (personal) — A dismissive exchange (‘Thanks Bob’) shows the natural human resistance to being told to change one’s heart. → Aldersgate
  • Body of Christ with different cells and organs (biblical) — Following Jesus doesn’t make everyone identical; the church is a body of varied members, not a military unit. → Follow Me
  • Body with hands, feet, eyes, and hearts (literary) — Paul’s image of diverse members in one body shows the church as concretely connected and not uniform. → What is our sacred story?
  • Boil Water Notice on Just and Unjust (current-events) — Echoing Jesus, the power outage and boil-water notice fall on just and unjust alike (a nod to the recent Texas winter storm) showing suffering is universal. → Restless with Suffering
  • Bonhoeffer on faithfulness in daily things (historical) — Bonhoeffer’s line that no one faithful in great things has not first learned faithfulness in daily life underscores day-by-day discipleship. → How to Live Our Story, How to Live Our Story
  • Bonhoeffer’s alcoholic and rich man freed but not from themselves (literary) — Giving up alcohol or money frees you from those things but not from yourself, showing only Jesus’ call dissolves our ties and brings true faith. → Lost & Found: Lost
  • Bonhoeffer’s Cheap Grace vs Costly Grace (literary) — Bonhoeffer’s distinction in Discipleship between shiny, well-marketed cheap grace that demands no change and the costly grace of the way to the cross. → The Way: Walking Together
  • Bonhoeffer’s Discipleship on the cross (literary) — Bonhoeffer’s ‘when Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die,’ framing discipleship as abandoning worldly attachments. → Whose Name?
  • Bonhoeffer’s return to Germany / letter to Niebuhr (historical) — Choosing to leave the safety of America to share his people’s trials shows costly discipleship that cannot be chosen from security. → The Cost
  • Boot Canyon spring at Big Bend (personal) — A rare living spring emerging from the mountain that he still boils as a father, illustrating both the wonder and the caution toward water sources. → Water
  • Bootstrap ideology (other) — the self-reliant ‘take care of my own business’ mindset names the hubris of thinking we can save ourselves → The Crown of Salvation
  • Borges, ‘On Exactitude in Science’ (literary) — An empire’s map made full-scale becomes useless, illustrating that a story can’t reproduce a life one-to-one. → What We Remember
  • Borges, ‘Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote’ (literary) — A writer recopying Don Quixote line by line raises the question of what a copy, inspiration, and a faithful telling of a life really are. → What We Remember
  • Born on third base, thinks he hit a triple (Barry Switzer) (pop-culture) — Switzer’s quip about inherited advantage illustrates life as a genetic lottery rather than a level playing field. → Freedom in Christ
  • Borrowing a cup of sugar (personal) — Childhood memory of knocking on a neighbor’s door for sugar or eggs as everyday neighborliness now seen as quaint. → Love Neighbor
  • Bosses telling us to do things (personal) — We obey bosses based on buy-in or survival, framing how Jesus’ singular command works differently. → Maundy Thursday
  • Bowl games and championship-or-bust fandom (personal) — His mellowing from caring only about national championships toward enjoying lesser bowl games illustrates maturing expectations and the difference between good and bad endings. → A Sermon on Endings: The Patience of Simeon
  • Boy Dressed as Jesus at Halloween (personal) — A six-year-old in robe and sharpie beard came trick-or-treating as Jesus, illustrating how we receive a popular image of Jesus rather than Jesus himself. → Priest, Prophet, King
  • Boys Staying Alive by Staying Together (current-events) — The trapped boys survived in the dark because they stayed together, illustrating that on the narrow way of the cross we must walk together. → Where Are We
  • Bracing for Bad News (personal) — Telling a friend ‘my world turned upside down today’ makes them brace for bad news, like the empty tomb seemed at first. → Upside Down
  • Brand Fanatics: Chick-fil-A, Apple, Sports Teams (pop-culture) — Marketers turning customers into fanatics who don’t think straight, illustrating how consumer culture sells us needs and pulls us in many directions. → The Way: Walking Together
  • Brazilian jiu-jitsu and assessing power (personal) — The pastor’s family taking up Brazilian jiu-jitsu, learning to judge real power by rolling with bigger/stronger opponents and surviving, illustrating that true power is not the same as size or apparent strength. → Spicy Mustard
  • Brighter Than Any Wool a Comber Could Comb (literary) — The rare biblical word describing Jesus’ clothes as whiter than any fuller/wool-comber could achieve in a lifetime, conveying the magnitude of Jesus’ revealed glory. → The Transfiguration
  • Broken Spoke first meeting (personal) — Elizabeth and Scott first met at the Broken Spoke dance hall about twenty years ago, marking the long road of patience to their wedding day. → Elizabeth and Scott
  • Brooklyn wrestling-ring dating mingle (current-events) — A WWE-style wrestling-match dating event in a Brooklyn warehouse, an adventurous, vulnerable act of faith toward another person. → Every Act of Faith
  • Bruce’s handwritten prayer for compassion (personal) — Bruce’s own prayer asking God for kindness, humility, patience, and grace — showing his humble, growing faith in his own words. → A Service of Death and Resurrection for Bruce Martin
  • Bruce’s list of achieved life goals (personal) — A litany of goals Bruce set and met (marry Cheryl, build his own house, daughter Rachel, Master Electrician’s License, 33-year business, horses and a barn) illustrating his determination and faithful follow-through. → A Service of Death and Resurrection for Bruce Martin
  • Buche de Noel (Yule Log) (personal) — The exceedingly complicated Christmas yule log he is attempting this year stands for needless complexity we add, contrasted with Jesus’ simple ‘follow me.’ → What Are We Going to Do About It?
  • Bucket list / after-the-bucket list (other) — Reframing the bucket list as an ‘after-the-bucket list’ to ask what you’ve done to impact others after you die. → I Believe in the Communion of the Saints
  • Bucket list origin and film (pop-culture) — Tracing ‘bucket list’ via Google nGrams to the 2007 Morgan Freeman film, contrasting life’s wants with Christ as the true list. → The Bread of Life: What Are You Hungry For?
  • Buckets / categorizing people (other) — Humans sort people, foods, and ideas into mental buckets to know what to do with them - framing the question of what makes us unique. → The Voice of Sabbath
  • Buechner: Bled For (literary) — Buechner’s line that we are sinners ‘cherished, forgiven, bleeding to be sure, but also bled for’ captures gospel as bad news before good news. → Upside Down
  • Buff ‘Yoked Jesus’ meme (pop-culture) — A muscled, supplement-using Jesus shows how we remake him in the image we want → If Jesus Drew a Portrait of You
  • Buffet and marginal utility (personal) — His childhood Golden Corral trips and eating dolmas at Dimassi’s to get his money’s worth illustrate marginal utility and how worldly abundance means consuming past the point of benefit. → Two Economies: Heavenly Abundance and the Widow’s Mite
  • Building a garden for the long term (nature) — Building a garden for the long term even at the cost of extra weekends pictures pursuing a life of excellence without cutting corners. → Jesus Our Advocate
  • Building and decorating a house for the Lord (other) — Extended metaphor: paint the house with modesty, gild it with good deeds, and crown it with prayer to make the spirit a dwelling place for God. → Prayer and Converse with God Is a Supreme Good
  • Building bass drum (boom…BOOM) (other) — An extended metaphor for the mounting tension of Jesus’ march to the cross → If Jesus Drew a Portrait of You
  • Building gardens in exile (biblical) — Jeremiah’s counsel to build and plant in exile, balancing the call to go against reckless rootlessness. → Walking Along
  • Burgundy grape-harvest laborers (nature) — Hired pickers gather grapes they didn’t grow, illustrating that laborers reap a harvest God already grew (prevenient grace) → The Harvest
  • Business-school CEOs and Myers-Briggs tests (other) — Jesus picks fishermen with no credentials, references, or probation, unlike modern hiring. → Follow Me
  • Businessweek and FastCompany CEO-routine articles (pop-culture) — Modern fascination with hot CEOs’ daily habits paralleled (and contrasted) with learning from holy lives. → Follow Me
  • By Water and the Spirit doctrinal statement (literary) — UMC baptism document framing humanity’s condition, prevenient grace, sacraments, and the baptismal covenant → Baptism
  • Bûche de Noël yule log (personal) — An exceedingly complicated Christmas cake recipe illustrates the needless complications we add, unlike Jesus’ simple call. → What are we going to do about it?
  • C.S. Lewis on being ‘Surprised by Joy’ (literary) — Lewis’s idea that we should be surprised by joy rather than pain supports joy as gift rather than reward. → Why Is He Coming?
  • C.S. Lewis’s Liar, Lunatic, or Lord (literary) — Lewis’s trilemma offered as another threefold formula for grasping who Jesus is. → Priest, Prophet, King
  • C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters (literary) — demons portrayed as laughable; the temptation is to get stuck in your own head → Legion
  • C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (literary) — Lewis’s character who delays heaven to finish his research illustrates the temptation to fixate on questions instead of Christ, the answer to every question. → We are One
  • C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce — Pam and the ghost mother (literary) — The ghost mother who can’t release her son into God’s hands illustrates love distorted into possession and the drag of building life on relationships. → Aerodynamics
  • Cabela’s or Academy stores (pop-culture) — You couldn’t just buy nets at a sporting-goods store, underscoring how costly and personal the disciples’ nets were. → Drop Your Nets
  • Cain and Abel (biblical) — John’s blunt advice ‘don’t be like Cain’ shows how a heart without love leads to death and to causing death. → Spilling Things: God Offers Us a Chance for a Do-Over
  • Cain and Abel (biblical) — Cain’s question ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ frames the ancient human struggle over how wide to draw the circle of responsibility. → Responsibility
  • Cake vs. chips and salsa (personal) — Different foods tempting different people illustrates that temptation is personal and always disguised as something good. → Lead Us Not into Temptation
  • Calling a child ‘very ordinary’ (other) — A parent calling a child ‘very ordinary’ shows how the word is misheard as a put-down, reframing ordinary time as necessary rather than pejorative. → Be Still
  • Camp Eagle Minister’s Escape Retreat (personal) — Upcoming family retreat at Camp Eagle in Rock Springs, anticipated as a true rest with no meetings or rules to make. → October Pastor Report
  • Can opener and toilet brush (other) — Mundane ‘useful’ tools to show how calling scripture merely ‘useful’ undersells it. → The Bible
  • Can’t believe they liked that restaurant or movie (personal) — Judging other people’s judgments is easier than judging a person, showing how anesthetized our discernment is → A Sign
  • Canaanite woman’s faith (biblical) — The woman who begs Jesus for crumbs is ‘good soil’ not by status or blood but by desperate faith—an example of faith in desperation. → Growth
  • Canadian Couple Who Stayed (personal) — A couple from Canada wept with the preacher and walked him out of the canyon, embodying solidarity that reminds the sufferer he is not alone. → Restless with Suffering
  • Candle that burns down on its own (nature) — Letting a candle burn all night until it putters out shows that neglect extinguishes the light as surely as covering it. → Praise
  • Capybaras as Lenten fish in Argentina (current-events) — Catholics not counting fish, or capybaras in Argentina, as meat on Fridays, a humorous example of how fasting rules get drawn. → If You Fall Down
  • Car stuck spinning in mud or sand (personal) — A functional car spinning its wheels in mud is the most frustrating kind of stuck — illustrating being stuck while everything seems fine. → Be Opened
  • Caravaggio’s Entombment of Christ (historical) — The preacher’s high point of baroque depictions of Jesus → If Jesus Drew a Portrait of You
  • Card in the wallet to prove salvation (other) — Judgment is not Christ checking a wallet card to verify you said a prayer or did a thing, but how we respond to God’s call. → He Will Come to Judge the Living and the Dead
  • Carl Henry, Billy Graham, and the rise of ‘evangelical’ (historical) — Post-WWII figures who used ‘evangelical’ to differentiate from fundamentalists, showing how the term shifted sociologically over seventy years. → Good News: What Is Evangelism?
  • Carlsbad Caverns Absolute Darkness (personal) — The shocking experience of absolute darkness in Carlsbad Caverns illustrates how startling true darkness is and why light matters. → Animals and God’s Promise (Children’s Message): The True Light Already Shines
  • Caroline asking daily if it was Sunday (personal) — Marty’s account of Caroline asking every day whether it was Sunday illustrates her deep connection to and delight in worship. → Caroline Miller (Memorial Service)
  • Caroline welcoming the pastor at her home (personal) — The pastor’s first visit three years prior, when Caroline’s joyful welcome surprised him, illustrates her natural, unforced love. → Caroline Miller (Memorial Service)
  • Carpenter from Nazareth (biblical) — The image of a carpenter from Nazareth born 2000 years ago illustrates that the highest we can hope to become looks like Jesus. → We Are God’s Children, But We Are Not Finished Yet
  • Carrying hot water to a neighbor (personal) — Wilson walked a mile and a half to bring hot water to a stove-less neighbor but could have done more—self-examination of whether God’s light shone in him or excused selfishness. → Ash Wednesday
  • Carrying water in the Chisos at Big Bend (personal) — Hauling your own water in the backcountry teaches you how precious water is, opening the theme of water and baptism → Baptism
  • Casablanca and the choice between past and future (pop-culture) — The 1942 film’s crux (Rick and Ilsa choosing between rekindling the past or moving toward a better future) frames letting go of the glory days for greater things to come. → Restless with the Past
  • Casablanca’s Rick and Ilsa (pop-culture) — A good (their love) competes with a greater good, illustrating rival goods → No Distinction
  • Cassette tapes and letters from deployed husband Donald (personal) — Pre-FaceTime correspondence during Donald’s military deployments depicting the strain and intimacy of military family life. → A Service of Death and Resurrection for Estalena Ferguson Aylieff
  • Cassette tapes and letters instead of FaceTime (personal) — A military family staying connected across distance through recorded cassettes and letters before modern video calls. → Memorial for Estalena Ferguson Aylieff
  • Casting a new rod for the first time (other) — First attempts at prayer feel awkward like casting a new fishing rod, but practice brings you into the rhythm of God’s life. → Drop Your Nets
  • Cat people versus dog people (personal) — The everyday divide between cat lovers and dog lovers, and how the two animals live differently, introduces the theme of creatures cohabiting. → Pet Blessing
  • Catching fish with bare hands like a bear (nature) — You can catch fish barehanded like a bear but can’t live on it, so the tools of faith are like nets making discipleship sustainable. → Drop Your Nets
  • Categorizing into Buckets (personal) — We sort foods, restaurants, vacations, jobs, and people into liked/disliked buckets to process the world, illustrating the earthly mind. → Upside Down
  • Catherine of Siena’s dialogue with God (historical) — Catherine’s dialogue teaches that we love our neighbors what we cannot repay to God, counted as done for him. → Three Ways of Saying Thank You
  • Catherine of Siena’s dialogue with God (historical) — Catherine’s dialogue—God redirecting her love toward neighbors since she cannot repay him—models gratitude as actions of mercy toward the unlovable. → Three Ways of Saying Thank You
  • Catherine of Siena’s dialogue with God (historical) — God tells Catherine to love neighbors as she cannot repay him, modeling gratitude as mercy toward the unlovable. → How to Say Thank You
  • Catholic Marian doctrines explained (historical) — Distinguishing the Annunciation, Assumption, and Immaculate Conception to clear up Protestant misunderstandings and recover Mary as a biblical witness. → Magnify
  • Catholic priest confession in movies (pop-culture) — The cinematic confessional scene illustrates Protestant discomfort with confession and the idea of an intermediary. → Ash Wednesday
  • Cave paintings at Seminole Canyon near Del Rio (personal) — Thousands-of-year-old cave art near the Rio Grande shows humanity’s ancient power of making images. → All Peoples and Creatures
  • Celebrity at the dinner party (pop-culture) — Missing the one dinner where Tom Brady, Beyoncé, or Taylor Swift shows up, illustrating both Thomas’s unfair miss and his cautious disbelief of his friends. → The Concrete Faith of Thomas
  • Center never fumbles a snap in a 72-6 loss (other) — Praising a minor detail done right while losing the whole game illustrates the Pharisees missing the point of faith. → The Opposite of Hypocrisy
  • Central Texas Nut Grass (nature) — Unlike tasty Cypriot weeds, local nut grass won’t flavor pasta, underscoring that not all weeds are secretly good but judgment is still not ours. → Waiting
  • CEOs, Senators, and Bishops on power (personal) — People in authority think more about what they can’t do than what they can, showing power is not freedom. → Freedom for Neighbor
  • Changing belief like an outfit (other) — Picking a belief like choosing to ‘wear red today’ shows that genuine faith is not fickle and is formed by how we live. → The Wager (Part 1)
  • Changing his major from economics to English and history for seminary (personal) — Switching majors didn’t change who he fundamentally was but stopped him lying to himself about what made a life worth living. → Drop Your Nets
  • Chapel with Bee Loved and songs for the children (personal) — Writing Bible songs for preschoolers to plant memories of God’s action, showing teaching stories matters even if data alone gives the Bible no value. → Lost & Found: Lost
  • Charles Ives’ Central Park in the Dark (literary) — Ives’ composition of two marching bands crashing in different time signatures as a musical image of the cacophony of life’s overwhelming options. → The Way: Walking Together
  • Charles Wesley hymn ”Tis Love! ‘Tis Love!’ (literary) — A favorite theologically-rich hymn quoted to show how 18th-19th century hymnody dug deeply into who God is. → Trouble in River City
  • Charles Wesley hymn ‘And Can It Be’ (literary) — the preacher’s favorite hymn, sung two ways, voices amazement that Christ died and won the crown for us → The Crown of Salvation, Jesus Wept, Peter Wants the Warmth Without the Weight
  • Charles Wesley hymn ‘He emptied himself of all but love’ (literary) — The Wesley hymn line illustrates Christ’s self-emptying love as the pattern of being now possible for us through God. → We Are God’s Children, But We Are Not Finished Yet
  • Charles Wesley hymn ‘He left his Father’s throne above’ (literary) — The hymn’s ‘he emptied himself of all but love’ models the goal of discipleship: emptying ourselves of everything that isn’t love. → Not to Us
  • Charles Wesley’s ‘And Can It Be’ (literary) — The hymn line ‘emptied himself of all but love’ frames Christ’s self-emptying as the pattern for shedding all that is not love. → Who is Christ?
  • Charles Wesley’s ‘Christ the Lord Is Risen Today’ (literary) — The hymn’s ‘Where, O death, is now thy sting?’ frames the service’s triumph-over-death theme. → Easter Sunrise Service
  • Charles Wesley’s ‘My Chains Fell Off’ (literary) — The hymn line evoking the liberating release that comes from an encounter with Jesus. → Priest, Prophet, King
  • Charles Wesley’s hymn ‘Come, O Thou Traveler Unknown’ (literary) — Wesley’s hymn, quoted throughout, reframes Jacob’s wrestling as the pattern of the whole life of faith clinging to God. → Jacob’s Grappling Technique
  • Charles Weymann and the chassis (historical) — The aviator-turned-engineer who in 1921 transformed the wooden wagon frame into the modern chassis shows that a church needs a true structural foundation, not just an engine on a wagon. → The Chassis
  • Charlie’s Proverbs class (personal) — A congregant’s well-researched class shows the value of reading scripture together, though no one has the final word. → The Bible
  • Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments / Ben-Hur (pop-culture) — Sword-and-sandal film epics show how we mythologize biblical history as distant and unreal, when in fact it intersects our shared human world. → Christmas Eve: God Enters History
  • ChatGPT and Claude as AI (current-events) — Large language models rebranded as AI raise the agency question—does any object have free choice? → Drawn by the Father
  • Chattanooga / Missionary Ridge assault (historical) — The Union’s later successful charge up a fortified ridge shows Pickett’s Charge was a feasible, contingent gamble, not mere folly. → The Rescue
  • Cheap Grace’s Social Media Team (other) — Cheap grace is shiny, slick, well-packaged and ‘has a wonderful social media team,’ dramatizing how a no-cost faith is marketed. → The Way: Walking Together
  • Cheating on the Quiz (personal) — Older kids cheating to impress the teacher shows how a teacher (like God) can’t help if they don’t know where you actually are. → Start From Where You Are
  • Check yourself before you wreck yourself (pop-culture) — The hip-hop catchphrase reframes Wesley’s first General Rule, do no harm, as honest self-examination. → The Wager (Part 1)
  • Chemical weed killers (nature) — Modern reliance on chemicals to kill weeds carries unintended consequences, illustrating how the word grows up choked amid competing weeds. → Growth
  • Chewing rocks / grit in food (personal) — The painful experience of biting sand or a pebble shows bodies aren’t made to eat stones, setting up the temptation to wish stones were bread. → Eating Stones
  • Chewing with your mouth closed (personal) — Being told manners versus seeing food dribble out shows the gap between being told something and embodying it. → Subterranean Hometown Blues
  • Chex-mix for a car, ruby for a paperback (other) — Lopsided gift exchanges illustrate the humiliation of receiving a gift you cannot reciprocate, like God’s love. → The Gift
  • Chicago Bears beating prevent defense (current-events) — The Bears scoring easily against weak prevent defenses shows how injustice spreads when we give away ‘first down after first down.’ → Broken Rod
  • Chicken or the Egg (other) — The unanswerable paradox illustrates contradictions that assume a false rivalry between two things on the same plane. → Sabbath and Prayer
  • Child crying for its mother’s milk (other) — The praying spirit clings to God like a child crying for its mother and craving the milk God provides. → Prayer and Converse with God Is a Supreme Good
  • Child learning to tie shoes: ‘I do it by myself’ (personal) — the preacher’s youngest insisting on doing it alone pictures the prideful ‘I’ve got this’ attitude toward God and salvation → The Crown of Salvation
  • Child or friend saying ‘don’t freak out’ (personal) — A kid or friend prefacing news with ‘don’t freak out’ parallels angels’ first words and signals something genuinely alarming. → Christmas Eve: Why Now?
  • Child tasting cake for the first time (nature) — A toddler going crazy over their first birthday cake pictures eternal joy and satisfaction that never grows old in God’s presence. → New Creation
  • Child’s bedtime thirst (personal) — The thirstiest person in the world is every child at bedtime begging for water, beating even a desert traveler. → The Bread of Life: What Are You Hungry For?
  • Childhood as a Modern Concept (historical) — In ancient Rome and Israel there was no notion of childhood as a distinct stage; the Greek word for child is genderless, underscoring children’s low status. → Like a Child
  • Childhood Family Christmas Eve Reading of Luke 2 (personal) — The preacher’s family read Luke 2 every Christmas Eve, and the odd name ‘Quirinius’ always struck him, illustrating how we recite the text without digging into its real historical roots. → Christmas Eve: God Enters History
  • Childhood memorization of Psalm 23 and the Lord’s Prayer (personal) — The KJV Psalm 23 and Lord’s Prayer learned as a child hold pride of place in his imagination and link straying to shepherd-and-sheep imagery. → Forgive Us Our Trespasses
  • Children Barred from Restaurants and Bars (other) — Modern spaces that exclude children because they are unpredictable and unruly, illustrating the instinct the disciples had to keep children away from Jesus. → Like a Child
  • Children playing together on a playground (nature) — Kids instantly playing regardless of skin color, language, or status shows the childlike openness Jesus praises over worldly ‘wisdom.’ → Love Neighbor
  • Children’s number-scaling song (other) — A child’s call-and-response counting song (‘more than 10? more than 50?’) illustrates the uncapped, ever-growing scale of those Jesus feeds. → How many people did Jesus feed?
  • Children’s song about foot washing (personal) — A children’s song the preacher wrote (‘If you want to follow me, I have to wash your feet…’) distills the heart of following Christ through table and service. → Maundy Thursday
  • Children’s song about the wedding at Cana (personal) — The pastor’s own children’s song (‘Jesus likes to party… he turns the water into wine’) frames celebration as part of grace. → The Church of the Future
  • Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, ‘The Danger of a Single Story’ (pop-culture) — The novelist’s TED talk and roommate anecdote illustrate how a single story flattens people and obscures complexity, paralleling how we read the Bible. → Miriam, Miriam
  • Chips and salsa in college (personal) — The preacher ate only chips and salsa for dinner in college, hungry for it yet never satisfied. → The Bread of Life: What Are You Hungry For?
  • Chocolate cake vs. chips and salsa (personal) — Different food cravings illustrate that temptation must actually be tempting to you to count as temptation. → Restless, Holding the Faith: Doing What You Say
  • Choosing a partner (personal) — Selecting a partner means deselecting others, a zero-sum choice based on attributes, contrasted with God’s gracious election. → Election, Not Selection
  • Choosing restaurants and dishwashers (other) — Nobody picks the three-star restaurant or the two-star dishwasher over the Wirecutter best, illustrating our aversion to the ordinary. → Show Us the Father
  • Chris and Animal Planet (personal) — Chris loved animals and would take over the TV to watch Animal Planet, illustrating her big-hearted, caring nature. → A Service of Death and Resurrection for Christine Renée Jarl
  • Chris’s Song ‘Half a World Away’ (personal) — A song shared by Chris whose chorus about seeing morning and stars at the same time across distance illustrates how we both find ourselves and hide in music, and stay connected to those far away. → Half a World Away
  • Christ Fills Your Bucket List (other) — Christ has already filled your bucket list, so all life’s small joys are a bonus next to the joy of being chosen and loved by God. → Broken Rod, Broken Rod
  • Christ the First-Fruits of Those Asleep (biblical) — The risen Christ as the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep, picturing resurrection as the harvest’s opening promise. → Easter Sunrise Service (Chrysostom Sermon)
  • Christ’s open communion table (personal) — The pastor’s recurring words at the table—‘This is Christ’s table, all are welcome’—illustrate communion’s low barrier of entry. → Maundy Thursday
  • Christian conferencing as a grow group (other) — Wesley’s ‘Christian conferencing’ means transformational conversation about where God is working, like a grow group, as a means of grace. → Big Boat
  • Christian Wiman on wounds and love (literary) — Wiman’s line that life tears us apart but tended wounds let love enter, illustrating how suffering and evil can become channels of grace. → Evil
  • Christians as vultures turning on their own (other) — When the church is at its worst, members act like vultures and Pharisees toward each other instead of protecting all who enter. → Shelter
  • Christina Rossetti and ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ (literary) — The poet overshadowed by her brother Dante, later set to music by Gustav Holst, frames the carol whose closing question—give him my heart—answers how we say yes to God. → Saying Yes to God
  • Christmas candlelight service (personal) — Holding a candle until it drips and goes out illustrates the forgetfulness that snuffs out God’s light. → Praise
  • Christmas Day Falling on a Sunday (current-events) — Churches canceling worship when Christmas lands on a Sunday illustrates treating the Lord’s Day as optional. → On the Third Day, He Rose Again
  • Christmas decoration boxes (personal) — Finding boxes of stuff you no longer need while decorating, asking what paths in your life need to be made straight. → The Four Questions: Who Is Coming?
  • Christmas Tree as Baptized Pagan Symbol Myth (historical) — The claim that the Christmas tree is a baptized pagan symbol has no basis in history; Europe was already Christianized. → The Cultivation of Christmas Trees
  • Christmas Trees Are Not Historically Accurate to Bethlehem (historical) — Fir trees don’t grow near Bethlehem and there were no trees that first Christmas, raising why we keep the tradition at all. → The Cultivation of Christmas Trees
  • Chronos and Kairos (literary) — Two Greek words for time—linear chronos vs. event-time kairos (Christmas memories, falling in love at 4am, holding a baby)—to argue God is beyond time. → Drawn by the Father
  • Chronos vs. kairos (other) — The two Greek words for time distinguish clock-time from the event-time worship aims for. → Praise, On the Third Day, He Rose Again
  • Chrysostom’s Five Paths of Repentance (historical) — John Chrysostom’s homily laying out five accessible paths of repentance—self-condemnation, forgiving enemies, prayer, almsgiving, and humility—frames the whole sermon. → Where two or three…
  • Chuck E. Cheese and Urban Air (personal) — Kids’ play places where freedom means maximizing fun in a constrained bubble, a metaphor for a self-indulgent grown-up freedom cut off from the real world. → Freedom for Neighbor
  • Church as Hospital for the Soul (other) — The church is not a place where everyone has it figured out but a hospital for the weary and heavy laden in need of care and hope. → The Way: Walking Together
  • Church consultant fads (other) — Parking spaces, contemporary worship, and the 80%-capacity building rule are passing trends (‘sand’) that change like fashion and cannot be the church’s foundation. → The Chassis
  • Church in the 50s (other) — The new creation doesn’t look like church in the 1950s but like a life boldly offered to others through grace. → Creation from Nothing: Genesis 1 and John 1 Together
  • Church Lady (‘Could it be Satan?’) (pop-culture) — Dana Carvey’s SNL sketch shows how demons became cultural punchlines detached from Scripture → Legion
  • Church Membership as Body vs. Country Club (personal) — Joining the church gives responsibilities not perks, unlike a country club membership at Barton Creek or the Hills of Stonehouse Vineyard with golf and member-only events. → Privilege
  • Church of the Resurrection visitor privileges revoked (other) — The pastor telling new members their ‘visitor privileges have been revoked’ illustrates that joining means becoming one who welcomes others. → Love Abides
  • Church plant with no legacy costs (personal) — The preacher’s discernment about church planting revealed he was not called to the cleanness of escaping legacy costs. → Anoint the Dust
  • Church roofs shaped like boat hulls (Noah’s ark) (historical) — The church anciently compared to Noah’s ark carrying the word of God illustrates the vessels through which people move through the world. → The Power Unit
  • Church storm damage and insurance deductible (current-events) — Recent rains knocked out the AC, internet, and flooded the building with a $100,000 insurance deductible, illustrating not building storehouses but giving in a hard summer giving season. → Show Us the Father
  • Churches leaving the UMC over property (current-events) — People who left the United Methodist Church told the preacher their departure was really about control of property, not human sexuality. → We are One
  • Churches on the block (personal) — Baptist, Church of Christ, Buddhist temple, and Imani community church all within blocks illustrate the absurdity-yet-reality of denominationalism. → Whoever Is Not Against Us: Denominations, Control, and How You Follow Jesus
  • Churches that run like corporations serving shareholders (other) — Transactional, member-as-shareholder churches contrast with believing in Christ’s body acting beyond what we see. → I Believe in the Holy Catholic Church
  • Clarity of a final sports score (personal) — the preacher’s love of the clear winner/loser at game’s end illustrates the human craving for clarity over biblical ambiguity → The Crown of Salvation
  • Classical double bass practice and lessons in Houston (personal) — The pastor’s teenage Saturday drives to study bass illustrate worldly ‘sacrifice’ as giving something up versus biblical sacrifice. → Sacrifice
  • Clay jars holding treasure (biblical) — Paul’s image of treasure in fragile clay pots that take blows yet are not broken shows God revealed through our struggle. → How to Live Our Story
  • Cleaning business customers (personal) — Chris was a constant, caregiving presence to her long-term cleaning-business customers, many present at the service, illustrating faithfulness toward people. → A Service of Death and Resurrection for Christine Renée Jarl
  • Clearer holy books (other) — The Bhagavad Gita and Quran are comparatively clear, unlike the layered, non-immediate Bible. → The Lamb of God
  • Cleveland Marathon (personal) — The preacher’s first marathon in Cleveland, run socially at an easy pace, illustrates life as a race that need not be a competition. → The Race
  • Climbing and respecting the mountain (personal) — Teaching his kids to fear and respect a mountain’s power illustrates fear-as-respect versus fear-as-insecurity. → Do Or Do Not
  • Climbing films (Free Solo, The Dawn Wall, Meru) (pop-culture) — The preacher’s love of climbing documentaries, especially Meru’s unclimbable peak, frames communion as the truly impossible summit offered freely. → Do this!
  • Clint Briggs in Spirited (pop-culture) — The seemingly unredeemable Scrooge-figure PR maven from the film Spirited illustrates how the prodigal could squander himself by using people, not just money. → The Far Country: God’s Journey to Us
  • Closing on a house (other) — Wanting Jesus to ‘just tell us’ if he’s the Messiah mirrors wanting to reach closing and be done → The Portico of Solomon
  • Closing Song: On a Scale of One to Ten Your Love Is Eleven (literary) — A sung paraphrase of the prayer’s opening lines reframing ‘hallowed be thy name’ as not shaming God and love that ‘changed the game.’ → Our Father, Who Art in Heaven, Hallowed Be Thy Name
  • Coaching the Packers flag football team (personal) — Wilson’s youth flag football team beating the rude Vikings illustrates rivalry and the call to love one’s enemies. → Rivals
  • Coffee shop deathbed-question evangelism (personal) — A stranger interrupting the pastor’s reading to ask where he’d go if he died that moment, offered as one (off-putting) model of evangelism. → Good News: What Is Evangelism?
  • Coffee shop evangelism question (personal) — A man asked the preacher in high school where he’d go if he died right then, raising the valid question of what happens after death. → I Believe in the Resurrection of the Body and the Life Everlasting
  • Coffee shop evangelist (personal) — A stranger in high school asked the pastor where he’d go if he died right then, raising the valid question of what happens after death. → I Believe in the Resurrection of the Body and the Life Everlasting
  • Coke or Pepsi, Plaid or Stripes, A&M or Texas (other) — Trivial consumer and team-loyalty choices illustrate how modern freedom-of-choice is really servitude to a sin-limited heart, not biblical freedom. → Freedom: A New Covenant for a New Year
  • Collapse of the Roman Empire (historical) — A leading theory blames Rome’s fall on over-leveraged debt and broken economic communication, not its conversion to Christianity. → I Believe in the Forgiveness of Sins
  • Colleagues’ century-old stained glass nightmares (personal) — Contrasts huge high-maintenance windows with Covenant’s small, focused, timeless ones → The Ten Commandments
  • College kids on the quad or south mall (other) — How people lingered at the Temple/Portico of Solomon as a casual gathering place → The Portico of Solomon
  • College Station vs. Longhorn pride (personal) — The pastor’s hometown of College Station and his UT loyalty parody the ‘what good comes from there?’ dismissal. → Welcome
  • Colonial Tax Crisis and Romans 13 (historical) — Colonists wrestling with Paul’s command to obey authorities versus rebelling against the king illustrates that kingdom-talk is political. → Thy Kingdom Come, Thy Will Be Done, on Earth as It Is in Heaven
  • Colorado Bend camping under a burn ban (personal) — A family camping trip where a burn ban prevented building a fire, introducing fire’s mesmerizing draw and its three components. → Light of the World
  • Columbus funded by debt instruments (historical) — Columbus’s voyage was financed through complex debt schemes engineered to dodge usury laws. → I Believe in the Forgiveness of Sins
  • Combed woolen cloth (nature) — The Greek image of cloth combed thousands of times to white, picturing the brilliance of Christ transfigured. → The Transfiguration
  • Come and see (John 1) (biblical) — Jesus inviting Philip, Andrew, and Nathanael with the simple words ‘come and see’ models evangelism as invitation rather than argument or conversion-pressure. → Good News: What Is Evangelism?
  • Come O Thou Traveler Unknown (literary) — The hymn sung the prior week, based on Jacob’s wrestling, frames the sermon’s meditation on struggle and healing. → Healing Wounds
  • Come well across languages (other) — French/Spanish/German welcome words (bienvenue, bienvenido, Willkommen) share the root ‘come well,’ showing welcome crosses cultures. → Welcome
  • Comfort is the goal of a mattress company (other) — Quips that comfort is a mattress company’s goal, not faith’s, since faith offers something more than ease. → Don’t Panic
  • Comfortable life in Spicewood, Texas, 2022 (personal) — God did not create so the congregation could enjoy a comfortable life in Spicewood, illustrating that faith is not a tool for our comfort or status quo. → I Believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth
  • Commercial Advent calendars (current-events) — Dog-treat and wine advent calendars mark December, not the Christian calendar, showing the easy-to-sell first meaning of Advent versus the hard second meaning. → He Descended into the Dead
  • Common English Bible rendering of the Beatitudes (‘Happy are the hopeless’) (literary) — The jarring CEB translation of makarios as ‘happy’ reframes the Beatitudes away from impossible ideal toward God’s presence. → Saints and Sinners
  • Communion table’s two perspectives (other) — The plain Hawaiian bread, grape juice, and gluten-free crackers seen as heavenly manna through Jesus’ eyes. → The Bread of Life: What Are You Hungry For?
  • Communion’s low barrier vs foot washing’s high barrier (other) — Communion has a low barrier of entry (all welcome, no metaphysics quiz) while foot washing has a high one, exposing the limits we set. → Maundy Thursday
  • Comparing church attendance and preaching to others (personal) — The pastor admits how hard it is in practice not to measure his church’s attendance or his preaching against others. → Freedom in Christ
  • Complicated gourmet recipes (Alinea, Noma, Meadowood) (personal) — The preacher’s love of elaborate multi-component restaurant recipes shows complexity is knowable but takes extra time. → What are we going to do about it?, What Are We Going to Do About It?
  • Confirmation Sunday confirmands (personal) — Three young people confirming their faith are meant to change the church toward Jesus, illustrating the church’s call to move rather than conform newcomers to existing tastes. → The Chassis
  • Conservation of Energy (nature) — As energy is neither created nor destroyed, humans do not originate love; we only direct the love God gave us first. → A New Commandment
  • Constantine and Reformation rulers grabbing power (historical) — From Constantine to Protestant princes, leaders co-opted the gospel for control, yet a faithful witness persisted → Ask Me Anything
  • Construction Mission Trips (personal) — Introverted, rough dads on roofing mission trips who opened up about failures and fears while working, showing how shared labor reveals character and forges community. → Laborers in the Vineyard: Grace, Community, and Mortality
  • Contracts and title agents (other) — The quid-pro-quo world of closing documents and distrust contrasted with the free gift of salvation in Christ. → The Transfiguration
  • Conversation with a strident atheist (personal) — A first-time encounter with a pastor by a man who knew only addict or mooch Christians, met with listening and love rather than argument. → Whose Name?
  • Cool kids and crushes at elementary school (personal) — His kids’ talk of crushes and the cool kids illustrates the universal in-group/out-group dynamic the church transcends. → I Believe in the Holy Catholic Church
  • Cool Kids vs. Band Geeks (other) — Whether popular or a weirdo/band geek, every person is worthy of God’s love and inclusion. → Privilege
  • Corded telephones and the pre-Internet world (personal) — How hard it is to convey the past to the present, framing the difficulty of explaining what the Temple meant → The Portico of Solomon
  • Costumes We Wear (other) — Extended metaphor of costumes (gender, ethnicity, victimhood, fixing others) that society makes us perform and that the word of God cuts through. → What Is My Sacred Story?
  • Council of Jerusalem and James changing his mind (biblical) — James humbly discerning the Spirit moving against his preconceptions models openness over rigid organizational thinking → Ask Me Anything
  • Counterfactual of Gabriel visiting another woman (other) — An imagined alternate history where another woman refuses or attacks the angel shows how rational ‘no’ would have been and magnifies Mary’s ‘yes.’ → Saying Yes to God
  • Courtroom and government oaths (current-events) — Swearing ‘to tell the truth, the whole truth’ and military/government oaths run against Jesus’ ‘let your yes be yes’ — true honesty rests on faith that Jesus is Lord, not on a system to adjudicate truth. → The Line: Jesus and the Inversion of Our Moral Expectations
  • Cousin Ross’s dig at Wilson’s football knowledge (personal) — Ross teasing Wilson sets up the self-deprecating coaching story. → Rivals
  • Cousin stationed in Kazakhstan (personal) — The fear when his cousin flew over enemy airspace illustrates the long, hard cost of 20 years of service since 9/11. → Come and See
  • Cousin Stationed in Kazakhstan (personal) — The fear of his cousin flying over enemy airspace, illustrating the hard cost of 20 years of war and service. → Come and See
  • Covenant campus security plan (personal) — The church’s large-campus security and the calm move-to-the-locked-exit plan illustrating preparedness without panic amid the world’s brokenness. → Whose Name?
  • Covenant food pantry volunteers (personal) — an open-handed ministry that thrives by offering many people the chance to do a mitzvah, feeding immigrants from many nations → Extravagant Faith: Mary’s Anointing and the Gift of the Mitzvah
  • Covenant Preschool Chapel & The Wise Man’s House (personal) — Teaching the preschool chapel song about building on the rock frames love as the foundation that lets the soul survive the storms. → A New Commandment
  • Covenant Social Club (other) — If the church stops welcoming, forgiving, and healing, it might as well change its sign to ‘Covenant Social Club’ rather than be the Body of Christ. → The Gate
  • Covenant stained glass nativity window (personal) — The manger window at Covenant grounds the sermon’s meditation on the incarnation as God-with-us. → The Birth of Jesus
  • Covenant stained glass Resurrection window (other) — The fourth window in the sermon series, depicting the cross, used as the visual anchor for the gift of Jesus. → The Gift of Jesus
  • Covenant UMC 43rd birthday and its challenges (personal) — The church’s aging campus (roofs, separating stucco, AC units), monthly deficit, and ministry challenges show that hope in a God of resurrection means facing hard realities rather than ignoring them. → Not Easy to Watch
  • Covenant UMC capital campaign and debt (current-events) — The church’s campaign to pay down debt is a chance for today’s members to add their names to the legacy of builders, like Nehemiah refusing to be trapped by past decisions. → What’s Next? (Builders and Names)
  • Covenant UMC pledge cards / stewardship drive (current-events) — Launching a stewardship drive with pledge cards as an act of faith and discernment, giving for 2054 not just 2024. → The Voice of Sabbath
  • Covenant UMC stained glass windows series (personal) — Launches a sermon series on the sanctuary’s stained glass, beginning with the Ten Commandments window → The Ten Commandments
  • Covenant’s stained-glass parables window (other) — The unlabeled lamp window depicts the parables as one of Jesus’ gifts in the sermon series on the church windows. → The Parables
  • COVID-19 viral load study (current-events) — A May study suggesting nasal breathing mitigates COVID viral load supports the health case for proper breathing. → Reset Your Soul
  • Cowboys, Longhorns, Aggies loyalties (other) — Cities, jobs, families, and sports teams are the assorted burdens people choose to carry. → Rest
  • Crashing the sailboat into the dock on Lake LBJ (personal) — The preacher finishes last week’s story of taking a sailboat out alone, crashing into a dock, and being paddled back humiliated by Dominic, illustrating that we are already embarked in the life of faith and sometimes stuck in endless, blameless shipwrecks. → The Wager (Part 2)
  • Credit and credo sharing a Latin root (other) — Banks extending credit (‘he/she believes you are good for your word’) is the everyday place most people encounter belief, contrasted with credo. → I Believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth
  • Creeds omit heaven at the end (historical) — The Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian creeds never mention heaven as a destination after death, focusing instead on bodily resurrection. → I Believe in the Resurrection of the Body and the Life Everlasting
  • Cross vs. fish as Christian symbols (historical) — Neither symbol was universal in the early church; the true sign of a Christian is mercy, not a badge or emblem on your car → Ask Me Anything
  • Cross-Washing (other) — Extended metaphor: wearing Christian shirts and going through motions to avoid confronting sin and loving neighbors. → Privilege
  • CrossFit / composting / shopping affinity buddies (other) — Shared-hobby friendships show ‘affinity’ relationships where you sacrifice nothing of yourself. → Wherever You Go
  • Crowd shifts from Hosanna to Crucify (biblical) — The same crowd that shouted Hosanna turned to ‘Crucify him’ when Jesus drove out money-changers instead of Romans, illustrating a Messiah unlike the one they expected. → Palm Sunday
  • Crowd singing Hosanna together (other) — The good feeling of singing the same song in a group illustrates how the power of crowds can drive praise without knowing why. → Palm Sunday
  • Crucifixion of Spartacus’s rebels (historical) — The mass crucifixion of rebellious slaves shows crucifixion was used not only to kill but to intimidate and warn. → Was Crucified, Died, and Was Buried
  • Cultural portraits of Jesus (historical) — Images of Jesus across cultures show we tend to find a Jesus who looks like us rather than the Jesus of the Bible. → I Believe in Jesus Christ, His Only Son, Our Lord
  • Cup of cold water in a broken land (biblical) — Prevenient grace pictured as mercy given freely, a cup of cold water rather than an act of human will. → Drawn by the Father
  • Cup refilled at church (personal) — People say they pour themselves out all week and need their cup refilled at church — a good but shallow answer to why we worship. → Why Do We Worship? The Assembly and the Bread of Life
  • Curly from City Slickers (pop-culture) — Curly’s line ‘Day ain’t over yet’ mocks consoling ourselves with ‘at least I didn’t kill anyone today.’ → The Line: Jesus and the Inversion of Our Moral Expectations
  • Curtain rising at the start of a play (other) — The stage revealed when the curtain goes up illustrates ‘apocalypse’ as revelation that Jesus is Lord here and now. → What do we hope for?
  • Curtain rising at the start of a play (literary) — The stage curtain going up to reveal the set illustrates apokalypsis/revelation as Christ’s lordship unveiled here and now. → Eternal Life
  • Curvatus / construction or destruction business question (literary) — The Augustinian image of the self curved inward (curvatus in se) framed as ‘Are you in the construction business or the destruction business?’ to contrast sin’s self-destruction with God’s order. → Sin as Rebellion: The Freedom Not to Rebel
  • Cyprian on doing the will of the Father (historical) — A quoted passage from Saint Cyprian on humility, faith, and standing by Christ’s cross defines what it means to be a coheir with Christ and follow him through storms. → Be Still
  • Cyprus Cook’s Oregano Weed (personal) — A documentary cook’s delicious wild oregano growing between driveway bricks shows that what looks like a weed may be good, since we are not the planters. → Waiting
  • Dabbling in Mandarin Chinese (personal) — The preacher’s halting attempt at Mandarin/Japanese characters illustrates how we can use the same word (‘sin’) yet mean entirely different things from what God means. → Freedom from Sin in the Waters of Baptism
  • Daniel playing the cello (personal) — A church member studying cello at UT performs the Fifth Suite prelude as the sermon’s living example of using one’s gifts. → God’s Song of Love
  • Dante’s Inferno vs. the biblical ‘placeholder’ Hell (literary) — Dante’s detailed geography of Hell is contrasted with the Bible’s much vaguer placeholder language (Sheol, Gehenna, Hades), reframing the real question as who (if anyone) is there, not what it looks like. → Jacob’s Ladder
  • Dark and stormy night cliche (literary) — A clichéd line that tells instead of shows, jarring the reader out of imagination. → Cantata: Show, Don’t Tell
  • Dark skies of Fort Davis and Big Bend (nature) — West Texas star-filled skies evoke the ancient world’s far deeper relationship to the stars before light pollution. → The Star
  • Darkness as absence of light (nature) — There are no ‘darkness particles’; darkness is only the absence of light, just as evil is only a corruption or absence of the good. → Let’s Talk About the Devil
  • Darrell K. Royal (historical) — Reference to Texas coach Darrell K. Royal’s saying that three things happen when you throw the ball (two bad), evoking Glynis’s devotion to UT. → Glynis Frye Memorial
  • Dating apps incentivized against success (current-events) — Hinge/Match profit from you NOT finding a partner, showing the strangeness of online dating and its required step of faith. → Every Act of Faith
  • David and Goliath (biblical) — David’s childlike courage, unafraid because he believed God was with him, defeats the giant where seasoned soldiers doubted. → Like a Child
  • David Bentley Hart, The Doors of the Sea (literary) — In a child’s death we see not the face of God but the face of his enemy; hope, not optimism, sustains faith until God makes all things new → The Holy Innocents and the Problem of Evil
  • David Chosen Over His Brothers (biblical) — God passing over the strong and handsome brothers to choose David the runt, illustrating that God doesn’t call the qualified. → A Burning Sensation (Summit Fever: A Pentecost Sermon)
  • David Hume (historical) — The philosophical denial that anything supernatural exists, so resurrection couldn’t have happened. → 12 Ways to Avoid Resurrection
  • David Hume (historical) — Hume’s denial of the supernatural cited as a philosophical ‘no’ to resurrection being possible. → 12 Ways to Avoid Resurrection
  • David Hume’s argument against miracles (historical) — The 18th-century philosopher’s empirical case against the virgin birth, rebutted as a one-time unrepeatable event. → Who was conceived from the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary
  • David’s 200 foreskins for Michal (biblical) — David doubling Saul’s grisly bride-price demand shows the ‘weird’ turn of David from underdog toward power. → David and Goliath
  • David’s capture of Jerusalem and the Six-Day War (historical) — David took Jerusalem from the south, a feat unrepeated until the IDF in 1967, showing David’s later rise into a powerful general/Goliath figure. → David and Goliath
  • Day-after-Christmas decoration takedown (other) — Americans rushing to pack up Christmas to move on illustrates how hard it is to stay in the moment during the long Easter season. → The Holy Club
  • Daylight saving time clock reset (current-events) — Sleeping through 2:00 AM repeating illustrates how time is something we just add or take away, not permanent or natural. → New Year’s Eve (Christ the King Sunday)
  • Dead engine and Mario Kart night (personal) — A car engine died at night, so he let the boys play unlimited Mario Kart — irreparable breakdowns are oddly freeing. → Be Opened
  • Dead moose at a Maine spring (personal) — An obviously contaminated water source the preacher avoided, illustrating recognizable signs of a bad source. → Water
  • Dead moose by the spring (personal) — Passing on a Maine water source because a dead moose lay next to it, illustrating the criteria for discerning safe (life-giving vs. tainted) water. → Give Me Water
  • Dead-end relationship (personal) — Staying in a doomed relationship to not waste invested time illustrates the sunk cost fallacy in our moral lives. → Ash Wednesday
  • Debate Team Spreading (personal) — Wilson’s high school Lincoln-Douglas debate experience and the technique of ‘spreading’ illustrates conquering vs. persuading, and ideological deafness. → Come to Me, All You Who Are Weary
  • Deborah’s song and ‘when hair is long in Israel’ (biblical) — The judge Deborah deferred honor yet was honored, and her song’s ‘long hair’ image (hair grown in peacetime, not fit for battle helmets) illustrates longing for the peace of Christ. → Ascension Sunday / Mother’s Day: Where Did Jesus Go?
  • Defining Gnosticism by Spelling (historical) — Walking through the G-N-O-S-T-I-C spelling and gnosis as ‘knowledge’ to explain Model Two’s bad/material vs good/spiritual error. → Upside Down
  • Dementia and confabulation (other) — Loved ones with dementia unconsciously combining memories shows remembering is about connection and love, not cold accuracy. → What We Remember
  • Demon thrown out like a baseball (other) — The demon was thrown out of the daughter like a baseball hit out of the park — vivid image of decisive deliverance. → Be Opened
  • Denver Casket-Building Ministry (personal) — A ministry that built and gave away wood caskets shows offering dignity in grief beyond money and transactions. → Jesus Wept
  • Desert fathers and mothers (historical) — Early-church ascetics who went to the desert to pray without ceasing model accepting the radical simplicity of God’s call. → What are we going to do about it?
  • Desert Fathers and Mothers (historical) — Early church ascetics who went into the desert to pray without ceasing illustrate accepting the radical simplicity of God’s call. → What Are We Going to Do About It?
  • Dietrich Bonhoeffer (historical) — The Lutheran pastor who resisted the Nazis, wrote The Cost of Discipleship, and died in Flossenbürg embodies costly grace and carrying one’s cross. → The Cost
  • Dietrich Bonhoeffer ‘when Jesus calls a man he bids him come and die’ (literary) — Bonhoeffer’s line frames discipleship as letting die the things that deserve to die. → Sacrifice, What Does God Ask of Us?, Eating Stones
  • Dietrich Bonhoeffer on cheap grace vs costly grace (literary) — Bonhoeffer’s contrast between cheap grace (forgiveness without repentance, grace without the cross) and costly grace (which costs a person their life because it cost God his Son) frames the cost of discipleship. → 2nd Sunday in Lent: Taking Up the Cross and Costly Grace
  • Difficult films vs. easy action movies (personal) — Preacher’s shift from loving Kurosawa/Truffaut/Godard in his twenties to wanting simple bad action movies at 9 PM on a Tuesday illustrates our reluctance to engage hard, important things like difficult Scripture. → Not Easy to Watch
  • Dikaiosune Translation in Paul Class (personal) — The preacher’s habit of swapping ‘justice’ and ‘righteousness’ when translating Greek shows the two are one word with very different English connotations. → Broken Rod
  • Dinner party with a serial killer (other) — The fear of letting a serial killer into your home dramatizes how uncomfortably wide and dangerous Jesus’s command to host the poor and strangers feels. → Responsibility
  • Dirty feet in hard places (other) — Extended metaphor: our feet going to dirty places mirrors our lives going to hard, shameful places that only grace can reveal, sometimes by simply taking off our shoes. → Maundy Thursday
  • Disciples Staring at the Sky (biblical) — After the ascension the disciples are told to stop staring up and return to Jerusalem, showing Jesus isn’t found in the clouds. → Upside Down
  • Disney’s Aladdin and the lamp (pop-culture) — The genie’s lamp resembles the stained-glass parables window, but he redirects attention from Aladdin to God’s yes. → The Parables
  • Distracted walking listening to a podcast (personal) — Bumping into others while mentally elsewhere on a walk pictures how we stray from our path and trespass into others’ lives. → Forgive Us Our Trespasses
  • Diverse animals on the ark (monkeys, bears, platypi, snakes, wolves) (nature) — God tells Noah to take two of every kind, not just the good kinds, picturing the church’s call to welcome all, not the in-crowd. → Big Boat
  • Divine Megaphone (Binitarian Spirit) (historical) — Early Binitarians treated the Spirit as merely a mode of God, ‘a divine megaphone,’ which the sermon corrects by affirming the Spirit as fully God. → Credo: I Believe in the Holy Spirit
  • Do as I say, not as I do (personal) — Children latch onto what parents actually do, not what they say, showing how hypocrisy undermines trust. → The Opposite of Hypocrisy
  • Do what I say, not what I do (other) — The old parenting joke exposes the hypocrisy that disconnects words from actions. → Light of the World
  • Docetism heresy warning (historical) — Turning Mary into a passive statue over-spiritualizes Jesus and risks the docetic denial of his true humanity. → Magnify
  • Dodo birds eating rocks for digestion (nature) — Dodos ate rocks to aid digestion and went extinct, illustrating how little good eating stones does us. → Eating Stones
  • Dog acquired before the first child (personal) — Friends who got a dog six to nine months before their first child illustrates pets as companions woven into human life. → Pet Blessing
  • Domesticating faith on the shelf (other) — Reducing the gospel to three simple rules or shelf knick-knacks from Canton or Round Top beside a Longhorns photo illustrates the temptation to make Christ comfortable rather than transformative. → Arise, Shine: The Light of Epiphany and the Grafting In of the Gentiles
  • Dominic asks if we are living in a movie (personal) — The preacher’s 5-year-old son asks at breakfast whether life is a movie, prompting the point that God is not a distant observer and we are not the protagonists with everyone else as extras. → Who Sits Upon the Throne
  • Dominique Collin on the Good News becoming an event for me (literary) — Collin’s line that Christ’s Good News ‘can also become an event for me’ shows each person’s ‘why’ for Jesus is personal. → Why Is He Coming?
  • Don Quixote Tilting at Windmills (literary) — Seeking ourselves in things and experiences is a quixotic quest—riding donkeys, tilting at windmills—rather than resting in who God created us to be. → Come to Me and Find Rest
  • Don’t build a three-room cabin (other) — A survival shelter is temporary, not a hermit’s home, because the aim is rescue not permanent residence. → Rescue
  • Don’t mix fibers vs. don’t murder (literary) — Illustrates that Torah makes no separation between moral, ceremonial, and dietary law → The Ten Commandments
  • Don’t Panic from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (pop-culture) — Douglas Adams’s phrase frames the sermon, but his nihilistic reason for it is contrasted with Christian hope. → Don’t Panic
  • Don’t panic when backpacking (personal) — Wilson telling his boys the first rule in any challenging situation is don’t panic, since panic never resolves a situation. → Whose Name?
  • Don’t shoot the messenger (other) — The idiom shows messengers are not responsible for the news they bring — like the angel at the tomb. → Easter: He Is Not Here Among the Dead
  • Don’t take what you can’t lose (personal) — Wilson’s rule for his kids—only bring to school what you wouldn’t mind losing or breaking—illustrating non-attachment, since only people mattered to Jesus. → Walking Along
  • Donating a couch you were going to throw away (personal) — Giving away something you didn’t want isn’t a real sacrifice, illustrating that sacrifice means letting go of something good you desire. → How We Are Saved
  • Donor pictured walking with Jesus in a window (historical) — Example of busy self-glorifying window art Covenant’s focused windows avoid → The Ten Commandments
  • Door-to-Door Salesmen Learned from Evangelists (historical) — Sleazy salesmanship was learned from preachers, exposing how Christianity has been distorted into a sales pitch. → Tell Everyone That Jesus is Alive
  • Door-to-door salesmen modeled on door-to-door evangelists (historical) — Explains modern squeamishness about evangelism by noting sales tactics borrowed the evangelist’s model, tainting the association. → One Straw Revolution
  • DoorDash life satisfaction (other) — Wanting to ‘DoorDash’ satisfaction and a ‘four-hour work week’ change illustrates our desire for instant, controlled transformation versus real change that takes time. → Come and See, Come and See
  • Dorothy Day ‘Don’t call me a saint’ (historical) — The Catholic Worker founder’s refusal of the saint label illustrates how naming something holy can dismiss it as unachievable. → Holy Conferencing
  • Dorothy Day’s Saying (historical) — ‘I only love God as much as I love the person I love the least’ — loving God is inseparable from loving the least lovable neighbor. → Privilege
  • Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor (literary) — Ivan’s prose poem in The Brothers Karamazov frames the three wilderness temptations as encompassing all human history. → Freedom for Neighbor
  • Dostoevsky’s The Idiot / Prince Myshkin (literary) — The innocent Prince Myshkin crushed by society embodies the wish that Jesus still walked the earth as a guileless example. → Ascension Sunday / Mother’s Day: Where Did Jesus Go?
  • Doubting Thomas touching the wounds (biblical) — Thomas refusing to believe until he touches Jesus’ wounds, contrasted with Luke where touching still isn’t enough. → Opened Eyes
  • Downloading 1080p instead of 740p (personal) — A recent personal mistake of downloading the wrong video resolution that lagged badly illustrates how mistakes happen even when we try to do well. → Jesus Our Advocate
  • Dr. Jacklyn Albin and the Blue Zones (current-events) — A UT Southwestern physician’s article on Blue Zones shows vegetable-heavy, low-meat diets that echo Wesley’s advice. → Reset Your Body, Reset Your Body
  • Dr. Matt on sheep being stupid animals (personal) — A quoted source that sheep are dumb and untrustworthy explains why night-shepherds existed and were weary. → Christmas Eve: Why Now?
  • Dr. Pepper 10-2-4 commercial (pop-culture) — Old Dr. Pepper ad gives the wild-card rule its name and a humorous aside about sugar intake. → Love Believes All
  • Draw your mustard seed exercise (personal) — Congregation is invited to draw a circle and fill it with what they actually believe, then reflect on why they are here rather than elsewhere — a guided self-examination exercise. → Faith the Size of a Mustard Seed
  • Dressed Up in the Rainstorm (other) — Peter is like someone all dressed up straining to stay dry in the mud, when accepting you’ll get wet is the only peace; we cannot keep ourselves dry from suffering. → Restless with Suffering
  • Drifting back to the wide road (other) — If you’re not growing in grace you stagnate and drift back to the wide road, avoiding the narrow one. → The Voice of Sabbath
  • Drinking from Lady Bird Lake (nature) — why ancient people drank wine instead of polluted water, framing the eating/drinking the disciples did → Prayer
  • Driving differently on ice vs spring (nature) — You drive differently on winter ice than on a spring day, as the church must drive differently in its present cultural season. → The Driver
  • Dropping curtain as revelation (other) — A curtain held up and then dropped illustrates that ‘apocalypse’ means unveiling reality, not the end of the world. → Alpha and Omega
  • Drowning in Lake Travis without rescue (nature) — A swimmer drowning in Lake Travis whom someone reaches but leaves there pictures a God who meets us where we are but refuses to leave us drowning. → Palm Sunday
  • Drowning swimmer refusing help (other) — A swimmer must admit he needs help before accepting rescue, like admitting you need to be saved. → Rest
  • Duke of Buckingham and the English Civil War (historical) — James I promoting his favorite to Duke of Buckingham set off a chain of contingent events leading to the English Civil War. → The Church in the Past
  • Duke the rescue dog on the boat (personal) — The family’s St. Bernard mix enjoying his first boat ride, setting up how memories get told and reshaped. → What We Remember
  • Duke’s Final Four loss to UConn (current-events) — A dumb pass that cost Duke the game illustrates how the losses that sting most are the ones nearest to victory, paralleling Peter’s high before the rebuke. → Peter Wants the Warmth Without the Weight
  • Dunbar’s Number (literary) — Robin Dunbar’s 150-person limit, popularized in Gladwell’s The Tipping Point, mirrors how we keep our circle of neighbors small. → Love Neighbor
  • Dunking an Oreo in milk (other) — Illustrates the plain Greek meaning of baptizo (to put into water), distinct from the sacrament → Baptism
  • Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson (pop-culture) — Satan’s bulk making the Rock seem small underscores the worldly equation of power with physical size. → Heavenly Battles
  • Early Christians accused of being atheists (historical) — Romans called Christians atheists for refusing pagan sacrifice, showing how outsiders tried to control or dismiss the early church → Ask Me Anything
  • Early English railroads and coal carts (historical) — first railroads came because mules couldn’t haul coal over muddy washed-out roads, setting up why durable milestones mattered → The Reign of the Spirit
  • Early Facebook and the Newsfeed Algorithm (personal) — The preacher’s college-era experience of early Facebook and the rise of attention-harvesting algorithms contrasts the gospel with engagement-driven ‘news.’ → Tell Everyone That Jesus is Alive
  • Early Methodist boldness (historical) — Early Methodists let lay people and women preach the scriptures plain, which meant confronting unclean spirits rather than playing the moderate. → Let’s Talk About the Devil
  • Early Methodist class meetings (historical) — Early Methodists’ transformational small groups model the accountability needed to fight temptation. → Restless
  • Easter Bunny of Christian practices (other) — Secularized sin reduces baptism to sprinkling magical water with a wink and a nod, like the Easter bunny, an empty gesture. → Freedom from Sin in the Waters of Baptism
  • Easter dating by the spring equinox full moon (nature) — The astronomical rule for Easter (first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox) explains why Ascension Sunday falls early this year. → Ascension Sunday / Mother’s Day: Where Did Jesus Go?
  • Easter dressed up vs. private Good Friday (personal) — The contrast between Easter’s flowering cross and family meals and the unmarked, partyless privacy of Good Friday illustrates the distance between public and private selves. → Easter
  • Easter Practices Generator QR Code (current-events) — A QR code linking to a site that generates a random Easter practice, inviting the congregation to live the Easter season differently. → Upside Down
  • Eastern Orthodox graduated fast (historical) — The Orthodox practice of giving up meat, then dairy, then even oil shows that the point of fasting is the why, not the what. → Ash Wednesday
  • Eastern Orthodox staged fasting (meat, dairy, oil) (other) — The Orthodox practice of giving up meat, then dairy, then oil illustrates that the point of fasting is the why, not the what. → Ash Wednesday
  • Easy peasy lemon squeezy all-nighter (personal) — Fantasy of finishing reports, edits, and a drive to Alaska without sleep illustrates our wish to avoid our need for rest. → Rest
  • Eating Cheetos (other) — Immediate enjoyment tastes good but is hollow — like Cheetos that don’t fill you and leave you sick and starving again. → The Lamb of God
  • Eavan Boland’s poem ‘Quarantine’ (literary) — Boland’s poem of a famine-era husband warming his dying wife with his last body heat is read as a poem of resurrection and embodied love pointing to God. → Easter Sunday: Works of Love
  • Economics major at UT (personal) — The preacher started college as an econ major before God redirected him to ministry, leaving him attuned to biblical economic language. → I Believe in the Forgiveness of Sins
  • Eddie Izzard’s ‘Cake or Death’ (pop-culture) — Choosing between a good and an obvious bad is no real temptation → No Distinction
  • Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay summit Everest (historical) — Hillary repeats Mallory’s ‘because it’s there’ line, continuing the theme of conquering impossible heights. → Do this!
  • Edwin Hubble and Georges Lemaitre proving the expanding universe (historical) — The 1929 discovery of cosmic expansion implies a beginning, vindicating Aquinas over Russell. → The Gift of the Trinity, Creation from Nothing: Genesis 1 and John 1 Together
  • Effortless perfection and the pursuit of needlessness (other) — Our culture’s strongest, richest, most powerful images of needless ‘effortless perfection’ actually pull us away from reality and from God. → A Bundle of Need
  • Eight numbering systems of the Decalogue (historical) — Shows enduring disagreement (Septuagint, Talmud, Calvin, Augustine, Luther, etc.) over how to count the commandments → The Ten Commandments
  • Election signs and Facebook fights (current-events) — Lawn signs and cousin arguments show how ‘election’ became a secular political word rather than its older theological meaning. → Election, Not Selection
  • Elite business schools (McCombs, Booth, Wharton) (other) — The disciples weren’t credentialed elites; Jesus required no test or references, just ‘follow me.’ → Follow Me
  • Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief (historical) — Critiqued because grief is not staged and finished but infinite, since loving someone means their absence is always felt. → God’s Song of Love
  • Elsa ‘Let It Go’ from Frozen (pop-culture) — Elsa’s anthem illustrates letting go, with the caveat ‘don’t be like Elsa’ who isolates herself instead of reconciling. → Sacrifice
  • Elysium and Olympus (historical) — Heaven-as-resting-place would have sounded to early Christians like pagan afterlife locations rather than biblical hope. → I Believe in the Resurrection of the Body and the Life Everlasting
  • Elysium and Olympus (literary) — Pagan afterlife locations the early church would have associated with ‘heaven as resting place of the dead,’ contrasting with bodily resurrection. → I Believe in the Resurrection of the Body and the Life Everlasting
  • Emily Dickinson, ‘Tell all the truth but tell it slant’ (literary) — Dickinson’s poem illustrates how God speaks indirectly so we are dazzled gradually rather than blinded by the full truth. → Shining
  • Emmaus road and Thomas not recognizing the risen Jesus (biblical) — Even those who knew Jesus best couldn’t recognize him after the resurrection, marking Easter as a radically new kind of ministry. → The Holy Club
  • English common law and early US courts (historical) — Christian-rooted legal systems developed swearing-in for practical accountability, yet Jesus’ words still challenge those pragmatic boundaries. → The Line: Jesus and the Inversion of Our Moral Expectations
  • English Reformation history (historical) — Henry VIII’s divorce, Cromwell, Cranmer, civil war, regicide, and the Georges trace how Methodism emerged from the Church of England tradition. → Whoever Is Not Against Us: Denominations, Control, and How You Follow Jesus
  • Ephraim asking who’s the good guy (personal) — The preacher’s son always asking ‘who’s the good guy?’ shows how we sort people into deserving/undeserving buckets. → Election, Not Selection
  • Ephraim imitating his brother Dominic (personal) — The preacher’s young son copies his brother’s good and bad behaviors, illustrating that growing up is ‘practicing living’ as disciples practice faith. → Palm Sunday: Practicing Living
  • Ephraim wishing to be a grownup (personal) — The pastor’s youngest son wishes to be a grownup so he can watch screens whenever he wants, prompting the lesson that adulthood means responsibility, not unlimited freedom. → Responsibility
  • Ephraim’s first Astros game (personal) — Taking his son to a winning Astros game illustrates how winning is fun and we naturally want to succeed. → Last Place
  • Ephraim’s flag football helmet (personal) — His youngest son’s soft flag-football helmet shows even modest protective gear marks a contest that isn’t perfectly safe. → This Teaching is Difficult
  • Ephraim’s reshaped boat-ride story (personal) — The preacher’s 10-year-old son merging two memories into one better story shows we naturally exaggerate and condense when telling stories. → What We Remember
  • Ernest Becker’s The Denial of Death (literary) — Becker’s book on how contemporary people deny death frames the Christian call not to hide from death. → Jesus Wept
  • Estalena and Donald came from nothing (personal) — Donald an orphan raised in an orphanage and Estalena born at the height of the Depression — both rose from poverty. → Memorial for Estalena Ferguson Aylieff, A Service of Death and Resurrection for Estalena Ferguson Aylieff
  • Estalena climbing under the house to remove a skunk (personal) — Illustrates Estalena’s fearlessness as a de facto single parent raising her children. → A Service of Death and Resurrection for Estalena Ferguson Aylieff
  • Etymology of ‘talent’ (literary) — How the Greek monetary ‘talent’ became English ‘talent’ for a gift or ability, framing the question of how we use what God gives. → Do Or Do Not
  • Etymology of angelos, mal’ak elohim, daemon, and Satan/Shatan (other) — Word studies (Greek angelos/daemon, Hebrew mal’ak elohim, Shatan ‘the accuser’) used to strip speculative baggage from what angels, demons, and Satan actually mean in the text. → Jacob’s Ladder
  • Etymology of antidote (anti + didonai) (literary) — Antidote means ‘something given against,’ showing the Greek prefix anti- isn’t inherently negative and reframing ‘antichrist’ as ‘one against Christ.’ → Antichrist: Becoming the Villain
  • Etymology of devil and Satan (historical) — Diabolos means slanderer and Satan means accuser, arguing the devil’s work is words that tear us down, not cinematic possession. → Healing Wounds
  • Eulogos / root of eulogy (literary) — ‘Blessed’ (eulogos, ‘well said’) is the root of ‘eulogy’—generations will speak well of Mary. → Magnify
  • Everything changes when you have a child (nature) — The common, inexplicable advice to new parents that life will utterly change illustrates the many unexplainable life-reorientations like conversion. → Aldersgate
  • Evolutionary view of parent-child love (nature) — Survival-of-the-fittest only gives a surface-level account of the love between parents and children, which goes beyond understanding. → Trinity Sunday
  • Exhausting prophets (biblical) — Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Elijah were exhausting company, so ‘no prophets welcome’ signs would make sense, yet we’re told to welcome them. → Welcome
  • Exodus from Egypt and the waters of baptism (biblical) — God’s deliverance from Egypt and through the Red Sea typifies baptismal salvation, set against the cross prepared for the Savior → A Service for Good Friday
  • Exodus from Egypt and the waters of baptism (biblical) — God led the people out of Egypt and delivered them by baptismal waters, yet they prepared a cross for their Savior. → A Service for Good Friday
  • Explaining Ash Wednesday to Isaac (personal) — The pastor describing Ash Wednesday to his child Isaac that morning, framing the day’s meaning. → Ash Wednesday
  • Exposure in mountain climbing (personal) — The climbing term ‘exposure’ (how far you’d fall) becomes a metaphor for the stakes of the soul’s vulnerability in the world. → Shelter
  • Eye of the Tiger and We Are the Champions (pop-culture) — Pop songs with the same minor-to-major trajectory as Beethoven’s Fifth, showing the move toward resolution. → God’s Song of Love
  • Eyes enlightened by light (nature) — As bodily eyes are lit when they see light, the spirit intent on God is illumined by his infinite light. → Prayer and Converse with God Is a Supreme Good
  • Ezekiel’s four-faced, four-winged wheeled angels (biblical) — Cited against the popular image of angels as humans with feathery wings, showing Scripture’s own descriptions are stranger and less domesticated. → Jacob’s Ladder
  • Ezekiel’s terrifying four-faced angels (biblical) — Ezekiel’s awesome four-faced, four-winged creatures show how unflinchingly Mary faced the angels at the tomb in her grief. → Easter Sunday: Works of Love
  • Ezekiel’s Valley of Dry Bones (biblical) — The sinews and flesh returning to bones depicts resurrection as fleshly and bodily, not disembodied spirit. → On the Third Day, He Rose Again
  • F1 fuel ratio change (E5 to E10 ethanol) (other) — Getting the right fuel mix for the most power at the least weight illustrates the church getting the right source of spiritual power. → The Power Unit
  • F1 trade secrets and team secrecy (other) — The secret fuel mixtures hidden between racing teams contrast with the gospel, which is revealed openly to all rather than as secret knowledge for the few. → The Power Unit
  • Facebook outrage and the user as product (current-events) — Facebook engineering outrage for profit, with users as the product sold, exemplifies the dopamine-driven wisdom of the world. → Restless with Foolishness
  • Failing pizza shop (other) — Pouring more money into a failing pizza shop illustrates the sunk cost fallacy and the need to cut losses. → Ash Wednesday
  • Faith as a house of cards (other) — Putting faith in external verification of every Bible verse makes belief a fragile tower that collapses when one card shifts, misplacing faith in technique rather than God. → Who Suffered Under Pontius Pilate
  • Faith as a social club (other) — If Jesus isn’t God and didn’t rise, faith is merely a pleasant club—eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die. → Who was conceived from the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary
  • Faith is not a possession like a car or leaf blower (other) — Unlike a car, calculator, or a leaf blower given on Father’s Day, faith cannot be possessed or handed over; it must be received and lived. → Go to Sleep, Isaac
  • Fake it till you make it after a hard night (personal) — Hiding a rough night behind a good face the next day shows the human instinct to cover woundedness rather than display vulnerability. → Easter
  • Falling in love and 50 years of marriage (personal) — A first date versus decades of marriage shows prayer as a deepening relationship requiring practice. → Living Hope
  • Falling on rocks at Petrified Forest (personal) — The pastor’s cut thumb (deep, bled, healed fast) vs. shallow palm cut (little blood, healed slow) illustrates that some wounds linger longer than others. → Healing Wounds
  • False summits while mountain climbing (personal) — You always know when you reach a mountain’s top because you can’t go higher, illustrating clarity of arrival. → He Descended into the Dead
  • Family Christmas dishes and recipes (personal) — The universal special foods and family recipes of Christmas, contrasted with not bothering to find a recipe for the most average green beans, illustrating how we seek the best while Mary and Joseph sought only a place to stop. → A Bundle of Need
  • Family meals that fall apart (personal) — A perfect family dinner followed by chaos shows how our good actions are not invalidated by subsequent failure. → Palm Sunday: Practicing Living
  • Fantasy football draft (pop-culture) — Drafting the next football star in a fantasy league exemplifies the world’s endless boredom and pursuit of novelty. → Restless with Foolishness
  • Father Abraham had seven sons (pop-culture) — The children’s song is corrected (Abraham had two sons, not seven) to note how Abraham’s hard stories get skipped in VBS and children’s Bibles. → Go to Sleep, Isaac
  • Father Damien of Molokai (historical) — The Belgian missionary who served and died among the lepers of Hawaii is a physical reminder of holiness and one sanctified in truth who did not fear death. → Ascension Sunday / Mother’s Day: Where Did Jesus Go?
  • Father God Versus Heavenly Father (personal) — The preacher once said ‘Father God’ because of the people around him, showing how we learn the language of prayer from our community. → Our Father, Who Art in Heaven, Hallowed Be Thy Name
  • Father Lemaitre and the Big Bang (historical) — Lemaitre’s Big Bang theory overturning belief in an eternal universe illustrates that the universe is not eternal, only God is. → I Believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth
  • Father on delayed gratification as the mark of maturity (personal) — His father’s saying that instant gratification is childish and delayed gratification is mature frames faithful waiting amid pain and longing. → A Sermon on Endings: The Patience of Simeon
  • Father Zosima’s decaying body (literary) — Alexei is shaken when his revered saint’s corpse decays and stinks, yet through that challenge comes to spiritual awakening. → Palm Sunday: Practicing Living
  • Father’s Day screwdriver gift (personal) — The little screwdrivers becoming junk-drawer black holes illustrate that handy or not, everyone bears responsibility to the next generation. → Don’t Panic
  • Father-in-law’s friction-stir welding (personal) — A genuinely complex engineering specialty shows some things are hard but knowable, contrasting with the simplicity of faith. → What are we going to do about it?, What Are We Going to Do About It?
  • Faulkner on the heart in conflict with itself (literary) — Temptation is the internal conflict that makes good writing worth the agony → No Distinction
  • Faulkner: the past is never dead (literary) — Faulkner’s line that the past is not even past shows how prior decisions still shape the present church. → The Church in the Past
  • Fearlessness Versus Courage (historical) — The ancient virtue of courage contrasted with mere fearlessness shows that courage means fearing the right fear. → You Are Strong
  • Fides quae creditur vs. Fides qua creditur (other) — Latin theological distinction between the faith that is believed (creed/object) and the faith by which one believes (lived conviction/action). → Faith the Size of a Mustard Seed
  • Field hospital in a conflict zone (other) — An extended metaphor of the church as the first line of care present in the midst of battle, caring for the most wounded, contrasted with a clean fortress castle. → Field Hospital
  • Field hospital not a private club (other) — Pope Francis’s image of the church as a field hospital caring for the wounded, not a members-only club. → The Church in the Present
  • Fig Tree Lesson (nature) — Jesus’ image of the fig tree’s tender branch signaling summer is near, teaching watchfulness for his nearness. → The Cultivation of Christmas Trees
  • Filling Judas’s vacant slot by casting lots (biblical) — The first act of the early church was filling a committee slot, choosing Matthias by lot, showing God equips leaders rather than the most credentialed. → The Holy Club
  • Finding the Book of the Law in the temple (2 Kings 22) (biblical) — Shows the Law had been lost/ignored for so long that its rediscovery during temple renovation was itself the note-worthy event. → Come Down, Don’t Delay
  • Finishing a marathon (personal) — The satisfaction of completing a marathon, painting a room, or organizing a closet illustrates the joy of accomplishment, paralleling Jesus reaching Jerusalem though the journey isn’t over. → Palm Sunday
  • Finite games versus life (other) — Football is a finite game with a known clock, but life is not finite because we don’t know when it will end, framing the value of a fresh start. → Spilling Things: God Offers Us a Chance for a Do-Over
  • Fire as Trinity Metaphor (other) — Father as spark, Son as light, Spirit as heat — an extended metaphor for the Trinity where the Spirit is how we feel God. → A Burning Sensation (Summit Fever: A Pentecost Sermon)
  • Fire tornado, thunder snow, super flu of 2020 (current-events) — Imagined escalating 2020 catastrophes illustrate how life’s challenges and our sense of them keep changing. → Holding the Faith: Doing What You Say
  • Fire, light, and heat (nature) — Father as fire, Son as light, Spirit as felt heat — we feel the Spirit’s warmth as God’s presence. → Wisdom’s Call
  • Fire: spark, flame, and light (nature) — Spark, flame, and light are each distinct yet all one fire — analogy for the three persons of the Trinity. → Wisdom’s Call, Trinity Sunday
  • First Amendment and in loco parentis (historical) — Learning students lack free-assembly rights because school stands in loco parentis, illustrating felt loss of agency. → Drawn by the Father
  • First church committee meeting casting lots for Judas’ replacement (biblical) — The disciples drawing lots to replace Judas as the church’s first committee, showing church order matters even if it isn’t the gospel’s heart. → Opened Eyes
  • First commandment from Sinai (biblical) — God’s first word ‘I am the Lord your God’ shows sin is about relationship with God, not a moralistic list of rules. → Love Covers a Multitude of Sins
  • First date at Church Under the Bridge (personal) — The pastor and Alina’s first date at this Austin ministry ties his own story into the congregation’s outreach history. → What is our sacred story?
  • First date hike with the dog (personal) — Their first date was a hike with Tanner’s dog Luna, who had to approve of Rachel or there would be no second date. → Rachel and Tanner
  • First date with Alina’s direct questions (personal) — His wife Alina, in sweats from soccer practice, opened their first date with deep direct questions, illustrating how direct questions about ultimate things forge real faith and relationship. → Palm Sunday
  • Fish fry fundraisers (nature) — Lenten fish fry fundraisers at Catholic churches as the everyday outworking of Friday meat-fasting. → If You Fall Down
  • Five Things About You Slideshow (personal) — A ‘five things about you’ slideshow tempts us to list flattering rather than true things, illustrating our urge to present a false self to be liked. → Start From Where You Are
  • Flannery O’Connor (literary) — O’Connor’s defense that being a Christian let her look at dark places without fear models facing death and grief unafraid. → Jesus Wept
  • Flannery O’Connor’s ‘A Good Man Is Hard to Find’ (literary) — The Misfit’s claim that Jesus ‘thrown everything off balance’ by raising the dead dramatizes that the resurrection forces a decision: throw away everything and follow Him, or there’s no pleasure but meanness. → What Are We Going to Do About It?
  • Flannery O’Connor, A Good Man Is Hard to Find (literary) — The Misfit’s claim that Jesus ‘thrown everything off balance’ shows the resurrection forces a total either/or: follow Him or chase meanness. → What are we going to do about it?, Peter Wants the Warmth Without the Weight
  • Flat vs. overflowing world / ‘a chair is only a chair’ (other) — An extended metaphor contrasting a purely materialist ‘flat’ reality (we are only cells and atoms) with an ‘overflowing’ world where moments and experiences carry meaning. → Christmas Eve Service: Is the World Flat or Overflowing?
  • Flood myths across cultures (historical) — Gilgamesh, Choctaw, Cree, Inuit, Egyptian, Indian, and Malaysian flood myths show the flood and boat are not unique to the Hebrews. → Big Boat
  • Following Someone Before GPS (personal) — The lost art of following another driver through unexpected turns illustrates discipleship as following Jesus wherever the path turns. → Discipleship
  • FOMO and the uninvited party (personal) — The sting of hearing friends threw a party without you, framing the human fear of missing out that God’s love never subjects us to. → Not a New Commandment: God’s Love Is Old, Not Trendy
  • Food pantry cleanup at 5:30pm (personal) — Concrete church service opportunities show that vectoring outward means signing up and showing up, not just nodding along. → Who am I in Christ?
  • Food poisoning and bodily knowledge (personal) — Eating something toxic gives you intimate, quick knowledge of your body, illustrating how the tree’s fruit could give knowledge by being poison. → Come and See
  • Food, Dieting, and Self-Loathing (current-events) — Modern struggles with diet, body image, and ‘that third dessert’ illustrate how constant self-satisfaction leads to self-destruction rather than rest, motivating fasting. → Come to Me, All You Who Are Weary
  • Footloose small-town rebellion (pop-culture) — The ‘cut loose, Footloose’ rebel against small-town authority shows rebellion only works when there’s an order worth defying. → Sin as Rebellion: The Freedom Not to Rebel
  • Ford Ranger broken axle (personal) — His axle fell driving Austin to College Station — a total breakdown you accept and move on from. → Be Opened
  • Forest fire suppression and ecological renewal (nature) — fire is both destructive and constructive, renewing ecologies as God’s refining fire renews us → The Mercy of Fire
  • Forgiving 500,000 vs a $2.35M house (other) — Escalating sums show that the larger the forgiven debt, the more radical the forgiveness, like a bank wiping a Zillow mansion’s mortgage. → I Believe in the Forgiveness of Sins
  • Forgiving a car loan (other) — Christ doesn’t just forgive sin like canceling a car loan and moving on; he overwhelms and covers it. → Love Covers a Multitude of Sins
  • Forgiving someone who tripped your child (personal) — The hardest mercy of all is forgiving those who have tripped up our children, illustrating that forgiveness is impossible apart from grace. → Forgive Us Our Trespasses
  • Formula 1 and Drive to Survive (pop-culture) — Getting hooked on F1 via the Netflix series sets up the points system and unjust last-race endings as a picture of life that seems unfair. → A Sermon on Endings: The Patience of Simeon, The Chassis
  • Formula One driver development and simulators (pop-culture) — F1 teams train drivers through divisions and million-dollar simulators to master every track, as Christians must learn to drive attentively. → The Driver
  • Formula One power unit (other) — The custom F1 engine that constantly needs refueling illustrates Scripture as the church’s fuel that must be returned to again and again. → The Power Unit
  • Forrest Gump bus seat ‘seat’s taken’ (pop-culture) — Unlike the bus kids refusing Forrest a seat, the unfinished church always has space for others. → Anoint the Dust
  • Fossil fuel running out versus Scripture never running dry (nature) — Petroleum will one day be exhausted, but the Bible as fuel never runs dry and stays as fresh as ever. → The Power Unit
  • Founding of Bee Creek / Pedernales UMC (historical) — The 2002-2005 church-plant story (letter to the DS, Pastor David Payne, name changes, land donation) embodies the concrete collective body of Christ. → What is our sacred story?
  • Founding story of Bee Creek UMC (historical) — From a failed 1970s real estate deal to charter in 2003 and a 2.4M loan, Bee Creek’s existence was contingent and unexpected. → The Church in the Past
  • Francis Xavier’s mission to Goa and Japan (historical) — Xavier said yes to the Great Commission and pressed on from Goa to Japan, a saint who is a ‘visible gospel’ to imitate. → Palm Sunday: Practicing Living
  • Francois Rabbath (historical) — The Lebanese bassist who revolutionized technique, cited in the pastor’s musical lineage as a ‘cool connection.’ → Sacrifice
  • Frank and the porn addiction (other) — Frank, a churchgoing UT-football fan with a hidden porn addiction, meets Christ, loses the desire, and can humbly confess to friends in Christ. → Freedom from Sin in the Waters of Baptism
  • Frank Wilson and John Wesley Hardin (personal) — Preacher’s namesake sheriff and the outlaw named for Wesley show that a name/lineage doesn’t determine character. → Emmanuel = Mercy
  • Franz Ferdinand’s driver and Gavrilo Princip (historical) — A wrong turn by the driver in Sarajevo put Franz Ferdinand in front of his assassin, sparking World War I. → The Church in the Past
  • Fred and Larry who refused the call (other) — Imagined fishermen Jesus may have called before Andrew and Peter, who said things were fine and wouldn’t put down their nets, illustrating clinging to what you have. → Fragments
  • Frederick Buechner on the Gospel as bad news before good news (literary) — The quote that we are chicken, phony, slob yet loved, cherished, and bled for, capturing grace beyond mere affirmation. → Lost & Found: Lost
  • Frederick the Great on defending everything (historical) — ‘He who defends everything, defends nothing’ shows fearing everything means missing the right fear. → Don’t Panic
  • Free-throw at the buzzer (other) — The pressure of making the winning shot is contrasted with the gospel, where Christ has already won and the pressure isn’t on us. → Not to Us
  • Freed prisoner who shares the news (other) — Someone locked away for a long time and then set free would naturally share that news, like new parents sharing about a baby, illustrating spontaneous evangelism from freedom in Christ. → Good News: What Is Evangelism?
  • Freezing brains and supplements (current-events) — Modern attempts to preserve ourselves won’t last; earthly treasure is impermanent. → Follow Me
  • French ‘arbre’ and its meaning as the cross (other) — the word for tree in French ranking the cross as a second meaning shows that translation is always a choice between words → The Crown of Salvation
  • Freshman dorm-room God debate (other) — Contrasts an abstract intellectual debate about God’s existence with the lived crisis of a struggling marriage and kids in college, showing why the question matters existentially. → The Wager (Part 2)
  • Friend hungover on Passover wine (personal) — A middle-school friend came to school hungover from too much Passover wine, a memory of how the holidays appeared to him as a kid. → Show Us the Father
  • Friend’s saying about wanting to spend time with God (personal) — If we don’t want to spend time with God now, why would we want to in the future — pointing to present transformation, not deathbed bargaining. → The Gift of Jesus
  • Frozen Lake LBJ Transformed by Ice (personal) — The Texas winter storm turned the lake where the pastor learned to swim white, which his boys saw as magical while he saw burst pipes, illustrating how the same scene can be a transformation seen differently. → The Transfiguration
  • Frustrated parent telling kids to brush teeth and buckle seatbelts (personal) — Everyday parental frustration shows that frustration is not the same as rejection or giving up. → The Church of the Future
  • Galadriel refusing the Ring (pop-culture) — Power corrupts even one who means to do good with it → No Distinction
  • Galen and the Methodist medical school (historical) — The ancient ‘Methodist’ medical rivalry explains the insult’s origin: anyone, by method, can be a Christian → The Calling and the Called
  • Galen vs. the ancient Methodist medical school (historical) — The ancient medical ‘Methodists’ (anyone trained by method could heal, versus Galen’s elite) gave the Wesleys their nickname-turned-claim that holiness is offered to all. → The Holy Club
  • Galileo, Kepler, and Tycho Brahe practiced astrology (historical) — Pioneers of modern astronomy also practiced astrology, showing Christians have long focused on the stars. → The Star
  • Game theory and the Nash equilibrium (historical) — Game theory’s rational-self-interest logic contrasts with the gospel call to love one’s neighbor. → Love of God, Love of Neighbor
  • Gandalf is never late (literary) — Tolkien’s wizard arriving ‘precisely when he means to’ illustrates that God’s time differs from human time. → When will he come?
  • Gandalf says no heroes can be found (literary) — a small, unassuming hobbit becomes the surprising hero, like ordinary believers being made holy → Sanctification
  • Garb vs. desire in the Gospels (biblical) — The street-corner Pharisee condemned and the widow’s tiny offering praised show Jesus values inward desire over outward Christian appearance. → Fruitfulness
  • Gathering Online During the Pandemic (current-events) — Longing for the day to gather ‘with masks off’ to hold and shake hands, naming the COVID-era separation of the congregation. → The Way: Walking Together
  • Gaudete Sunday and the pink candle (other) — The Advent day of rejoicing frames joy as an unearned gift received when we admit the world’s brokenness. → Why Is He Coming?
  • Gaudete Sunday pink candle (historical) — The pink Advent candle marks the church’s shift from ‘Come, Lord Jesus’ to ‘The Lord is close at hand.’ → Cantata: Show, Don’t Tell
  • General anesthesia and the meaning of judgment (personal) — The preacher’s two times under general anesthesia (wisdom teeth, ankle tumor) frame anesthesia as ‘absence of judgment,’ a wordplay distinguishing kinds of judgment from God’s judgment of souls. → He Will Come to Judge the Living and the Dead
  • General Conference and Kansas City delegation trip (personal) — The UMC’s deep debates and the pastor’s delegate trip to Kansas City that very afternoon show present-tense church disagreement firsthand. → The Church in the Present
  • General Conference presentation after the service (current-events) — The pastor’s upcoming talk on what really happened at UMC General Conference versus media portrayals, framing the call to read Scripture together humbly. → Pentecost
  • Genius Bar / Google troubleshooting (pop-culture) — Tech support always asks first if you’ve reset it, modeling humble preemptive reset without ego. → Reset Your House
  • George Mallory and Everest (“because it’s there”) (historical) — Mallory’s deadly drive to climb Everest illustrates the human pursuit of the impossible that finds its true answer at the Lord’s table. → Do this!, Palm Sunday
  • George Mallory on Everest (historical) — Mallory’s ‘because it’s there’ answer for climbing Everest shows how the reasons we give for doing things sound cool but don’t really make sense. → Palm Sunday
  • George McClellan and the lost Confederate orders at Antietam (historical) — A battle’s outcome is contingent, not inevitable: McClellan found the enemy’s plans yet failed to press his advantage. → The Rescue
  • George Michael’s ‘Faith’ (covered by Limp Bizkit) (pop-culture) — A Google search for ‘faith song’ turns up this pop song rather than hymns, illustrating how culture reduces faith to mere hope/expectation. → Faith the Size of a Mustard Seed
  • George Strait, “Ocean Front Property” (pop-culture) — The 1987 song’s ironic too-good-to-be-true sales pitch (oceanfront property in Arizona) frames grace as a deal that sounds unbelievable. → God’s Love: A Deal Too Good to Be True
  • George the Sheep stuck in the brambles (other) — An imagined named lost sheep whose rescue feels unfair to the obedient, framing the rule-followers’ resentment as economists’ moral hazard. → Lost & Found: Lost
  • George Washington declines a third term (historical) — Washington’s 1796 peaceful transfer of power shows America rejected kingship, framing the sermon’s question of who should rule. → How not to make Jesus King
  • Gettysburg Address (historical) — Lincoln’s clear, succinct prose exemplifies the dense, get-to-the-point style shared with Mark’s gospel. → Binding the Strongman
  • Ghost hunter shows, horror movies, tarot and horoscopes (current-events) — Contemporary pop-culture fascination with the supernatural (ghost hunting TV, horror films, tarot, crystals) shows the same enduring spiritual curiosity Wesley’s audience had. → Jacob’s Ladder
  • Giardia parasite (nature) — The odorless, tasteless parasite that can debilitate you pictures bad spiritual water that slowly destroys the soul. → Water
  • Gideon and the Day of Midian (biblical) — Gideon’s 300 men attacking the Midianites by faith, not running a prevent defense, models bold faithful action that breaks the oppressor’s rod. → Broken Rod, Broken Rod
  • Gideon Bibles and the AirBnB era (current-events) — Most Americans meet the Bible in hotel rooms, but short-term rentals are ending the Gideons’ reach, illustrating the Bible’s uneven value to people. → Lost & Found: Lost
  • Giving 300% at work (other) — Exhausting ourselves in external striving illustrates how prayer offers a countervailing way of simply being with God. → Ash Wednesday
  • Giving kids many rules (personal) — Children don’t take a pile of rules as a sign of freedom, showing how commands feel constraining. → Sabbath and Prayer
  • Giving the promotion to Sally (other) — Few willingly yield a deserved promotion, showing how zero-sum and competitive ordinary work life is. → Last Place
  • Giving up chocolate for Lent (personal) — Food tempts precisely because it is good, not bad → No Distinction
  • Gleaning at orchard edges in Israel and California (nature) — The ancient practice of leaving field edges for the poor and wayfarer illustrates God’s provision for Ruth and the outsider. → Wherever You Go
  • Glengarry Glen Ross sales contest (pop-culture) — First prize a Cadillac, second steak knives, third you’re fired — the zero-sum, results-oriented misreading of the fig-tree parable → A Sign
  • Global Poverty Comparison (other) — Comparing our lives to world measures of poverty, malnutrition, and persecuted Christians reveals our blessings and challenges our privilege. → Privilege
  • God as Santa Claus (pop-culture) — Rejecting the naughty-or-nice reward-and-punishment image clarifies why Jesus came to redeem, not to dole out gifts. → Jesus Likes to Party
  • God comes not as king but as a speechless poor child (other) — Instead of arriving on a chariot or as warlord, king, or tycoon, God enters as the weakest among us, a poor child who cannot speak, illustrating divine self-emptying. → Waiting on a Miracle
  • God enters the chat from the whirlwind in Job (biblical) — Job’s ending, where God speaks from the whirlwind, parallels Jesus’ power over the storm, except Jesus speaks to the whirlwind in finite flesh and it obeys. → Be Still
  • God is not a heavenly Santa Claus or puppet master (other) — Contrasting a gift-dispensing Santa or controlling puppet master with God who desires relationship shows love is more than receiving things. → Love Abides
  • God of the gaps and the rise of modern science (historical) — In the 16th-17th century God became a filler for what new observational techniques couldn’t explain, the deist ‘God of the gaps’ theory rather than the Trinitarian God. → Pentecost
  • God treated like a pesky in-law (personal) — Keeping a non-Trinitarian God at a comfortable distance, like an in-law you only tolerate briefly. → Wisdom’s Call, Trinity Sunday
  • God’s glory would burn us up, as it nearly did Moses (biblical) — Moses nearly being consumed by God’s glory shows why God came humbly in Jesus rather than in overwhelming glory. → Christmas Eve: Why Now?
  • Gods playing bridge (other) — The image of pantheon gods meeting to play bridge underscores how the God of Abraham differs from one deity among many. → The Wager (Part 1)
  • Golden calf and focus groups (biblical) — Aaron giving impatient people what they want like responding to focus groups, showing we are led astray by getting wants instead of needs. → Whose Name?
  • Gollum hoarding the ring of power (literary) — Clinging to Christ’s peace like Gollum to the ring contrasts with sharing peace freely. → Rest
  • Good Friday scoreboard Rome 1 - Jesus 0 (other) — The metaphor of a scoreboard that didn’t hold out shows Jesus’ apparent defeat became resurrection victory. → Last Place
  • Good Samaritan and ritual purity (biblical) — Passersby avoided the wounded man to protect their ritual purity, illustrating how fear of contamination makes us see others as threats. → Walking Along
  • Good Samaritan’s Priest and Levite (biblical) — The priest and Levite passing by the wounded man illustrate how we turn away and give up first downs against injustice. → Broken Rod
  • Grafting into Israel and the sin of persecution (biblical) — Gentiles grafted into the chosen people turned on Israel with persecution and made them scapegoats for their own guilt. → A Service for Good Friday
  • Grandfather John Huebel beating Smithville in football (personal) — A lighthearted family memory of the 1930s quarterback introduces the town of Smithville. → What is Hope?
  • Grandfather John Huebel, A&M class of 1940 (personal) — Personal family tie to A&M’s only national championship illustrates symbols carrying memory. → Symbols and Signs
  • Grandfather John Huebel, Aggie class of 1940 (personal) — Dropped at a train station in the dark with two more miles to walk, illustrating the preacher’s roots in the College Station / Aggie story. → David and Goliath
  • Grandfather left a church over a money ask (personal) — His grandfather quit a Methodist church because the preacher asked for money, explaining the pastor’s own aversion to pulpit fundraising. → Shelter
  • Grandmother and the jetskis (personal) — His grandmother threatening warning shots at jetskis in their cove colors the family lake setting that frames the sermon’s central metaphor. → The Wager (Part 1)
  • Grandmother’s genealogy research (personal) — Pre-internet family-tree hunting in libraries sets up the theme that genealogy is about relationship, not blood. → Emmanuel = Mercy
  • Greedo or Han shot first edits (pop-culture) — Online arguments over George Lucas’s special-edition edits illustrate that ‘nerds don’t like change’ and the restless chasing of the next thing. → Restless with Foolishness
  • Greek ‘daemon’ vs English ‘demon’ (other) — source-language word meant a neutral divine power, not an inherently wicked being → Legion
  • Greek dikaiosyne in the Paul class (other) — The single Greek word for justice/righteousness, which the preacher flips when translating, shows justice and righteousness are one reality. → Broken Rod
  • Greek pantheon and Athenian philosophy (historical) — The sophisticated, increasingly monotheistic thought of Plato and Aristotle shows the Greeks seeking the same God Paul proclaims as now revealed in Christ. → The Power Unit
  • Greek word calypto vs apocalypse (literary) — The Greek ‘calypto’ (cover) versus ‘apocalypse’ (uncover) illustrates that love covers sin while Revelation uncovers Christ’s plan. → Love Covers a Multitude of Sins
  • Greek word study: Calypso / Apocalypse (other) — Wordplay tracing the Greek for ‘cover’ (kalyptō) through Calypso and apocalypse/uncovering, illustrating that love covers sin until it is no more, as Revelation uncovers the new heaven and earth. → Love Covers a Multitude of Sins
  • Greenwashing (current-events) — Corporations acting environmental without changing policies, the parallel for Christians’ empty performance. → Privilege
  • Gregory the Great on Doubting Thomas (historical) — Gregory the Great’s reflection that Thomas’s doubt, resolved by touching Christ’s wounds, did more for our faith than the other disciples’ belief. → Future Sermon Notes: On Thomas and Prayer
  • Grief is not like a mortgage you pay off (other) — An extended metaphor contrasting grief with a debt that can be settled and forgotten, since we grieve because we love. → Saints and Sinners
  • Grizzly bear escape joke (other) — You only have to outrun the slowest person, illustrating the human instinct to save yourself and abandon the weakest. → Who Gets to Be Saved
  • Grocery cart returners (personal) — People who don’t return grocery carts illustrate the differing internalized levels of responsibility people carry. → Responsibility
  • Grocery-store freedom of fifty pastas (other) — Worldly freedom as endless consumer choice (fifty kinds of pasta) is unquenchable and constraining, the freedom of the hired hand. → Being Sheep
  • Groggy morning pianist (personal) — A young pianist who plays best when too groggy to overthink, illustrating the danger of overthinking faith. → Living Hope
  • Groucho Marx club argument (pop-culture) — “I’d never join a club that would have me” frames the argument that God is too great to care about insignificant us. → The Baptism of the Lord
  • Group chats and FaceTime vs. hugging (other) — Digital connection can’t replace celebrating together or hugging tightly, showing that bodies matter and a party without bodies is no party. → I Believe in the Resurrection of the Body and the Life Everlasting
  • Group chats vs. hugs (other) — FaceTime and group chats can’t replace hugging someone tightly, showing that bodies matter for true celebration. → I Believe in the Resurrection of the Body and the Life Everlasting
  • Group project where someone doesn’t do their part (personal) — A group member who promises to do the work but doesn’t, illustrating the disappointment of broken commitments. → Antichrist: Becoming the Villain
  • Growing up and realizing others are better than you (personal) — The childhood-to-adulthood ache of discovering some people are faster, smarter, and more gifted, illustrating the unfairness of unequal talents. → Freedom in Christ
  • Growing up in College Station, the Supreme Court dream, and conversion in Saltillo (personal) — The preacher’s ambition to be a Supreme Court justice with a Potomac island dissolved after an encounter with God on a hill outside Saltillo, Mexico, illustrating how dropping your nets enlarges rather than shrinks your purpose. → Drop Your Nets
  • Growing up with Nintendo and video games (personal) — Wilson’s childhood playing the original 8-bit Nintendo, Super Mario, Goldeneye, and deliberative computer RPGs sets up the value of games that form good decision-making. → Eternal Life
  • Guests who never leave (personal) — Loving people but liking when they go home illustrates why a mere continuation of earthly life would not be heaven. → New Creation
  • Guided enemy-prayer meditation (personal) — Closing eyes to pray for a loved one, then an irritant, then someone you never want to see again, enacts loving enemies because Christ is victorious. → Heavenly Battles
  • Guided eyes-closed self-examination (personal) — Congregation imagines what Jesus would notice, highlight, or pass over in them → If Jesus Drew a Portrait of You
  • Guided meditation as the father/mother (other) — Invites listeners to feel the parent’s grief and mercy at a child who left them for dead and then returned. → The Prodigal Son and the Ministry of Reconciliation
  • Guided meditation as the older sibling (other) — Invites listeners to inhabit the obedient older brother’s jealousy and resentment at the celebration. → The Prodigal Son and the Ministry of Reconciliation
  • Guided meditation as the prodigal son (other) — Invites listeners to close their eyes and imagine being the runaway child returning home, to feel repentance and dread. → The Prodigal Son and the Ministry of Reconciliation
  • Gustavo Gutierrez’s commentary on Job (literary) — The Peruvian theologian connects Job to Pascal’s wager—Pascal confronts history’s winners while Job seeks out its losers and nonpersons. → The Wager (Part 2)
  • Gym ‘no judgment zones’ (current-events) — A gym slogan against judging others’ bodies is pushed to its limit (someone flinging dangerous weights) to show that some judgment/discernment is necessary, undercutting ‘kingdom without judgment.’ → Peter Wants the Warmth Without the Weight
  • H. Richard Niebuhr on a God without wrath (literary) — Niebuhr’s ‘God without wrath…Christ without a Cross’ names the church-as-social-club following of the hired hand. → Being Sheep, Lifted Up: Reading the Bible as Jesus Reads It, Peter Wants the Warmth Without the Weight
  • Hagia Sophia Christ mosaic (historical) — Iconographic flatness invites the viewer to be drawn up to heaven in prayer → If Jesus Drew a Portrait of You
  • Haircuts for books at Waldenbooks (personal) — Pastor’s boyhood inability to resist a free book in exchange for a haircut, illustrating his lifelong love of prophecy-laden fiction. → The Prophecy
  • Halloween and the Word Hallowed (current-events) — Hallowed survives only in the Lord’s Prayer and on October 31st, showing how a once-living word has become strange. → Our Father, Who Art in Heaven, Hallowed Be Thy Name
  • Hamartia as archery term (literary) — Sin as ‘hamartia,’ an archery term for missing the target, frames sin as straying from the path of God. → Love Covers a Multitude of Sins
  • Hamlet ‘more things than are dreamt of’ (literary) — The allusion that there are more things than dreamt of in our philosophy acknowledges real spirits and powers of this world. → Healing Wounds
  • Hamlet’s ‘more things in heaven and earth’ (literary) — Quoting the Prince of Denmark to frame the guardrail that Scripture’s witness exceeds what our philosophy/speculation can pin down. → Jacob’s Ladder
  • Hamlet’s undiscovered country (literary) — Shakespeare’s image of death as an unmapped land, set against the age of exploration, to show death as a fixed, unknown frontier. → Glorification
  • Han Solo frozen in carbonite (pop-culture) — God’s word is not frozen and static like Han Solo in carbonite but speaks living truth today. → Big Boat
  • Handel’s Messiah (pop-culture) — Handel set Isaiah 9:6 (‘For to us a child is born’) to music, voicing the power of the coming Christ. → The Prophecy
  • Handmade ancient fishing nets (historical) — Nets were painstakingly handmade prized family possessions lasting generations, so dropping them meant laying down who you thought you had to be. → Drop Your Nets
  • Hank Williams and Johnny Cash gospel songs (pop-culture) — Country artists who shared gospel songs, showing praise styles predating the Jesus Freak movement. → Trouble in River City
  • Hannah’s song prefiguring Mary (biblical) — Barren Hannah’s song over Samuel parallels Mary’s Magnificat, showing God overcoming barrenness. → Magnify
  • Hannibal crossing the Alps with elephants (historical) — Ancients went around mountains rather than over them, contrasting with the modern goal of conquering the impossible. → Do this!
  • Hashem / Adonai and ho kurios (literary) — Jewish reverence for the unspoken divine name (Hashem, Adonai) shows that Mark’s ‘ho kurios’ means the colt is needed by the Lord God, not a random master. → Palm Sunday
  • Hauerwas on the story you choose when you have no story (literary) — Stanley Hauerwas’s line that modernity produces people who think they should have no story except the one they choose, naming the false self-authored identity of the modern self. → Who Sits Upon the Throne
  • He died just as he lived — on his terms (personal) — Bruce arranged to settle Cheryl in a manageable home before dying, facing death brave, strong, and loving — illustrating a life and death of quiet control and devotion. → A Service of Death and Resurrection for Bruce Martin
  • Heading downhill to find rescue (nature) — Going downhill finds people and conserves energy, illustrating wise, energy-conserving pursuit of rescue. → Rescue
  • Headlamp leaves your back vulnerable (personal) — Shining a flashlight forward leaves you blind behind, where a kid could sneak up and grab you, illustrating need for a rear guard. → Light of the World
  • Hearing a grackle (nature) — We don’t hear God the way we hear a grackle, because God is immaterial and has no body to make sounds. → Shining
  • Heart Rate Variability and Sleep Biometrics (other) — Physiological markers of good sleep (low heart rate, low respiratory rate, high HRV) show there are good and bad kinds of rest, not just hours in bed. → Come to Me and Find Rest
  • Heartache vs. heart attack (other) — A one-syllable difference with enormous consequence, paralleling pantheism vs. panentheism. → Distinctions: Message and Messenger in Creation
  • Heat (Pacino vs. De Niro) (pop-culture) — Michael Mann’s film about whether you can walk away when the heat closes in; De Niro can’t let go and is caught, illustrating the cost of clinging. → Walking Along
  • Heath’s Baptism (personal) — The baptism performed that morning grounds the sermon’s teaching that God, not the human recipient, is the active agent in baptism. → A Foundation of Water
  • Heavenly chocolate fountain (other) — An ever-flowing chocolate fountain in the narthex playfully illustrates the rejected hypothesis of an infinitely self-replenishing universe. → Trinity Sunday: In the Beginning (Song of Creation)
  • Heavenly HR department / C-suite / parent (other) — Extended metaphor warning against putting ourselves in God’s seat judging others’ worthiness. → Love Believes All
  • Heavenly tow truck pulling a car out of the mud (other) — extended metaphor for God freeing us when we are stuck spinning in earthly things so we can drive toward where we need to be → Under the Wing
  • Hebrew ‘satan’ as accuser (other) — the term means accuser, not inherently wicked → Legion
  • Hebrew as the only extant ancient document (historical) — Some Hebrew words appear only once in Nehemiah and nowhere else in human history, so scholars rely on traditional meanings — like the once-recorded builder names that still matter to God. → What’s Next? (Builders and Names)
  • Hebrew Bible and the Founding Fathers (historical) — 17th-century Hebrew scholarship and the English Civil War made monarchy-as-sin thinkable, shaping America’s founders who read Israel as a republic. → Thy Kingdom Come, Thy Will Be Done, on Earth as It Is in Heaven
  • Hebrew mayim and shamayim (other) — The near-identical Hebrew words for water (mayim) and sky (shamayim) show we are surrounded by waters above and below. → Waters Above, Waters Below
  • Hebrew shamayim as upper waters over the ocean (literary) — Uses the Hebrew word for heaven (waters above) and the ocean-sky resemblance to frame creation as pure gift. → The Gift of the Trinity
  • Hebrew word almah (literary) — The Hebrew term in Isaiah 7 can mean virgin or young woman, the crux of the translation dispute. → Who was conceived from the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary
  • Hebrew words for heaven and land (shamayim and eretz) (literary) — Hebrew ‘shamayim’ (upper waters) and ‘eretz’ (land) frame creation as pure gift, like ocean meeting sky. → Three Whats?
  • Hebrew words shamayim and eretz (other) — The Hebrew terms for ‘waters above/heaven’ and ‘land’ show creation as pure gift, like sea and sky meeting at the horizon. → Trinity Sunday: In the Beginning (Song of Creation)
  • Helicopter or boat rescue (other) — God’s rescue does not always look like a dramatic helicopter or boat rescue from the world. → Rescue
  • Hell deceived by taking Christ’s body (literary) — Hell ‘took a body and discovered God… took what it saw and was overcome by what it did not see,’ picturing death undone by swallowing the crucified Christ. → Easter Sunrise Service
  • Hell Swallowing a Body and Discovering God (literary) — Death takes Christ’s body expecting earth but encounters Heaven, overcome by what it could not see, dramatizing the harrowing of hell. → Easter Sunrise Service: The Paschal Homily of St. John Chrysostom
  • Hell Swallowing the Body and Finding God (literary) — Hell took a body and discovered God, took earth and encountered Heaven, dramatizing death being undone from within by Christ. → Easter Sunrise Service (Chrysostom Sermon)
  • Hell Swallowing the Body of Christ (literary) — Hell takes a body and discovers God, takes earth and encounters Heaven, depicting death undone by the one it could not see. → Easter Sunrise Service, Easter Sunrise Service (Chrysostom’s Paschal Homily)
  • Helping Hands community give-away (personal) — The Nov 9 clothing/housewares collection for Helping Hands Crisis Ministry is a concrete chance to share with those in need. → The Church in the Present
  • Helping Hands ministry (current-events) — A church-supported community ministry as a concrete way to prepare to love neighbors. → Love Neighbor
  • Hen gathering her brood under her wings (biblical) — Jesus’ own metaphor of himself as a mother-hen longing to protect Jerusalem’s children → Under the Wing
  • Henri Nouwen on the prodigal (literary) — Nouwen’s insight that we can find ourselves in each figure: father, older son, and younger son. → When You’re Lost, God Will Find You
  • Henri Nouwen’s Return of the Prodigal Son (literary) — Nouwen’s book placing himself in each figure of the parable models the rich, multi-angled reading of the prodigal son. → The Far Country: God’s Journey to Us
  • Hepburn and Tracy ‘antediluvian’ (pop-culture) — Imagining Katharine Hepburn calling Spencer Tracy ‘antediluvian’ illustrates the word’s meaning of something very old, from before the flood. → Big Boat
  • Herbert McCabe on crucifixion as the Christian’s destiny (literary) — McCabe’s claim that Christ-like love inevitably leads to a death conquered by the Spirit grounds the sermon’s vision of self-giving love. → Ascension Sunday / Mother’s Day: Where Did Jesus Go?
  • Herbert McCabe on distractions in prayer (literary) — McCabe argues distractions reveal our real desires, so we should pray for what we actually want, as people on sinking ships do. → The Birth of Jesus
  • Herbert McCabe on Easter as meaning of the cross (literary) — The quoted theological passages (Easter as the meaning of the cross, resurrection as the seal on incarnation) ground the claim that we must go through Good Friday to reach Easter joy. → Easter, 12 Ways to Avoid Resurrection
  • Herbert McCabe on grace and prayer (literary) — McCabe’s claim that it is God who prays in us reframes prayer as connection rather than productive work. → Sabbath and Prayer
  • Herbert McCabe quotation (literary) — Easter is the meaning of the cross, not its cancellation; the risen Christ is paradise and the new bodily world. → 12 Ways to Avoid Resurrection
  • Herbert McCabe’s eternal parent, child, joy (literary) — Theologian Herbert McCabe’s phrasing of God as eternal parent, eternal child, and eternal joy to express the Trinity. → Trinity Sunday
  • Hercules myth (Campbell and von Balthasar) (literary) — Resurrection dismissed as just another mythic dying-and-rising hero story. → 12 Ways to Avoid Resurrection
  • Hero of your own movie (pop-culture) — Without the Trinity you stay in control as the hero while everyone else is a supporting character — a self-destructive lie. → Wisdom’s Call, Original Sin
  • Herod as Roman warlord (historical) — Herod’s rise via alliances with Julius Caesar, Marc Antony, and Caesar Augustus, his tax-funded building projects and Temple rebuild, illustrating insecure borrowed authority and a scarcity mindset. → Reset Your House
  • Herod the Great’s reign and Temple-building (historical) — Herod’s Rome-derived power, heavy taxes, and controversial Temple project illustrate an insecure heart hiding behind grand appearances. → Reset Your House
  • High Fidelity / Rob’s Top Five Lists (pop-culture) — Nick Hornby’s character making top-five side-one track-one lists reveals how list-making and music taste can mask the shallowness of presenting ourselves to the world. → Half a World Away
  • High priest as butcher / hot butcher shop (historical) — The blood-soaked, un-air-conditioned sacrificial temple resembled a hot butcher shop, reframing what Jesus actually walked into. → The Foolishness of the Cross: Jesus Cleanses the Temple
  • High school debate team and spreading (personal) — Pastor’s debate-team days (extemp, LD, CX, and ‘spreading’ the Constitution preamble) illustrate how argument can overwhelm rather than persuade. → The Church in the Present
  • High school keggers and beer pong vs. Christian kids (personal) — The stereotype that Christian kids don’t party shows the modern, deficient idea that partying means relinquishing inhibitions. → Jesus Likes to Party
  • Hiker who goes his own way (other) — Refusing to walk together on a hike is no humility, illustrating that walking humbly means walking with God’s people. → Justice
  • Hiking and Trail Trust (personal) — Pastor’s long-distance hiking days, where he quickly learned who would have his back and make room in a shelter, illustrating earned trust. → Come and See
  • Hippolytus of Rome on Christ’s baptism (historical) — A 2nd-century Roman saint’s meditation on the astonishing paradox of the infinite, all-filling Christ being immersed in John’s shallow stream, illustrating divine condescension and the healing of Adam’s wound. → Baptism of the Lord
  • His changing account of faith at 8, 23, 43 (personal) — His faith’s account differing across ages shows giving an account of faith is a lifelong journey shaped by experience. → Justice
  • Historical Herod the Great (historical) — Herod’s Idumaean origins, Roman collusion, and temple-building show him as a king who saw Jesus as a rival to eliminate. → Rivals
  • History of Brazilian jiu-jitsu and judo (historical) — BJJ’s roots in judo and its ground-game philosophy set up the idea of a ‘dominant position’ amid struggle. → Jacob’s Grappling Technique
  • History of Methodism podcast starting with Luther (personal) — The preacher’s podcast begins 200 years before Wesley to show Wesley repackaged others’ ideas, making the movement about God rather than one man. → The Church in the Past
  • History of the ancient and modern Olympics (historical) — The Olympics from 776 BC to today demarcating time shows the enduring human pursuit of being the best. → The Cup
  • Hitchcock’s MacGuffin (pop-culture) — The MacGuffin (Maltese Falcon, Death Star plans) is an arbitrary object that drives a plot, like the hollow goals the world hands us. → What Is My Sacred Story?
  • Hitting a wall at Genesis 2 in seminary Hebrew (personal) — The pastor could translate Genesis 1 but stalled at Genesis 2’s different vocabulary, showing the Bible’s many human authors versus the Koran’s uniformity. → Lost & Found: Lost
  • Hoarders of the heart (other) — Cluttered, hoarded hearts cramped with desires illustrate the need to declutter so God and love can be at the center. → Come and See, Come and See
  • Hobby Lobby and Menoras (current-events) — Resetting your house isn’t spending $300 at Hobby Lobby or displaying religious objects like Herod’s menoras to impress people rather than honor God. → Reset Your House
  • Hocus pocus from hoc est corpus meum (historical) — The magic phrase derives from the Latin words of institution, yet communion is not magic → Communion
  • Holier than thou (other) — The cute Southern phrase shows how culture distorts holiness into something undesirable rather than humble acceptance of grace. → Freedom from Sin in the Waters of Baptism
  • Holy Club nickname appropriated from an insult (historical) — The Wesleys turned the mocking labels ‘Holy Club’ and ‘Methodist’ into owned identities of pursuing holiness for everyone. → The Holy Club
  • Holy people you have known (personal) — The hearer’s own experience of seeing genuinely holy people proves the Spirit-empowered life of love is possible, not an impossible ideal. → Who is Christ?
  • Holy Spirit as the song of love sung by the Father to the Son (literary) — A medieval mystic’s image of the Spirit as the love-song between Father and Son depicts the Trinity singing life into existence. → Trinity Sunday: In the Beginning (Song of Creation), Three Whats?
  • Holy Spirit is not a vampire (pop-culture) — Prevenient grace illustrated by the Holy Spirit not being a vampire who must be invited into the house before entering. → He Will Come to Judge the Living and the Dead
  • Holy, Holy, Holy at communion and at the shepherds’ fields (biblical) — The Sanctus sung at communion and by the heavenly host to the shepherds at Christmas connects the church’s worship to the song of the elders around the throne. → Who Sits Upon the Throne
  • Home Alone (pop-culture) — Kevin wandering the store carefree mirrors the child’s blissful obliviousness to being lost. → When You’re Lost, God Will Find You
  • Home Depot trips for home projects (personal) — Holiday home projects and Home Depot runs as another marker of the busy striving around Christmas. → A Bundle of Need
  • Honeymoons end and babies eventually eat solid food (personal) — Good things in life don’t last forever — but the obverse is more encouraging: hard things are likewise not the end of the world. → Get Ready for Something Big
  • Hope Floats (Sandra Bullock film) (pop-culture) — The Smithville-set movie’s surface-level ‘keep hoping’ message exemplifies generic Hollywood hope that is not biblical hope. → What is Hope?
  • Horizon of Earthly Pursuits (other) — The horizon limiting what we can and cannot see pictures how Jesus’ light reaches beyond and within our present and future. → Animals and God’s Promise (Children’s Message): The True Light Already Shines
  • Horse and dog pedigree records (other) — Breeding records show how the ‘good blood’ idea predates genetics and gets wrongly read into the Bible. → Emmanuel = Mercy
  • Hosting a wedding banquet (place of honor) (biblical) — Reframes the parable: whom do we seat in the place of honor of biblical authority? → The Bible
  • House built on sand versus rock (biblical) — Building one’s identity on the sand of relationships or hobbies causes drag, versus the rock of hearing and practicing God’s word. → Aerodynamics
  • House Foundations You Never Discuss (personal) — Homeowners never want to talk about foundations after they’re laid, illustrating how foundational assumptions (in marriage, jobs) go unquestioned. → A Foundation of Water
  • Houston Astros fandom and the sign-stealing scandal (personal) — The preacher’s lifelong, biased loyalty to the Astros (defending them despite the cheating scandal while condemning rival teams) illustrates how we sort people into good/bad buckets and refuse to examine the judgment. → 2nd Sunday in Lent: Taking Up the Cross and Costly Grace
  • Hugh of St. Victor’s four arks (historical) — Medieval Hugh of St. Victor read four arks in Noah’s story (Noah’s, the church, wisdom, grace) structuring the whole sermon. → Big Boat
  • Husband betting the mortgage on black (other) — A gambler losing the family home illustrates the social harms of gambling that made Methodists wary of it. → The Wager (Part 1)
  • Hypocrisy is like being lazy (other) — Nobody struggles to do less; hypocrisy comes naturally, requiring no effort to fall into. → The Opposite of Hypocrisy
  • Hypocrite as Greek Actor (literary) — The word hypocrite comes from the Greek for one who plays a part, illustrating faith that is performed rather than embodied. → What Is My Sacred Story?
  • Hypocritical public figures (current-events) — The family-values politician with an affair, the pastor who embezzles $50,000, the youth caretaker who abuses—recurring hypocrisy that drives people from church. → Light of the World
  • Hypostasis at the Council of Nicaea (325) (historical) — The Greek term for faith’s ‘substance’ connects to the trinitarian debates, illustrating faith as foundation rather than culture or heritage. → The Gift of Jesus
  • I don’t know how a computer works (personal) — Most people use the church without understanding denominational differences, like using a computer they can’t repair, and would just switch to another if it broke. → We are One
  • I like church, I don’t like church stuff (personal) — A line from the preacher’s parents’ friend distinguishing love of the church from its painful interpersonal mess. → The Church in the Past
  • I Love Cake / Spinach Tamales (personal) — The way English uses ‘love’ for everything from spouses to food shows how the word has been hollowed out into mere desire rather than action. → A New Commandment
  • I Need Thee Every Hour (spiritual) (literary) — The old hymn voices the sermon’s call to admit need and cry out to Christ for rescue. → What Should We Do to Be Saved?
  • I’m not going to lie today (other) — A small starting light—committing simply not to lie today—as the ground floor of truthful living. → Light of the World
  • Ice cube in prenatal class (personal) — Holding an ice cube to mimic a contraction in a class before his son Dominic’s birth illustrates the particular, concrete pain of a particular birth. → The Far Country: God’s Journey to Us
  • Icon controversies (8th century and Reformation) (historical) — Church fights over icons illustrate the contested power and danger of images of God. → All Peoples and Creatures
  • Idaho soil vs. Texas soil (nature) — A comparison of soils illustrating the parable of the sower and how costly tilling by God lets us bear fruit. → Ash Wednesday
  • Idle talk about weather and the Longhorns (personal) — talk that fills time and doesn’t matter, the opposite of how we should speak of God in prayer → Prayer
  • Idol-meat and showing off a good job/marriage (other) — Don’t flaunt your blessings before the suffering, as Paul warns against eating idol-meat before weak believers → Communion
  • If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck (other) — The duck-test of appearances works for humans but not for God, who looks at the heart rather than outward stature. → Freedom in Christ
  • If It’s Free, You Are the Product (other) — The internet adage that free services make users the product frames consumers as commodities with unquenchable desire. → Tell Everyone That Jesus is Alive
  • Imagine Jesus as your own child (other) — Extended perspective-shift asking listeners to see the Pharisees as anxious parents worried their child mixes with the wrong crowd. → The Prodigal Son and the Ministry of Reconciliation
  • Imagining Jesus with a Galilean accent (other) — We picture Jesus speaking like us, but to his contemporaries he was a Galilean healer Pilate’s violence should have enraged → A Sign
  • Immaculate Reception (Franco Harris, 1972 playoffs) (pop-culture) — Wordplay distinguishing the famous football catch from the Catholic Immaculate Conception doctrine people confuse with Jesus’s conception. → Who was conceived from the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary
  • Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative (historical) — Kant’s no-exceptions deontology shows the rigid system Jesus contrasts by prioritizing love over universal maxims. → Sabbath and Prayer
  • Immediacy and the etymology of im-mediate (other) — Breaking apart the word ‘immediate’ (im- + medium) to show our culture wants the unmediated and instant. → The Lamb of God
  • In the Aggie section but a Longhorn (personal) — Sitting in the Aggie alumni section at Kyle Field while wanting Texas A&M to lose, illustrating being ‘in the world but not of it’ as a matter of desire, not garb. → Fruitfulness
  • In the Bleak Midwinter (Christina Rossetti) (literary) — Rossetti’s carol is iconographic, drawing us to God now and modeling giving Christ our heart as the only fitting gift. → The Gift
  • Index fund / real estate venture (other) — You can’t put God’s love in an index fund or real estate venture—it is given to share, not to hoard. → Big Boat
  • Indianapolis Colts owner on oppressed billionaires (current-events) — A billionaire claiming his group is the most oppressed shows how anyone can find a grievance to be angry about. → The Foolishness of the Cross: Jesus Cleanses the Temple
  • Indulgences and the Prosperity Gospel (historical) — The Reformation fought indulgences only for them to return as the prosperity gospel, showing recurring distortion of the faith. → Tell Everyone That Jesus is Alive
  • Infinite heavenly chocolate fountain in the narthex (other) — Humorously pictures the rejected hypothesis of an infinite source of being versus a single point of origin. → The Gift of the Trinity, Three Whats?
  • Influencer saying ‘you need this supplement’ (current-events) — a marketer turning a choice into a necessity warns us to be wary when something is framed as unavoidable → The Crown of Salvation
  • Influencers and celebrities selling life tricks (current-events) — Modern voices promising salvation whose paths lead up a mountain but never back down, illustrating idolatry. → The Transfiguration
  • Inspiration as inhaling / inspirare (other) — The Latin root of ‘inspire’ (to breathe in) ties to lighting candles and using incense to actively inhale and be inspired by the saints. → What We Remember
  • Instagram and Facebook comparison (current-events) — Your worth is not based on Instagram, Facebook, neighbors, siblings, or winning, but is grace all the way down. → Fruitfulness
  • Instagram-worthy Sunday meals (current-events) — Contrasts treating resurrection as a nice idea shared between curated brunches versus all cosmic reality being overturned. → 12 Ways to Avoid Resurrection, 12 Ways to Avoid Resurrection
  • Intermittent fasting can’t be branded or sold (current-events) — Fasting isn’t promoted as a weight-loss strategy because, unlike Paleo or cleanses, there’s nothing to brand and sell, exposing the world’s drive to make us consume more. → Sacred Story: Aligning Our Lives with Who We Claim to Be
  • Intermittent fasting can’t be branded or sold (current-events) — Illustrates how the world’s story demands consumption: you can sell cleanses and Paleo, but not ‘not consuming.’ → Our Sacred Story
  • Interpretation chart as complex as an atom diagram (other) — Dispensationalist charts being as intricate as a diagram of an atom or protein molecule illustrate the overcomplication of Revelation. → Alpha and Omega
  • Introduction to Methodism Class (personal) — A well-attended adult class sparked by confirmation-class members wishing for ‘confirmation for grownups.’ → October Pastor Report
  • Investment banker’s favorite verse (other) — A Christian investment banker reading the parable as a mandate to take financial risk, which the sermon then subverts. → Do Or Do Not
  • Irony as an English-class term (literary) — The hard-to-define notion of irony (a disconnect between what we see and what is really there) frames the gap between Hosannas and ‘Crucify him.’ → Waving from the Sideline
  • Isaac means laughter (other) — The meaning of Isaac’s name, ‘laughter,’ tied to the changing of names and the birth of the promised child. → Hagar, Sarah, and the Birth of a People
  • Isaiah as the fifth gospel (personal) — A teacher’s name for Isaiah, underscoring how centrally it points to the Messiah. → The Prophecy
  • Isaiah Foretelling Hell’s Trouble (biblical) — Isaiah’s word that Hell is troubled by encountering Christ below shows the prophesied defeat of death. → Easter Sunrise Service (Chrysostom’s Paschal Homily)
  • Isaiah’s feast and the bosom of Abraham (biblical) — Scriptural images (a feast that never grows old, rest in Abraham’s bosom, worship before the Lamb in Revelation) offered as images rather than a concrete geography of heaven. → Jacob’s Ladder
  • Isaiah’s feast and the lion lying with the lamb (biblical) — Scriptural images (Isaiah 25, Revelation 22) show God gives us pictures, not blueprints, of our open-ended future with him. → What is Hope?
  • Isaiah’s feast with no bloating (biblical) — The great feast of Isaiah 25 pictures the transformed life to come where one enjoys God’s bounty fully. → What We Remember
  • Israel in Egypt longer than the U.S. has existed (historical) — A scale comparison — Israelites were in Egypt longer than the U.S. has been a country, and longer than most families in the room have been in North America — conveying the depth of generational estrangement between Pharaoh and Israel. → Who Do You Say That I Am?
  • Israel in exile (biblical) — Centuries of toil away from Jerusalem model how to remain faithful to God in exile, as Christians awaiting new creation. → Emmanuel = Mercy
  • Israeli airport security asking Alina ‘why now?’ (personal) — An IDF officer’s stern ‘why now?’ to the preacher’s wife on a trip to Israel frames the sermon’s recurring question we ask of God. → Christmas Eve: Why Now?
  • Israelites longing to return to Egypt (biblical) — The Hebrews in the wilderness pining for full bellies in slavery exemplify how fixation on a falsely-golden past blinds us to what God has opened up. → Restless with the Past
  • It’s just bread from HEB (personal) — A skeptic’s mockery that communion elements are merely grape juice and bread from the grocery store dramatizes how difficult the teaching of real presence is. → This Teaching is Difficult
  • Ivan and Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov (literary) — Ivan’s rejection of God over the suffering of innocent children frames the problem of evil; Alyosha answers not with argument but an embrace → The Holy Innocents and the Problem of Evil
  • Jack carrying word from Athens to Sparta (historical) — An informal ancient messenger of convenience warning King Leonidas the Persians are coming, illustrating the messenger profession. → Easter: He Is Not Here Among the Dead
  • Jack Reacher-sized untrained opponent (pop-culture) — Size and strength don’t determine who prevails in a grapple, just as Jacob need not be the ‘burly’ one to hold his own with the angel. → Jacob’s Grappling Technique
  • Jacob Böhme, the shoemaker of Görlitz (historical) — A 17th-century mystic who had a vision and ‘could not shut up about it,’ warning against becoming myopically fixated on visionary experience rather than moving on in faithfulness as Jacob did. → Jacob’s Ladder
  • Jacob grasping for blessing (biblical) — Jacob scheming to get what he wants contrasts with James and John, who had already given up everything for Jesus. → The Cup
  • Jacob wrestling the unknown figure (biblical) — Jacob the deceiver is wounded in the thigh yet refuses to let go and is blessed and renamed Israel, modeling how Christ’s healing is a wrestling match within the heart. → Healing Wounds
  • Jacob’s Ladder and Wrestling the Angel (biblical) — The scheming second son’s vision and wrestling match show divine presence breaking into ordinary, undeserving lives. → In the Presence of God
  • Jane Austen regency rectors (literary) — Wealthy marriageable clergy of Austen novels contrasted with the more modest class position of early-18th-century Anglican priests → The Calling and the Called
  • January Gym Memberships and Spring Training (current-events) — The new-year surge in gym sign-ups and baseball’s spring training as the optimistic ‘this is the year’ feeling we bring to fresh starts. → Notes from the Pastor: Resetting Yourself with God in the New Year
  • Jason and the Argonauts / Golden Fleece (literary) — Mythological quests aim at a treasure, like the golden fleece, mirroring how our lives chase a goal. → What Is My Sacred Story?
  • Jean Valjean’s ‘Who Am I?’ (pop-culture) — Valjean confessing his true identity rather than letting an innocent man suffer shows identity confronted through grace and the cost of honesty. → Who Am I?
  • Jeff Bezos leaving you $70 billion (pop-culture) — An overnight fortune makes your current possessions irrelevant, illustrating not clinging to stuff in light of the kingdom. → The Birth of Jesus
  • Jehoram’s evil reign (2 Kings 8:16-18) (biblical) — Used as a concrete example that Israel’s kings, and by extension the people, were rarely faithful to Torah. → Come Down, Don’t Delay
  • Jennifer’s divorce (personal) — A member from Houston, a lawyer, for whom the church was present and supportive during her divorce and a dark day. → Congregant Notes (Sue, Emily, Jen, Nancy, Brenda, Michael, Rich, Jennifer)
  • Jeremiah 29:11 in its harsh context (biblical) — The comforting verse sits amid the prophet’s announcement of exile and suffering, showing God’s faithfulness is found in the midst of brokenness, not in denying pain. → Pentecost
  • Jeremiah’s Potter’s House (biblical) — The potter reshaping the marred clay shows God can remake us even after we’ve been baked and fixed in our ways. → Subterranean Hometown Blues
  • Jerry Jones putting a Cowboys fan in the game (pop-culture) — Being called onto the team though unqualified, illustrating the humbling invitation to participate → Communion
  • Jesus and the tax collector / woman / cross (biblical) — Jesus calling Matthew the tax collector, seeing a woman rather than an adulteress, and forgiving from the cross, illustrating love that covers and overwhelms sin until it is gone. → Love Covers a Multitude of Sins
  • Jesus as a worldly failure / Nazareth neighbors (biblical) — Jesus had no retirement, no steady job, and his whereabouts unknown to Nazareth neighbors, showing worldly ‘failure’ that still bears divine fruit. → Do Or Do Not
  • Jesus as your wayward child (personal) — A thought experiment imagining Jesus as your son or partner hanging out with the wrong crowd, to surface how we judge people who associate with sinners. → Field Hospital
  • Jesus before Pilate (biblical) — Jesus deflects Pilate’s ‘Are you the King of the Jews?’ by turning the question back, contrasted with the disciples’ direct (if inadequate) answers to his own question. → Who Do You Say That I Am?
  • Jesus calling Peter and Andrew (biblical) — Jesus’ two-word ‘follow me’ on the Sea of Galilee shows the radical simplicity of God’s call versus our self-protective complexities. → What are we going to do about it?
  • Jesus Calling Peter and Andrew (biblical) — ‘Lay down your nets and follow me’ models the radical simplicity and directness of God’s call. → What Are We Going to Do About It?
  • Jesus calling Peter and Andrew to lay down their nets (biblical) — The simplest yet hardest example of salvation: dropping everything to follow Jesus when he calls. → How We Are Saved
  • Jesus Calls Us O’er the Tumult (hymn) (literary) — The hymn’s ‘Christian, follow me’ ties the whole sermon series’ invitations together at communion. → Do this!
  • Jesus entering through locked doors (biblical) — Christ enters despite locked doors, showing he comes with peace even when we shut everyone out of our lives. → Recognized by His Scars: The Power of Pardon
  • Jesus Freak movement and guitar-led worship (historical) — Southern California’s Jesus Freak movement illustrates the emergence of modern guitar-led praise worship. → Trouble in River City
  • Jesus in Gethsemane (biblical) — Jesus’ own wrestling with God in the garden shows struggle and questioning are not sin but part of faith. → Jacob’s Grappling Technique
  • Jesus is not an influencer or life coach (other) — Contrasting Jesus with a modern influencer/life coach to insist his words on worry are not self-help tips but a call to repent because he is Lord. → How We Fill Our Waiting
  • Jesus Looking Different to Each Person (biblical) — Imagining the risen Jesus appeared differently to the women than to Peter and John, paralleling how we each encounter neighbors differently. → Upside Down
  • Jesus Looks Like a Neighbor, Not a Zombie (biblical) — The risen Jesus is unrecognized, looking like a stranger or neighbor rather than a ghost or zombie. → Upside Down
  • Jesus Never Body-Shames Peter (biblical) — Jesus never tells Peter he’s gained weight or should be more like John, showing God does not deal in the world’s idle comparisons. → Waiting
  • Jesus of Nazareth as Smallville (pop-culture) — Comparing obscure Nazareth to Superman’s small hometown to stress Jesus’s humble origins. → Follow Me
  • Jesus of Smallville (pop-culture) — Nazareth as a backwater ‘Smallville’ shows Jesus came from an unremarkable place, unlike where leaders are found. → Follow Me
  • Jesus qualifies the called (other) — A borrowed preacher’s line that God doesn’t call the qualified but qualifies the called, affirming the unready. → Screening God’s Call
  • Jesus recognized by his scars, not his face (biblical) — The disciples knew the risen Jesus by his wounds, illustrating that resurrection transforms yet bears the marks of suffering. → Recognized by His Scars: The Power of Pardon
  • Jesus Revolution film / Chuck Smith and the Calvary Chapel revival (pop-culture) — The 1968 Calvary Chapel / Jesus Freak revival depicted in the movie shows revival rippling out across generations. → Revival
  • Jesus silent before Caesar at the passion (biblical) — Jesus refuses yes/no answers, instead showing who he is on the cross and as a child at Christmas. → Cantata: Show, Don’t Tell
  • Jesus turning over tables (biblical) — Twisting forgiveness to maintain abusive power structures provokes the same outrage as the cleansing of the temple. → Recognized by His Scars: The Power of Pardon
  • Jesus weeping over Lazarus (biblical) — Jesus grieving Lazarus moments before raising him shows that we grieve because we love. → Saints and Sinners, God’s Song of Love
  • Jesus’ hidden scars shown to Thomas (biblical) — The risen Jesus had to point out his scars to Thomas rather than walking around displaying bloody wounds, showing even Jesus was not a wallowing mass of vulnerability. → Easter
  • Jesus’ poor first impression (biblical) — Jesus calls fishermen to drop everything and doesn’t dress for success, illustrating that he gives no good first impression yet offers life. → Welcome
  • Jesus’s teleportation narratives (biblical) — Jesus slipping away and appearing across the lake shows he felt no compulsion to fix everything or organize an elaborate structure → Ask Me Anything
  • Jesus’s unremarkable appearance (biblical) — Jesus had no handsome appearance and couldn’t bench press, illustrating that true power is in the Lord, not the body. → Food
  • Jewish friends in College Station and Shavuot (personal) — His Jewish childhood friends celebrated visible holidays but not Pentecost/Shavuot, setting up the festival’s Jewish origin as the giving of the law at Sinai. → Show Us the Father
  • Jewish mikveh and circumcision (historical) — Ancient Jewish immersion (mikveh) and required circumcision frame the Acts 15 debate over Gentile inclusion. → The Church in the Present
  • Jewish mikveh and synagogue excavations (historical) — Christians took and transformed the Jewish ritual-purification bath into baptism → Baptism
  • Jewish proximity and European ghettos (historical) — Keeping Sabbath meant living within walking distance of the synagogue, clustering Jews together - a Sabbath-keeping root of European enclaves. → The Voice of Sabbath
  • JFK moon-race speech (“not because they are easy, but because they are hard”) (historical) — Kennedy’s vow to reach the moon shows humanity straining after hard, impossible goals. → Do this!
  • Joachim of Fiore and dispensationalism (historical) — From Joachim de Fiore dividing history’s ages, to the Plymouth Brethren Darbyites, to modern dispensationalism’s seven dispensations, illustrating the long Christian temptation to predict the end. → Restless with Our Future
  • Job’s ‘Satan’ as troublesome counselor, not paragon of evil (biblical) — The Satan figure in Job functions more like a critical courtier than the archetypal devil of later imagination, undercutting popular caricatures of ultimate evil. → Jacob’s Ladder
  • Joe the unfulfilled good man (other) — Joe, a ‘good’ family man with bad-influence friends, encounters the risen Christ and his inner life changes without changing job or wife. → Freedom from Sin in the Waters of Baptism
  • John 3:16 in stadium end zones and football eye-black (pop-culture) — The most famous verse ripped from context onto end-zone signs and players’ eye makeup, illustrating how 3:16 was never meant to stand alone. → Lifted Up: Reading the Bible as Jesus Reads It
  • John Brown’s raid at Harper’s Ferry (historical) — A landmark passed on the hike, marking the varied American history traversed along the trail. → The Far Country: God’s Journey to Us
  • John Calvin’s idol factory (historical) — Calvin’s line that the human heart is an idol factory illustrates humanity’s constant fabrication of false gods. → I Believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth, Distinctions: Message and Messenger in Creation, Whose Name?, If You Fall Down
  • John Cassian on acedia (historical) — Cassian’s description of the restless monk gazing at the slow-setting sun illustrates boredom as the spiritual sickness of acedia. → Restless with Foolishness
  • John Chrysostom on prayer, fasting, and mercy (historical) — Chrysostom’s homily that prayer, fasting, and mercy are inseparable grounds the Lenten call to show mercy before seeking it. → Forgive Us Our Trespasses
  • John Chrysostom Paschal homily (historical) — The 1600-year-old ‘Christ is Risen’ acclamation proclaiming death annihilated and life liberated. → 12 Ways to Avoid Resurrection, 12 Ways to Avoid Resurrection
  • John Chrysostom’s Christmas sermon (historical) — An early preacher’s astonished sermon on the Ancient of Days becoming an infant lifts up the wonder of the Nativity. → Three Ways of Saying Thank You, Three Ways of Saying Thank You
  • John Chrysostom’s Christmas sermon (historical) — Chrysostom’s astonished nativity sermon conveys the immensity of God-become-infant entering the covenant. → How to Say Thank You
  • John Chrysostom’s Easter sermon on Hell in uproar (historical) — Christ defeated death and hell through humility and the cross, not combat → Legion
  • John Darby and the origin of rapture theology (historical) — Darby’s 19th-century invention of the rapture shows that modern prophetic interpretation is not how the earliest Christians read the book. → Alpha and Omega
  • John Huebel on Iwo Jima (personal) — Grandfather who landed on Iwo Jima told funny stories but left other stories untold, showing some losses are nearly impossible to speak aloud. → Trinity Sunday
  • John Milton’s Paradise Lost (literary) — Milton’s Satan looks mighty at first but devolves into nothingness, and Jesus in Book 6 puts forth only half his strength, showing the heavenly battle is no fair fight. → Heavenly Battles, Let’s Talk About the Devil
  • John Milton’s Paradise Lost (literary) — Milton shaped how Wilson reads the forbidden-fruit passage, though he tries to return to the text afresh. → Come and See
  • John Milton, ‘Upon the Circumcision of the Lord’ (literary) — Quoted lines from Milton’s poem frame Christ’s circumcision as entirely satisfying the covenant humanity transgresses. → Three Ways of Saying Thank You
  • John Milton, Upon the Circumcision of the Lord (literary) — Milton’s poem frames Christ emptying his glory to satisfy the covenant we transgress. → Three Ways of Saying Thank You, How to Say Thank You
  • John Nash, A Beautiful Mind (pop-culture) — The mathematician of A Beautiful Mind whose equilibrium concept frames the choice between cooperation and betrayal. → Love of God, Love of Neighbor
  • John of the Cross on love at life’s evening (historical) — Quoted by Williams: ‘In the evening of our life, it will be on love that we are examined.’ → The Next Thirty Seconds
  • John outrunning Peter to the tomb (biblical) — John’s gloating about beating Peter to the empty tomb contrasts with the rare good line he gives Peter: ‘Lord, to whom can we go?’ → This Teaching is Difficult
  • John Updike, ‘Seven Stanzas at Easter’ (literary) — Poem insisting on the literal bodily rising-‘let us not mock God with metaphor’-against spiritualizing the resurrection. → 12 Ways to Avoid Resurrection, 12 Ways to Avoid Resurrection
  • John Wesley and the Moravians (historical) — Wesley learned faithfulness needs no seclusion; grace and sin both find us wherever we are in community → Original Sin
  • John Wesley as an unappealing personality (historical) — The judgmental, prudish, un-charismatic Wesley shows God works revival through unlikable instruments. → Revival
  • John Wesley sharing stories of holy lives (historical) — Wesley offered models of grace-filled living to transform lives, not boost efficiency. → Follow Me
  • John Wesley sharing stories of holy lives (historical) — Wesley retold others’ transformation stories as models of faithful living, not for efficiency but transformation. → Follow Me
  • John Wesley withholding communion from Sophie Hopkey (historical) — Wesley’s spiteful denial of communion to a woman who married another man shows how the power of pardon is abused when divorced from the Holy Spirit. → Recognized by His Scars: The Power of Pardon
  • John Wesley’s Aldersgate conversion (historical) — Wesley’s strict early moralism, failed Georgia mission, and his heart ‘strangely warmed’ at Aldersgate model the shift from faith-as-duty to faith-as-grace. → Restless with the Past, A Burning Sensation (Summit Fever: A Pentecost Sermon)
  • John Wesley’s coded commonplace-book journal (historical) — Wesley’s devotional diary written in code, undeciphered until broken ~50 years ago by the preacher’s teacher Richard Heitzenrater, models the journaling practice he gave the club. → The Holy Club
  • John Wesley’s Covenant Prayer (historical) — Wesley’s New Year covenant prayer (‘I am no longer my own, but yours’) models total self-surrender over self-care resolutions. → Credo: I Believe in the Holy Spirit
  • John Wesley’s heart strangely warmed at Aldersgate (historical) — The stodgy failed missionary feeling assurance of grace on Aldersgate Road in May 1738 models conversion as confirmation of grace. → Aldersgate
  • John Wesley’s home health book (historical) — Wesley’s health manual gives plain rules on air, food, light dinners, and exercise so people can show the light of Jesus while healthy. → Reset Your Body
  • John Wesley’s preacher lineage and family (historical) — Wesley born into a family of preachers, showing calling as inherited tradition and particular history → The Calling and the Called
  • John Wesley’s rules for singing (historical) — Wesley’s directions to sing lustily, modestly, and spiritually model the desperation and full-hearted offering worship requires. → Why Do We Worship? The Assembly and the Bread of Life
  • John Wesley, Oglethorpe, and the failed Georgia mission (historical) — Wesley came to Savannah with high hopes to convert Native Americans and failed, showing revival comes despite the preacher’s shortcomings. → Revival
  • Joining a church in 1950s Texas (historical) — 70 years ago everyone joined a church and Sundays were closed, showing how the pressure of external expectation persists even as its form changes. → Ash Wednesday
  • Joke about hearing your own eulogy (pop-culture) — An old joke/movie-TV trope of someone faking death to overhear their eulogy, used to introduce the strangeness of Jesus asking ‘who do people say that I am?’ → Who Do You Say That I Am?
  • Jonah ghosting God (biblical) — Jonah receiving God’s call like a voicemail and fleeing illustrates avoiding God’s love and call. → Screening God’s Call
  • Jonathan Edwards and the Northampton awakening (historical) — Awakening means waking up to one’s own sin and accountability, not a positive feeling → Original Sin, Revival
  • Jonathan Edwards, ‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God’ (literary) — Edwards’ image of hanging by a thread over the pit illustrates the contingency of life and that only grace delivers us from evil. → Lead Us Not into Temptation
  • Jonathan hearing David play the harp (biblical) — Jonathan’s initial admiration of David grows into self-sacrificing friendship that defies his own royal self-interest. → Wherever You Go
  • Jordan River water in baptism bottles (other) — Bottles holding a little Jordan water are not magical but holy and sanctified because Christ entered, received, and gave us that water. → Freedom from Sin in the Waters of Baptism
  • Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat (pop-culture) — Cites the musical as evidence of how strange and dramatic the Joseph story is, even if he isn’t a fan of it. → Come Down, Don’t Delay
  • Joseph Campbell / Hans Urs von Balthasar myth comparison (literary) — The ‘no’ answer that resurrection is just a myth like Hercules, illustrating an intellectual way of denying the resurrection. → 12 Ways to Avoid Resurrection
  • Joseph Martin Cantata foreword (literary) — The composer’s foreword to ‘An Invitation to a Miracle’ evokes child-like wonder at the unexpected glories of Christmas. → Cantata: Show, Don’t Tell
  • Joseph Ratzinger quotation (literary) — Quoted passage that the Christian faith stands or falls on Christ being risen, else Jesus is merely a failed religious leader. → 12 Ways to Avoid Resurrection, 12 Ways to Avoid Resurrection
  • Joseph Sold into Slavery (biblical) — Joseph keeps faith and thrives rather than complaining after his brothers sell him into slavery, illustrating childlike humility. → Like a Child, Come Down, Don’t Delay
  • Josephus and the scholarly reappraisal (historical) — Recent scholarship affirming the authenticity of Josephus’s reference to Jesus serves as extra-biblical evidence for the reality of Jesus. → Shining
  • Joshua and the conquest of the promised land (biblical) — Israel’s rescue into an occupied land comes at the cost of the lives and land of those already there. → How We Are Saved
  • Journaling shrinks fears on the page (personal) — Writing down anxieties makes them tiny on paper, a practice for not panicking. → Don’t Panic
  • Jubilee and the American economy (biblical) — If we practiced the biblical jubilee of forgiving debts every fifty years, the American economy would fall apart, showing the tension between the Christian calendar and the world’s. → New Year’s Eve (Christ the King Sunday)
  • Jubilee as a trumpet blast of liberty in Leviticus (biblical) — The Levitical Jubilee canceling debts and returning land to God models the inefficient, debt-erasing economy of grace. → The Church of the Future
  • Judas Maccabaeus and David as war heroes (historical) — Jewish revolt leader and warrior-king illustrate that victory in battle was the prized mark of a leader, unlike Jesus. → Heavenly Battles
  • Judas perfume-waste meme (pop-culture) — an internet meme framing Judas’s ‘why was this not sold?’ complaint about wasted resources → Extravagant Faith: Mary’s Anointing and the Gift of the Mitzvah
  • Judges in MMA, boxing, Olympics gymnastics, and art (other) — The varied senses of ‘judgment’ in English, distinguishing scoring/discernment from harmful judgmentalism → A Sign
  • Judo’s origin among displaced samurai (historical) — Judo emerging as a nonviolent synthesis after the Tokugawa period’s end illustrates grappling repurposed for peace, not violence. → Jacob’s Grappling Technique
  • Julian and Gregorian calendar reform (historical) — The arbitrary, human-chosen history of calendars (Caesar, Pope Gregory XIII, England’s two-week jump in Wesley’s day) shows our timekeeping is a construct, raising the question of who is Lord of our time. → New Year’s Eve (Christ the King Sunday)
  • Junia mistranslated as Junius (historical) — Translators changing the female name Junia to male Junius illustrates how women’s apostolic roles were erased to defend a male-only priesthood. → Miriam, Miriam
  • Junk bond rating (other) — Even when our soul’s credit is junk status, God is willing to bear the risk of forgiving us. → I Believe in the Forgiveness of Sins
  • Justin Martyr on Plato and Moses (historical) — Justin Martyr’s claim that Plato and Moses conversed shows early Christians’ desire to link philosophy and faith as paths to the light. → Where Are We
  • Justin Martyr’s account of Sunday worship (historical) — Second-century description of the early church gathering on Sunday for Scripture reading, exhortation, prayer, Eucharist, and a collection for orphans, widows, and the needy, modeling the shape of Christian worship. → How to Build a Car (Justin Martyr on Early Christian Sunday Worship)
  • Kafka’s Metamorphosis / Gregor Samsa (literary) — Gregor waking as a giant cockroach distinguishes metamorphosis (body) from metanoia (mind), the Greek word for conversion. → Aldersgate
  • Kant’s duty-only morality (literary) — Kant’s claim that good must be done from duty alone (not enjoyment) is contrasted with how God shows us to live. → Big Boat
  • Karl Barth and the journey into the far country (historical) — Barth’s Church Dogmatics IV:1 chapter ‘The Journey of the Son of Man into the Far Country’ frames the incarnation as God’s costly descent to us. → The Far Country: God’s Journey to Us
  • Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV.1 (literary) — Barth on Christ becoming a servant and dying in our place grounds salvation wholly in what God does for us. → What Should We Do to Be Saved?
  • Karl Ove Knausgård’s My Struggle and auto-fiction (literary) — Plotless first-person memoir/auto-fiction (vs. Proust) exemplifies the cultural craving for the unmediated and immediate. → The Lamb of God
  • Katherine Sonderegger on Christ in the pit (literary) — Her words that the Helper has tasted the bitter gall and is inside the suffering illustrate Christ’s solidarity in our darkest grief. → A Sermon on Endings: The Patience of Simeon
  • Keeping up with the Joneses (pop-culture) — The American saying about social one-upmanship illustrates the futile pressure to keep up with ‘the Jones’s or the Herod’s or the Caesars.’ → Reset Your House
  • Keeping up with the Joneses (Herods) (pop-culture) — Riff on the American saying about not needing to keep up with the Joneses, or the Herods. → Reset Your House
  • Keeping up with the Joneses / bucket lists (current-events) — Everyday drives to have the best kids, healthiest life, fullest bucket list, illustrating how the desire to dominate pervades ordinary life as a lack of faith. → Spicy Mustard
  • Kennedy’s moon race speech (historical) — Kennedy’s ‘we do these things not because they are easy but because they are hard’ illustrates that stated reasons often differ from real motivations and don’t fully make sense. → Palm Sunday
  • Keyser Söze and Luke’s father spoilers (pop-culture) — The Usual Suspects and Star Wars reveals illustrate how a story’s whole truth can be explained in one climactic moment. → The Church of the Future
  • Kids and animal noises / ice cream (personal) — Children delight in animal sounds (which toddlers make before they can speak), framing Noah’s story as more than an excuse for animal noises. → Big Boat
  • Kids learning to sing the naming song (personal) — The delight children show when they “get” the song mirrors the deeper aha of grasping Christ’s love. → God Told Adam and Eve
  • Kids sharing favorite toys (personal) — Children don’t naturally share their favorite toy, showing sharing as a practiced letting-go of control. → Living Hope
  • Kids striving for excellence in school (other) — Wanting children to succeed in school shows that striving for excellence can be a genuine good that opens future opportunities. → The Cup
  • Kids these days nostalgia (other) — The ‘kids these days’ refrain illustrates nostalgia that idealizes the past and discounts the present. → The Church in the Past
  • Kids with water bottles vs. soda generation (personal) — Society learning to drink plain water instead of soda illustrates recognizing our continual need for the real thing. → Water
  • Kids’ wrist locks and bullies (personal) — His family does jiu-jitsu for community and confidence (kids can wrist-lock a bully), not to win championships. → Last Place
  • Kierkegaard on ‘Come here to me’ (literary) — Kierkegaard’s Practice in Christianity: truly inviting the burdened to come would overturn one’s whole comfortable way of life. → I Believe in Jesus Christ, His Only Son, Our Lord
  • Kierkegaard’s swimmer in a harness (literary) — Being suspended in a ceiling harness to mimic swimming strokes shows you can describe faith’s movements but cannot actually make the leap for someone else. → Go to Sleep, Isaac
  • Kierkegaard: the jealous person is the devil’s martyr (literary) — Søren Kierkegaard’s saying that the jealous person witnesses to the works of the devil, illustrating how jealousy tears down God’s kingdom. → Love Builds Up
  • Kindling the new fire (nature) — The opening prayer to sanctify the new fire so hearts are ‘kindled with holy desire to shine forth with the brightness of Christ’s rising.’ → Easter Sunrise Service
  • King James and the translation of the Kings books (historical) — James I, viewing his kingship as divinely ordained, objected only to harsh depictions of kings in Kings/Chronicles, illustrating the human elevation of earthly kingship. → How not to make Jesus King
  • King Ralph (John Goodman film) (pop-culture) — Suddenly inheriting the English throne shows you’d leave your stuff behind, like the heavenly kingdom already given to us. → The Birth of Jesus
  • Knowing Jesus returns next Tuesday (personal) — If we knew the hour of Christ’s return we’d procrastinate and set an alarm, but not knowing means living ready now. → The Birth of Jesus
  • Knowledge tree at the Natural Gardener (personal) — You can’t buy a tree of the knowledge of good and evil at the local nursery, underscoring that the Eden fruit meant something beyond food. → If You Fall Down
  • Laborers Arriving at Different Hours (biblical) — Those who toiled from the first hour and those who came at the eleventh all receive the same reward, illustrating God’s grace to early and late alike. → Easter Sunrise Service: The Paschal Homily of St. John Chrysostom
  • Laborers Hired at Different Hours (biblical) — Workers arriving at the first, third, sixth, ninth, and eleventh hours all receive their reward, illustrating God’s gracious welcome of late and early alike. → Easter Sunrise Service
  • Laborers of the eleventh hour (biblical) — Workers arriving at the first, third, sixth, ninth, and eleventh hours all receive their reward, illustrating grace given equally to the late and the faithful. → Easter Sunrise Service
  • Laborers of the Hours (biblical) — Workers arriving at the first through eleventh hours all receive the same reward, illustrating God’s gracious welcome of latecomers. → Easter Sunrise Service (Chrysostom’s Paschal Homily)
  • Laborers Welcomed at Every Hour (biblical) — Whether one toiled from the first hour or arrived at the eleventh, all receive equal reward, illustrating the lavish grace of the risen Lord. → Easter Sunrise Service (Chrysostom Sermon)
  • Lake Jackson, Texas — town with no straight streets (personal) — Bruce’s hometown, a WWII Dow Chemical town designed by a Frank Lloyd Wright student so no streets are straight — showing the strange, distinctive place that shaped him. → A Service of Death and Resurrection for Bruce Martin
  • Lake time, work time, mountain time (personal) — How place shapes our sense of time, setting up the contrast between human and God’s time. → When will he come?
  • Lamb slain for his people (biblical) — God’s character is not a robotic overlord but a slain lamb, an offering freely given so we could be free. → Drawn by the Father
  • Language as a metaphor for sacred story (other) — Extended metaphor that living our sacred story has a grammar, vocabulary, and syntax we learn by living it, not by stopping at the alphabet. → How to Live Our Story
  • Large debt and the freedom of its forgiveness (other) — A seven- or eight-figure debt that reshapes an organization, and the freedom when it’s gone, illustrates sin-as-debt and the relief of forgiveness. → Forgive Us Our Trespasses
  • Last Will & Testament / testimonial shows (current-events) — Notes ‘testament’ surfaces almost nowhere in modern life except Scripture and legal wills (and loosely reality-TV ‘testimonials’), to explain Old/New Testament as ‘witness’ to Christ. → Come Down, Don’t Delay
  • Laud’s prayer book and the Bishops’ War (historical) — Charles forcing William Laud’s prayer book on the Scots triggered revolt, another contingent cause of the Civil War. → The Church in the Past
  • Lay-led circuit preaching (historical) — Preachers overseeing 60 churches with lay-led hymn-singing shows 19th-century Methodism as a liturgical laboratory. → Praise
  • Lazarus and the Rich Man (biblical) — Cited as the Bible’s clearest example of eternal consequence tied to how one lived, grounding the otherwise speculative topic of judgment. → Jacob’s Ladder
  • Learning a language / deceptive fluency (personal) — No language is easy to learn; thinking you understand a place because it speaks English is ‘deceptive fluency’ — a metaphor for living our sacred story, which has its own grammar and vocabulary that must be practiced daily. → How to Live Our Story
  • Learning ASCII charts to type term papers after spilling coffee on his laptop (personal) — Rather than repair his broken keyboard, he stubbornly taught himself ASCII to type without certain keys, dramatizing the refusal to admit a need. → Why Is He Coming?
  • Learning basketball like LeBron James (pop-culture) — You can’t wake up expecting to play like LeBron; you start where you are and keep moving, like growing in love of neighbor. → Who am I in Christ?
  • Learning bicycle, car, instrument (other) — Justice and prudence must be practiced like riding a bike or playing an instrument, an infused habit that requires doing. → Who Am I?
  • Learning Hungarian for Alina (personal) — Pruitt knowing no Hungarian when he met his wife Alina and visited Hungary illustrates how learning our sacred story is like learning a new language. → How to Live Our Story
  • Learning to ride a bicycle (personal) — You can’t learn from a book and must fall a few times, illustrating that prayer is an uncomfortable practiced habit. → Living Hope, Three Ways of Saying Thank You
  • Learning to Ride a Bike (personal) — Once you learn to ride a bike the instructions become internalized, just as God’s love and forgiveness become part of us once truly learned. → Learning to Abide: The Means of Grace
  • Left Behind series (pop-culture) — The Rapture/Anti-Christ novels the preacher grew up around exemplify popular Dispensationalist readings of Revelation. → Alpha and Omega
  • Legal System and Children’s Responsibility (other) — Modern law holds children below an age unaccountable for their actions and free of financial liability, reflecting Jesus’s point that children are not mature or responsible. → Like a Child
  • Lent Shares a Root with Lento (Slow Tempo) (other) — The musical term lento (play slowly) shares a root with Lent, framing the season as a time to slow down. → The Transfiguration
  • Leo the Great on the incarnation (literary) — Quoted patristic meditation on God coming within our grasp and becoming subject to death. → Palm Sunday
  • Liam Neeson in Taken (pop-culture) — David’s ‘particular set of skills’ as a shepherd compared to the movie’s hero, the worldly reading of David’s power. → David and Goliath
  • Lieutenant as ‘place-holder’ (other) — The French etymology (lieu + tenir) shows ancient ‘officers’ were just place-holders telling untrained farmers where to go. → David and Goliath
  • Life Before Phones and GPS (personal) — Growing up having to ask directions and read maps illustrates how modern tools deceive us into thinking we know where we are. → Where Are We
  • Life’s blows are not the end of the world (personal) — Job loss, breakups, divorce, abusive relationships, and disease diagnoses are real but not the end of the world for those anchored in Christ’s coming glory. → Get Ready for Something Big
  • Lifeboat theology (other) — Extended metaphor for reducing faith in Jesus to merely escaping hell, which the sermon rejects in favor of present salvation. → Glorification
  • Lifting and setting down a heavy load (other) — Weights, backpacks, and furniture you set down to rest picture the burdens everyone must bear. → Rest
  • Lincoln’s House Divided Speech (historical) — Lincoln’s 1858 ‘house divided’ speech against slavery illustrates that evil is united on its purpose and cannot be opposed with half-measures. → Binding the Strongman
  • Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address (historical) — Lincoln noting both sides ‘read the same Bible and pray to the same God,’ reframing the question from ‘is God on our side?’ to ‘are we on God’s side?’ → Reset Your World
  • Lincoln-Douglas debates ideal (historical) — The lost hope of Lincoln-Douglas style persuasion contrasts with today’s regurgitated soundbites. → The Church in the Present
  • Lines we draw around our behavior (personal) — We all have things we will and won’t do; faith in Christ dissolves those self-drawn limits. → Maundy Thursday, Maundy Thursday
  • Liquidating a 401k to give it away (personal) — The pastor’s own admission that he wouldn’t give away his retirement savings exposes how modern property assumptions contradict Acts taken literally. → Pentecost
  • Little Longhorn reunion (personal) — Refusing to let fear control her, Elizabeth went to the Little Longhorn on Burnet where she reunited with Scott and ‘time had disappeared.’ → Elizabeth and Scott
  • Little Nicodemi coming by night (literary) — We are all ‘little Nicodemi’ bringing earnest, doubting clarifications to Jesus about whether he really means his hard commands. → Trinity Sunday
  • Living on a mountaintop (nature) — Mountaintops are exposed to violent storms, so you must come down to live, illustrating why God saves us for the ordinary everyday rather than peak experiences. → Show Us the Father
  • Liz Lemon’s speed-dating on 30 Rock (pop-culture) — Liz ruins every speed date by correcting her dates because ‘I can’t just let them be WRONG,’ illustrating the human compulsion to judge. → Lost & Found: Lost
  • Local service ministries (personal) — Church Under the Bridge, Mobile Loaves and Fishes, Marble Falls rescue mission, Partners in Hope, and Blueprint Ministries become familiar through repeated service. → Living Hope
  • Logos in French as la Parole (other) — The French translation of Logos as ‘speech’ frames Jesus as the speech of God who gives speech before giving bread. → How many people did Jesus feed?
  • Lone Ranger and Tonto ‘what do you mean we’ (pop-culture) — Tonto’s ‘what do you mean we, kemosabe?’ frames the central question of who ‘we’ are in the church and the two ways of being surrounded (allies vs. enemies). → I Believe in the Communion of the Saints
  • Longhorns football season hopes (current-events) — Preferring a proper, decisive win or loss over an agonizing near-miss sets up the sermon’s theme that losses closest to success hurt the most. → Peter Wants the Warmth Without the Weight
  • Longhorns loss to Washington (Michael Penix) (personal) — After the Longhorns blew the game by not tackling Penix, the pastor felt relaxed in the championship game with ‘no skin in the game’—worry tied to expectation. → How We Fill Our Waiting
  • Looking for a body in a cave / hide and seek (other) — Common-sense scene of checking a tomb for a corpse, emphasizing the literal reality that Jesus is not there. → Easter: He Is Not Here Among the Dead
  • Looking for God like a house, car, or job (other) — We tend to search for Jesus the way we shop for a house, car, or job, but God cannot be possessed that way. → Shining
  • Looking for the sucker at the poker table (other) — The poker adage that if you can’t spot the sucker at the table it’s you, illustrating how deceivers look for someone to fool. → Advent: Don’t Be Deceived
  • Looking in a mirror and forgetting (biblical) — James’s image of glancing in a mirror and forgetting one’s face illustrates how we forget who we are without doing God’s word. → Reset Your Soul
  • Looking in the mirror and forgetting (biblical) — James’s image of one who looks in a mirror and forgets his appearance, illustrating that unpracticed faith fades back into tearing people down. → Love Builds Up
  • Lorenzo Valla and the Donation of Constantine (historical) — A Renaissance scholar exposing the Donation of Constantine as a forgery, illustrating the rise of historical criticism applied to church tradition and eventually the Gospels. → Priest, Prophet, King
  • Losing your keys (other) — Turning a lost set of keys into ‘I am a loser’ shows how losing something feels like moral failure, but you are not a lost coin. → When You’re Lost, God Will Find You
  • Lost at the Galleria Mall (personal) — Wilson, age 5-6, wandering off from his mother’s hand while Christmas shopping, illustrating how we often don’t notice we’re lost. → When You’re Lost, God Will Find You
  • Lost on a family vacation (personal) — You won’t ask for directions until you admit you’re lost, paralleling admitting you are tired. → Rest
  • Lost sheep as bad business / tax write-off (other) — Leaving the 99 is terrible efficiency, illustrating that Jesus seeks the lost and never treats anyone as a write-off. → The Parables
  • Lost’s disappointing finale vs. well-crafted mysteries (pop-culture) — Lost’s empty ending versus The Usual Suspects and Knives Out illustrates the difference between a good ending and a bad one. → A Sermon on Endings: The Patience of Simeon
  • Loudest Christians in the public square (current-events) — Non-Christians in 2025 picture Christianity as politicians loudly claiming faith, contrasting Jesus’ call to quiet, secret devotion. → Ash Wednesday
  • Love is like riding a bike (other) — Love compared to riding a bike or long-distance running shows that love is a practice and habit you get bad at if you stop doing it. → Palm Sunday
  • Love is like riding a bike / long-distance running (other) — Extended metaphor that love is a habit and practice you get bad at if you stop doing it, like an athletic skill. → Palm Sunday
  • Loved more than a PlayStation 5 (pop-culture) — God’s love outweighs any coveted material gift, freeing us from childish desire to receive. → The Gift
  • Loved ones in addiction can always go lower (personal) — What looks like the last straw for an onlooker is not the bottom for the suffering person, who can always sink further. → He Descended into the Dead
  • Lover, Beloved, and Love (literary) — Augustine’s image of God as Lover (Father), Beloved (Son), and Love (Spirit) as a favorite illustration of the Trinity. → Trinity Sunday
  • Lover, Beloved, and the Love Between (literary) — The Augustinian analogy of Father as Lover, Son as Beloved, and Spirit as the Love between them, the preacher’s favorite picture of the Trinity. → Credo: I Believe in the Holy Spirit
  • Lover, beloved, and the love between them (literary) — Augustinian love analogy — Father as lover, Son as beloved, Spirit as their love that we are drawn into. → Wisdom’s Call, Trinity Sunday
  • Loving or fearing the spotlight (other) — Some love the stage spotlight and others fear it, illustrating how people respond differently to Christ the light. → Creation from Nothing: Genesis 1 and John 1 Together
  • Low blood sugar in the pastor’s family (personal) — The preacher’s family lashes out and blames others when hungry, illustrating how hunger weakens our responses. → First Attempt (Temptation of Jesus)
  • Low-stakes prom movie vs. Star Wars (pop-culture) — The high stakes of Christian doctrinal disagreement are less like a small-town prom romance and more like Star Wars where the whole universe hangs in the balance. → We are One
  • Luna and Rachel’s bond with her Father (personal) — Seeing how Tanner connected with the dog Luna reminded Rachel of her relationship with her Father. → Rachel and Tanner
  • Luther Cutting the Bible to the Literal Sense (historical) — Luther narrowing reading to the literal sense sets up the problem of how to read Jesus’s heavily figurative language. → Go From Your Country
  • Luther’s swaddling clothes (historical) — Luther’s image of scripture as dirty swaddling clothes holding the baby Jesus shows it can be complicated yet hold the greatest gift. → The Bible, Go From Your Country
  • Lutron, the Greek word for ransom (other) — The word ransom (lutron) meaning a payment that releases from bondage shows Jesus frees us by love, not power. → The Cup
  • Lydia Patterson Institute / SMU Lawsuit (current-events) — October trip to El Paso for the jurisdictional mission council, plaintiffs in the lawsuit against SMU. → October Pastor Report
  • Lydia’s baptism in Macedonia (biblical) — The Spirit pushing Paul across a border to baptize Lydia and her household illustrates the Spirit doing radical, boundary-crossing things. → Trouble in River City
  • Lyle Lovett’s ‘If I Had a Boat’ (pop-culture) — The song’s image of riding a pony on a boat as the fantasy of freedom unburdened by obligations to others. → Freedom for Neighbor
  • Mack Pruitt and the death camp (personal) — Grandfather who helped evacuate a death camp never spoke of it, illustrating the ineffability of certain experiences. → Trinity Sunday
  • MADD and drunk-driving laws (historical) — Mothers Against Drunk Driving changed the law so you must be in the right frame of mind to drive, like attentiveness is required to drive the church. → The Driver
  • Madeline lying under the doorframe (personal) — The pastor’s niece, told to stay in her room after bedtime, lay under the doorframe to go right up to the line — illustrating how we push limits to find the boundary. → The Line: Jesus and the Inversion of Our Moral Expectations
  • Magnificat as revolution (other) — Casting down the powerful from thrones is a political revolution, moving from governance to redistribution of resources. → Magnify
  • Mahoosuc Notch Shoulder Dislocation (personal) — On the Appalachian Trail in 2004 the preacher dislocated his shoulder in the treacherous Mahoosuc Notch, becoming so restless with pain he no longer cared what happened as long as it changed. → Restless with Suffering
  • Maim and sh’maim (Hebrew for water and sky) (other) — Sky meaning ‘waters above’ illustrates the creation distinction between waters above and below. → Distinctions: Message and Messenger in Creation
  • Maimonides’ 613 commandments (historical) — Numbering Torah focuses on trees instead of the forest, taking away from the whole → The Ten Commandments, Pentecost
  • Mainframe computers and switchboard operators (historical) — Older generation’s hard-to-explain tech parallels the inexplicable centrality of the Temple → The Portico of Solomon
  • Making Matzah While Preaching (personal) — The pastor bakes unleavened Passover bread during the sermon to embody bread as a real, material gift. → Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread
  • Making the bed (personal) — Some feel compelled to make their bed daily, others never would, showing different baseline levels of responsibility in everyday life. → Responsibility
  • Making Wikipedia Pages for Friends in Grad School (personal) — The preacher’s prank of making Wikipedia pages for friends (flagged in three minutes) illustrates that most of us, like Mary and Joseph, will never enter the history books. → Christmas Eve: God Enters History
  • Mal Blum, “Love and Hate” (pop-culture) — Song lyrics personifying Love and Hate as two people: Love writes warm letters and sails singing through the sky while Hate throws the letters away and walks the streets greeting strangers with a serious face, dramatizing love’s persistence against hate’s cold indifference. → Mal: Love writes a letter and sends it to Hate
  • Mandatum word origin of Maundy (literary) — The word ‘Maundy’ from the Latin mandatum (Greek entole) explains why this day is named for Christ’s new commandment to love. → Maundy Thursday, Maundy Thursday
  • Manger as French word for ‘to eat’ (literary) — The manger is the French word ‘to eat,’ a food trough, so the promised child is laid in a place for animal feed. → A Bundle of Need
  • Manichaeism and Zoroastrianism as dualist counterfeits (historical) — Ancient dualistic religions pictured good and evil locked in eternal combat; the sermon contrasts this with Christianity’s claim that the battle is already over in Christ. → Jacob’s Ladder
  • Manifest your will and find your crystals (current-events) — The world’s gospel of defining your own truth, manifesting your will, and finding crystals is set against the harder, real message of Jesus. → This Teaching is Difficult
  • Manna in the wilderness (biblical) — Manna that rotted when hoarded shows God’s love and peace are given to share, not to store up. → Big Boat
  • Manna in the Wilderness (biblical) — God gives just enough manna each day and extra rots, teaching reliance on God for daily provision. → Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread
  • Manna in the wilderness as the bread of heaven (biblical) — Forty years of manna and Christ’s own body given as the bread of heaven, contrasted with the church’s betrayal → A Service for Good Friday, A Service for Good Friday
  • Manners are like riding a bicycle (other) — Manners as practiced habits that become second nature, like a learned skill. → Three Ways of Saying Thank You
  • Manners as habits like riding a bicycle (other) — Manners become second nature through practice, illustrating how gratitude is a learned, repeated posture of love. → How to Say Thank You
  • Marathon begun by running a mile (other) — A New Year’s resolution to run a marathon starting with a single mile illustrates that conversion always begins with a small step of grace. → New Year’s Eve (Christ the King Sunday)
  • Marathon running and community (personal) — Running two marathons among 30,000 people, and a two-year injury that stole his prayer-running, show athletics as koinonia/fellowship not winning. → Last Place
  • Marathon training (other) — You don’t run a marathon on day one - growth in grace is gradual; walk before you run, start where you are. → The Voice of Sabbath
  • Marcion and the angry-OT/happy-NT God (historical) — The Marcionite error of an evil Old Testament God versus a loving New Testament God, which the early church rejected because it would make creation evil and Jesus a liar. → Not a New Commandment: God’s Love Is Old, Not Trendy
  • Marie Antoinette ‘let them eat cake’ (historical) — The queen’s distance from starving subjects contrasts with God bridging the distance to humanity in Jesus Christ. → Was Crucified, Died, and Was Buried
  • Marie Kondo sparking joy (pop-culture) — Contrasts Kondo’s ‘spark joy’ decluttering with the real question of whether objects draw you toward or away from God. → Reset Your House
  • Marines surviving at Parris Island (other) — Intentional, time-bound survival training illustrates that survival always has a point beyond itself. → Rescue
  • Marketing segments and brackets (other) — The world’s question ‘which segment are you in, how can we get you to spend more’ illustrates how consumer culture divides and reduces us. → Sacred Story: Aligning Our Lives with Who We Claim to Be
  • Marketing segments and the ‘under 10’ bracket (current-events) — Shows the world’s thirst to segment people for profit, unlike Jeremiah who fits no marketing bracket. → Our Sacred Story
  • Marketing that makes you feel inadequate (current-events) — Ad tactics convince you that without a certain thing, car, or body you aren’t a real man or woman, a lie about what is good for us. → Drop Your Nets
  • Marlo Stanfield and Omar from The Wire (pop-culture) — HBO’s depiction of Baltimore gang rivalry (‘when you come at the king, you best not miss’) models the threat Herod felt from Jesus. → Rivals
  • Marriage as an act of faith (a teacher’s saying) (personal) — A teacher’s line that ‘you never marry the right person’ because you can’t know who they’ll become shows marriage itself is a step of faith. → Saying Yes to God
  • Marriage counseling and the vows (personal) — Couples taking vows for better or worse never know what they’re getting into, yet the vows are not false—like participating in the Trinity without full understanding. → Trinity Sunday
  • Marriage to Alina and humble beginnings (personal) — His wife saw the hope of God’s call on his life despite his poverty and stalled career, illustrating sight by the light of God’s call. → What is Hope?
  • Married to a teacher (personal) — His teacher wife’s lack of classroom freedom shows the predetermined ordering of life extends into adulthood. → Drawn by the Father
  • Marsha caring for mom after Donald’s death (personal) — Devoted family care, with Marsha staying with and tending to her mother since her husband passed in 2011. → Memorial for Estalena Ferguson Aylieff
  • Martin Luther on Christian freedom (historical) — Luther’s paradox that the Christian is utterly free master of all yet utterly dutiful servant of all frames the gospel’s paradoxical freedom. → Freedom: A New Covenant for a New Year
  • Martin Niemoller’s ‘First they came’ poem (literary) — The poem about silence in the face of Nazi persecution illustrates the cost of failing to speak out. → The Cost
  • Mary and Joseph walking to Bethlehem without a donkey (biblical) — Re-telling the nativity journey on foot with Joseph carrying weary Mary dramatizes the gritty particularity of Jesus’ arrival. → The Far Country: God’s Journey to Us
  • Mary and Martha (biblical) — Mary as contemplation and Martha as service/celebration, both good in their own time → Prayer, Glorification, Love Neighbor, Waiting
  • Mary and the angel Gabriel (biblical) — Mary’s fear and perplexity at the annunciation parallels John’s unworthiness — both admit insufficiency before God’s glory. → The Baptism of the Lord
  • Mary anointing Jesus’ feet at Bethany (biblical) — In John 12 Jesus receives a blessing from Mary; on Maundy Thursday he reverses it by giving the blessing through foot washing. → Maundy Thursday
  • Mary at Jesus’ feet vs. Jacob wrestling the angel (biblical) — Reading scripture sometimes feels like restful sitting at Jesus’ feet, other times like wrestling all night. → The Bible
  • Mary Magdalene at the Empty Tomb (biblical) — The two Marys discovering the empty tomb and passing the news to Peter and John illustrates the unbroken tradition of the gospel handed down to today. → Credo: I Believe in the Holy Spirit
  • Masanobu Fukuoka’s The One-Straw Revolution (literary) — Japanese farmer’s integrated natural-farming method frames the sermon’s central metaphor of not separating what belongs together. → One Straw Revolution
  • Massachusetts Bay Colony and John Winthrop’s city on a hill (historical) — The Puritan colony meant to be a city on a hill instead shone the light of division, praising God for a smallpox outbreak that killed 40% of indigenous people, illustrating prideful self-righteous religion. → Field Hospital
  • Mastered skills like riding a bike or brushing teeth (other) — Things fully understood fade into autopilot; parables resist this so meaning stays alive and transforming. → The Parables
  • Matinee movies and dilated pupils (personal) — Stepping from a dark theater into bright sunlight contracts the pupils painfully; pupils dilated in darkness are ready to absorb the true light, like the Magi straining to see in a dark world. → Arise, Shine: The Light of Epiphany and the Grafting In of the Gentiles
  • Matthew Brady moving Civil War dead (historical) — A photographer rearranging corpses shows that every image is manipulated and incomplete. → All Peoples and Creatures
  • Matthew McConaughey’s ‘tie your shoes’ running advice (pop-culture) — Eliminating excuses to start running illustrates taking the simple first step of following Jesus. → Follow Me, Follow Me
  • Maxed-out retirements and 529 plans can’t save you (other) — Even full retirement accounts and college funds cannot rescue anyone from death and brokenness, pointing to the need for a savior. → Why Is He Coming?
  • Maximus of Turin on Christ sanctifying the water (historical) — The early church bishop taught Christ was baptized not to be made holy but to make the water holy. → Waters Above, Waters Below
  • McDonald Observatory and Webb Telescope (personal) — The pastor’s family trip to West Texas to view stars and Hubble/James Webb images, evoking the beauty of space and the ancients’ view of the heavens. → He Ascended into Heaven
  • Meals counted across a lifetime (other) — A 40-year-old has eaten ~43,830 meals and an 80-year-old ~87,660, showing how relentlessly food and worry occupy a life. → The Gift of Jesus
  • Medici and Fugger banking wealth (historical) — Banking families amassed unprecedented non-royal wealth, illustrating the seductive accumulation of riches the gospel passage confronts. → Eye of the Camel
  • Medieval fourfold method of reading Scripture (historical) — Literal, allegorical, moral, and eschatological senses, and Luther’s partial pushback, frame the difference between literal and serious reading. → Lifted Up: Reading the Bible as Jesus Reads It
  • Medieval Fourfold Reading of Scripture (historical) — Literal, allegorical, tropological, and anagogical senses illustrate the richer pre-modern way of reading the Bible beyond bare literalism. → Go From Your Country
  • Medieval noble pedigrees and marriages (historical) — Warlord nobles checking bloodlines (Gunther and Hilda) illustrate the mistaken assumption that good blood makes a person good. → Emmanuel = Mercy
  • Medieval sin of gluttony as insatiable desire (historical) — Gluttony defined as an impossible-to-satisfy desire illustrates how worldly hungers can never finally be filled. → Food
  • Meeting Alina at the Church Under the Bridge (personal) — The pastor’s timid, fear-of-rejection courtship of his wife under the I-35 overpass illustrates why we approach Mary’s annunciation expecting ‘no.’ → Saying Yes to God
  • Meeting Alina before online dating (personal) — The preacher and his wife met by being set up, just before online dating took over, illustrating that any relationship is a step of faith. → Every Act of Faith
  • Meeting and marrying Alina (personal) — The preacher’s unexpected courtship of his wife illustrates love as showing up daily rather than fitting tidy assumptions. → Easter Sunday: Works of Love
  • Membership Vows: Prayers, Presence, Gifts, Service, Witness (other) — The five membership promises, treated as mere obligations, deaden into dry works that keep us from God. → On the Third Day, He Rose Again
  • Men who forget to drink water (personal) — An older generation, especially men, whose bodily thirst triggers don’t fire, used to illustrate our often-unfelt thirst of the soul. → Give Me Water
  • Mercedes losing the constructors’ championship (current-events) — After eight years of dominance Mercedes won’t win this year, showing it takes different skill to drive a sub-optimal car, as the church now drives in a less privileged season. → The Driver
  • Methodism born in Bristol fields and St. Paul’s Evensong (historical) — Methodist worship’s dual origins show the tradition holds space for both low and high church. → Praise
  • Methodist circuit riders on the frontier (historical) — Circuit riding let one pastor plant many frontier churches, explaining Methodism’s rapid early American growth. → I Believe in the Holy Catholic Church
  • Methodist sweater and Episcopalian section in heaven (other) — There will be no denominational divisions in eternal life; structures are signs of this world’s brokenness, not the point → Ask Me Anything
  • Methodists vs Galen (historical) — The ancient Methodist physicians who rivaled Galen and taught that anyone could be a doctor became a slur for the egalitarian Wesleyan movement. → Whoever Is Not Against Us: Denominations, Control, and How You Follow Jesus
  • Michael and Fredo in The Godfather Part II (pop-culture) — Michael’s cold rejection of Fredo (‘you’re nothing to me now’) contrasts the prodigal’s father who runs out to embrace his broken son instead. → Palm Sunday
  • Michael Jordan remembering who made varsity first (pop-culture) — Jordan using slights as motivation contrasts with Jesus, who was not petty and didn’t keep score of those who said no. → Screening God’s Call
  • Michelangelo chiseling the sculpture from marble (historical) — repentance chips away superfluous material to reveal who God created us to be → The Mercy of Fire, Who is Christ?
  • Michelangelo the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle (pop-culture) — self-deprecating aside on the preacher’s first cultural encounter with the name Michelangelo → The Mercy of Fire
  • Michelin Guide and its stars (historical) — Michelin’s three-star rating marks a place ‘worth the trip on its own,’ as John the Baptist was worth traveling to the Jordan to see. → Waters Above, Waters Below
  • Midgard Serpent of Tail Risks (literary) — The Norse world-serpent names the enormous tail-risk manufacturers fear in self-driving liability. → The Driver
  • Milestones as ordinary road markers (historical) — literal English road milestones were average markers to keep washed-out-road travelers on the path, illustrating that kingdom markers are ordinary, not grand events → The Reign of the Spirit
  • Military and law enforcement gear (other) — Putting on extra gear before a situation signals an antagonist or enemy, paralleling the spiritual struggle Paul describes. → This Teaching is Difficult
  • Military command structure (other) — Soldiers obey superior officers because of shared mission, illustrating buy-in to following a command. → Maundy Thursday
  • Military commissioning of officers (historical) — The military’s use of ‘commission’ as a verb (to send with) recovers the active sense of the Great Commission. → Wisdom’s Call
  • Military commissioning of officers (other) — Officers are commissioned (a verb, sent-with) rather than passively appointed, recovering the active sense of the Great Commission. → Trinity Sunday
  • Military leadership books (Clausewitz, Napoleon, Sun Tzu, Book of Five Rings) (historical) — Old leadership literature centered on generals and strategy, contrasted with Jesus calling ordinary followers. → Follow Me, Follow Me
  • Military order (other) — A commanding officer’s order is immediate and uninterpreted — the kind of clarity we sometimes wrongly want from God. → The Lamb of God
  • Military triage (historical) — The 19th-century military medicine triage question ‘Can they walk? Can they not walk? Are they dead?’ as the speaker self-assessed his wounded feet, illustrating honest assessment of one’s condition. → Love Covers a Multitude of Sins
  • Milo Hamilton and Larry Dierker radio broadcasts (personal) — Listening to Astros games on car-ride radio as a child grounds the preacher’s formation as a baseball fan. → 2nd Sunday in Lent: Taking Up the Cross and Costly Grace
  • Milo of Croton and the calf (historical) — The Olympic wrestler who carried a growing calf into a full-grown cow illustrates bearing one another in love. → The Bread of Life: What Are You Hungry For?
  • Milton’s Paradise Lost (literary) — literature filled gaps in biblical revelation about demons → Legion
  • Milton’s Paradise Lost and the impotence of Lucifer (literary) — Wesley himself edited Paradise Lost for school use; its power lies in showing how ultimately powerless Lucifer is, reinforcing that the cosmic battle is already won. → Jacob’s Ladder
  • Miriam throwing rocks at crocodiles (biblical) — Imagined image of Miriam protecting the floating basket illustrates the brave, behind-the-scenes love that saved Moses and the people. → Miriam, Miriam
  • Mirror That Forgets Its Reflection (biblical) — James’s image of forgetting your face in the mirror illustrates hearing the good news but returning to harmful living. → Tell Everyone That Jesus is Alive
  • Missing car seat in Geneva (personal) — On a trip to visit his sister in Switzerland, his wife Alina crossed a DO NOT CROSS line to retrieve their child’s car seat, finding a gate where none seemed to exist. → The Gate
  • Mission creep (Somali Civil War origin) (historical) — The 1990s military term for an intervention’s scope quietly expanding past its original goal explains how temple commerce overran holy ground. → The Foolishness of the Cross: Jesus Cleanses the Temple
  • Mitch Hedberg broken escalator joke (pop-culture) — A broken escalator is just stairs, illustrating that a car (or church) without a driver goes nowhere. → The Driver
  • MLB vs NFL (pop-culture) — Two sports leagues that are rivals, allies, and collaborators illustrate how denominations differ organizationally yet share a common enterprise. → Whoever Is Not Against Us: Denominations, Control, and How You Follow Jesus
  • Model T Ford (historical) — A best-seller that was loud, noisy, and structurally limited illustrates that popularity is not the same as a sound foundation. → The Chassis
  • Modern news media as selling something (current-events) — The litany of outlets (NYT, Fox, CNN, MSNBC, etc.) and marketing industries that didn’t exist in Paul’s day, all now selling something, contrasts ancient ‘good news’ with today’s distrust of news. → Good News: What Is Evangelism?
  • Modern shibboleths: hook ‘em vs gig ‘em, who you voted for (current-events) — Political shibboleths illustrate the temptation to judge ‘good’ vs ‘bad’ Christians. → Symbols and Signs
  • Money changers and the graven-images problem (historical) — Changing coins bearing rulers’ faces helped diaspora Jews keep the commandment against graven images, showing the money changers served a real religious need. → The Foolishness of the Cross: Jesus Cleanses the Temple
  • Moneyball and Billy Beane (pop-culture) — Billy Beane looked like a ballplayer but didn’t succeed; good looks don’t help hit a pitch, illustrating that we don’t need the ‘not loves’ or external markers to follow Christ. → Not to Us
  • Moral hazard and the 2008 crisis (current-events) — Forgiving debts risks moral hazard, the reckless reliance on bailouts seen in 2008, yet that is exactly what God’s forgiveness invites. → I Believe in the Forgiveness of Sins, The Race
  • Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (historical) — An early-2000s study of 3,000 teenagers found a distant ‘just be good’ God who would never ask anything odd, like stealing a pony, contrasting the demanding God of Jesus. → Palm Sunday
  • Moravians and the First Candlelit Fir Tree (historical) — Moravian and Pietist Protestants who influenced Wesley first put candles on a fir (Tannenbaum) to bring light into a dark season. → The Cultivation of Christmas Trees
  • Moravians calm during the Atlantic storm (historical) — The German pietists praying and singing unafraid in a violent storm while Wesley was terrified shows the peace of grace-rooted faith. → Restless with the Past
  • Moravians singing in the Atlantic storm (historical) — Their calm faith amid the storm exposes what Wesley lacked and points toward assurance → The Calling and the Called
  • Mortgages, amortization schedules, and moral hazard (other) — Long-term financial planning and the economist’s ‘moral hazard’ contrast the predictable economy of man with the inefficient economy of grace. → The Church of the Future
  • Moses and Elijah present for their own sake (biblical) — The prophets appear not merely for the disciples but so they themselves can behold and worship the God-man Jesus. → Who Is Jesus? The Transfiguration
  • Moses and the bronze serpent in Numbers 21 (biblical) — The lifted bronze serpent that healed snakebitten Israelites is Jesus’ own figurative type for himself being lifted up to heal sin. → Lifted Up: Reading the Bible as Jesus Reads It
  • Moses and the Bronze Serpent in the Wilderness (biblical) — The snake Moses lifted up in the wilderness prefigures the Human One being lifted up so believers find eternal life. → Lost & Found: Found
  • Moses and the burning bush (biblical) — God telling Moses to remove his shoes on holy ground illustrates holiness as being set apart for God. → Saints and Sinners
  • Moses and the Burning Bush (biblical) — Standing on holy ground, told to remove his shoes, exemplifies encountering the presence of God beyond ourselves. → In the Presence of God, Who Do You Say That I Am?
  • Moses and the Red Sea / Jordan Crossing (biblical) — Moses and the prophets split waters to pass through, contrasted with Jesus who instead walks over the waters entirely. → A Foundation of Water
  • Moses Maimonides numbering the law (historical) — The Torah wasn’t divided into discrete numbered rules until Maimonides, showing the law was meant as a whole life oriented to God. → Reset Your Body
  • Moses Maimonides Numbering the Law (historical) — The Torah wasn’t divided into discrete numbered commands until Maimonides in the Middle Ages, showing dietary and moral law were once seen as one whole. → Reset Your Body
  • Mother Night (Vonnegut) (literary) — The novel’s line ‘be careful who you pretend to be because in the end you are who you pretend to be’ illustrates that how we live, not our intentions, shapes who we are. → Come and See, Come and See, 2nd Sunday in Lent: Taking Up the Cross and Costly Grace
  • Mother Teresa ‘Do It Anyway’ (literary) — The ‘Anyway’ poem illustrates faithful, unrewarded goodness done for God rather than for human recognition. → Miriam, Miriam, Come and See
  • Mother Teresa’s ‘Do It Anyway’ poem (historical) — The poem from her Calcutta wall closes the sermon: give your best though it’s never enough, for it is between you and God anyway. → Palm Sunday: Practicing Living
  • Mother’s food drops (personal) — His mother mailing him food drops on the trail shows care and sustenance, though still not enough for his hunger. → Food
  • Mountain climber: courageous vs foolhardy (other) — A courageous climber takes extra care at the riskiest spots while a foolhardy one climbs every spot the same and falls, illustrating the Greek distinction between courage and fearlessness. → Be Still
  • Mountain spring: source, flow, and creek (nature) — Water’s source, flow, and creek as three inseparable things — analogy for Father, Son, and Spirit as one God. → Wisdom’s Call, Trinity Sunday
  • Mountaintop experience of forgiveness (other) — A powerful mountaintop moment of forgiveness is not the end; like a mother wanting her child to grow, God wants to complete us. → Love Does Not Seek Its Own
  • Mouth-breathing vs. nasal breathing (nature) — The medical benefits of nasal breathing become a metaphor for prayer as breathing with God and resetting the soul. → Reset Your Soul
  • Movie depictions of demon possession (pop-culture) — Horror-film tropes (head-spinning, screeching) are used to contrast pop-culture Satan imagery with the biblical sense of ‘satan’ as accuser, applied to Peter’s rebuke of Jesus. → Peter Wants the Warmth Without the Weight
  • Movies that replay the last scene at the start (pop-culture) — Acts replaying Jesus’ ascension that ended Luke is like a sequel that reopens with the previous film’s final scene. → Get Ready for Something Big
  • Moving-mountains mustard seed parable vs. the growing-bush parable (literary) — Contrasts the more famous ‘move this mountain’ parable (self-centered, impractical) with Matthew 13’s growing-bush parable (faith expanding to make room for others). → Faith the Size of a Mustard Seed
  • Mr. Bienkowski’s NYPD diver tryout (personal) — 32 people trying out for four slots (only two made it) shows how life sorts people to find the best, leaving most out. → Who Gets to Be Saved
  • Mr. Christ greeting (other) — A joking ‘good afternoon, Mr. Christ’ shows Christ was a title (anointed), not Jesus’ surname. → I Believe in Jesus Christ, His Only Son, Our Lord
  • Mr. John Huebel and the Lake movie theater (personal) — The theater owner who patrolled with a swinging flashlight to stop teens making out turns out to be the preacher’s own granddad — revealing the surprising personal connection between pastor and the family. → A Service of Death and Resurrection for Bruce Martin
  • Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood (pop-culture) — The ‘won’t you be my neighbor’ theme as a generational image of what being a neighbor means. → Love Neighbor
  • Ms. Brenda’s confirmation class (personal) — Referenced as the local teacher of Methodist origins to the congregation’s confirmands. → Whoever Is Not Against Us: Denominations, Control, and How You Follow Jesus
  • Multilingual congregation understanding each other (personal) — English, Hungarian (Alina), Korean (Younee), and Spanish (Alexander) speakers all comprehending one another illustrates being fully understood while remaining fully yourself. → Show Us the Father
  • Murder on the Orient Express twist (literary) — The shocking reveal that all the passengers did it illustrates how forgiveness and mercy arrive as an unexpected, justice-bearing twist. → Mercy Revealed
  • Mustard seed growing into a tree (biblical) — Jesus’s parable shows God’s love expanding from something insignificant into the redemption of the world. → The Gift of the Trinity
  • Mustard seed multiplication / grocery store mustard jars (nature) — One mustard bush yields thousands of seeds and nearly every grocery store carries jars of mustard, illustrating how small faith multiplies abundantly. → Faith the Size of a Mustard Seed
  • Mustard seed transformed into mustard (nature) — A tiny mustard seed, hard to clean up when spilled but tasty after being smashed with vinegar and turmeric, illustrating hidden power and transformation in small things. → Spicy Mustard
  • Mustard-Seed-Sized Faith (literary) — Asking the mass or volume of faith shows the absurdity of pressing figurative language into wooden literalism. → Go From Your Country
  • Mystery stories and the act of faith (P.D. James) (literary) — Reading a mystery is an act of faith that a hidden truth exists and will be revealed, mirroring faith that God’s mercy is the true twist at the heart of the world. → Mercy Revealed
  • Name-repeating trick when meeting someone (personal) — Repeating a new acquaintance’s name (‘Nice to meet you, Jack…’) to remember it shows we hold on to names that matter to us — as God holds the builders’ names. → What’s Next? (Builders and Names)
  • Naming our own children (personal) — We name our kids but don’t control them, countering the claim that to name is to control. → God Told Adam and Eve
  • Nathaniel and Nazareth (biblical) — Nathaniel’s ‘what good can come out of Nazareth?’ shows Jesus wasn’t from the right kind of place. → Welcome
  • Natural Explanations for Walking on Water (other) — Rationalizing theories (thin ice, near shore) are dismissed as failing to fit the text, preserving the miracle as a sign of Christ’s divinity. → A Foundation of Water
  • Nazareth Not on Early Maps (biblical) — Jesus raised in backwoods Nazareth, a town so insignificant it didn’t appear on early maps, underscoring God choosing the lowly. → The Way: Walking Together
  • Nazi Pervitin methamphetamine (historical) — WWII soldiers given meth (Panzerschokolade) to skip sleep won early but eventually crashed, showing rest cannot be eliminated. → Rest
  • NBA playoffs and the let-down after winning (personal) — The excitement of the playoffs lives in anticipation; once a championship is won or lost, the thrill fades fast — like the brief joy after the Astros’ World Series. → Get Ready for Something Big
  • Nehemiah as patron saint of structural engineers (other) — A relatable career-style calling (rebuilding) contrasted with Jesus’s prophetic, identity-rooted calling → The Calling and the Called
  • Neighbor who won shot put gold in 1968 (personal) — A College Station neighbor, a gold-medal shot putter, as a treasured connection to ‘best in the world’ status. → Who Gets to Be Saved
  • New Year’s Day and summer as future-markers (other) — Writing a new year on a check or the start of summer become moments when change and the future become apparent. → Restless with Our Future
  • New Year’s resolution as a better start date (other) — Deferring change to ‘next week, New Year’s Day, the year of the new me’ shows our excuses for not claiming now. → Christmas Eve: Why Now?
  • Newborn babies as soft, sticky, on-off communicators (nature) — Babies’ helpless, all-or-nothing crying illustrates the humble form God chose in the incarnation. → Christmas Eve: Why Now?
  • Newborns announce their need unlike independent teenagers (other) — God came as a needy infant who, unlike self-sufficient teenagers, openly signals need, modeling the admission of need for God. → Why Is He Coming?
  • NFL Draft Scouts (pop-culture) — A foil for Samuel’s mission: God did not scout David for his potential like draft scouts predicting future stars, but chose him to reveal God’s glory. → In the Presence of God
  • Nicodemus and being born again (biblical) — Jesus tells Nicodemus he must be born of water and spirit, framing salvation as ongoing new birth, not a momentary event. → Love Does Not Seek Its Own
  • Nicodemus and the second birth (biblical) — Jesus’ talk of being born again to Nicodemus illustrates that beyond our one physical birth, faith offers a daily new beginning through repentance. → Spilling Things: God Offers Us a Chance for a Do-Over
  • Nicodemus asking about being born again (biblical) — Nicodemus’s literal question about re-entering his mother’s womb introduces new birth through the Holy Spirit into the world made new. → Aerodynamics
  • Nicodemus born again (biblical) — Jesus’ night conversation about being born of the Spirit sets up the theme of totally new life. → Water
  • Nicodemus taking Jesus’ words to the letter (biblical) — Nicodemus imagining re-entering the womb shows literalism that misses the transformative, born-from-above meaning Jesus intends. → Lifted Up: Reading the Bible as Jesus Reads It
  • Nieces 18 and 21 years younger (personal) — The preacher’s much-younger nieces introduce the BFF concept and frame how different generations conceive of ‘forever.’ → Wherever You Go
  • Nietzsche and the death of God (historical) — The 19th-century philosopher’s claim, contrasted with how Christianity makes the death of God the central action of faith rather than a scandalous taunt. → Was Crucified, Died, and Was Buried
  • Niles Crane scoring a basketball shot on Frasier (pop-culture) — An unathletic character’s lucky basket illustrates ‘moral luck’—accidental good doesn’t make us good. → All Peoples and Creatures
  • Nine Inch Nails T-Shirt in 6th Grade (personal) — The preacher recalls wanting to be the kind of kid who wore a NIN shirt (‘I don’t listen to the lyrics’), showing music taste as a performance of identity. → Half a World Away
  • Nine Inch Nails t-shirt phone call (personal) — His sixth-grade defense ‘I just listen to the music, not the words’ illustrates that music is a private experience requiring trust. → The Gift
  • Nintendo and childhood video games (personal) — The preacher’s boyhood love of the original Nintendo and slow role-playing games sets up the central cheat-code metaphor. → What do we hope for?
  • Nitrogen and phosphorus for plants (nature) — Without phosphorus a plant may look pretty but never flower, illustrating that humans need ‘heavenly nitrogen and phosphorus’ (the Spirit) to truly flourish. → Fruitfulness
  • Nixon’s ‘if the president does it, it’s not illegal’ (historical) — Nixon’s line illustrates antinomian self-justification, treating one’s own status as a license for lawless action. → Eternal Life
  • No Candles in the Pool (personal) — Oddly specific establishment rules arise from specific past harms, just as Jesus’ new commandment responds to the disciples’ behavior. → A New Commandment
  • No church, potlucks, or planning meetings in heaven (personal) — Heaven has no preachers, sermons, potlucks, or leadership meetings because the church exists only for the not-yet. → Rescue
  • No Confetti Karaoke Rule (personal) — A karaoke bar’s ‘no confetti’ rule illustrates how rules answer past harm, and how unloving selfishness creates an exhausting mess for others to clean up. → A New Commandment
  • No political party, sports team, or job fills the God-sized hole (other) — Nothing worldly can fill the God-shaped void inside us, underscoring why Jesus is necessary. → Why Is He Coming?
  • No solicitation sign (other) — Posting ‘no solicitation’ signs illustrates how we put easy conditions on whom we welcome. → Welcome
  • No such thing as a free lunch (other) — The economics adage that all actions have hidden costs contrasts the world’s transactional logic with God’s freely given abundant life. → Restless with Foolishness
  • No True Scotsman fallacy (other) — The sugar-on-porridge logical fallacy, used in a Scottish accent, to warn against endlessly qualifying who counts as a ‘true Christian’. → Whose Name?
  • Noah and the ark (biblical) — A model of salvation where only a few are saved and everyone else is left out or sacrificed. → How We Are Saved
  • Noah and the Flood as the response of ‘no’ (biblical) — The destruction of the Flood is the counterfactual divine ‘no’ to sin, against which the Incarnation is God’s ‘yes’ to the world. → Saying Yes to God
  • Noelle the disillusioned teen (other) — Fifteen-year-old Noelle, who sees only hypocrites at church, encounters God and is freed to speak truth knowing she is of sacred worth. → Freedom from Sin in the Waters of Baptism
  • Norse mythology of Thor, Odin, Asgard and Midgard (literary) — Norse gods who are part of the world rather than its creator contrast with the biblical Creator God. → I Believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth
  • Nostradamus and Conan O’Brien’s ‘In the Year 2000’ (pop-culture) — Contrasts cartoonish future-telling with prophets whose words address present injustice. → The Prophecy
  • Not a mutant serum (pop-culture) — The disciples weren’t injected with a superhuman forgiveness serum; the power is the indwelling Holy Spirit, not a magic ability. → Recognized by His Scars: The Power of Pardon
  • Not a superhero, not the Messiah (pop-culture) — You can’t save yourself; admitting that is where the good news begins → Original Sin
  • Not checking Yelp or finding the best OB/GYN (current-events) — Mary and Joseph weren’t checking Yelp or seeking the best hospital or OB/GYN, just a place to stop, contrasting our search for the best with their bare need. → A Bundle of Need
  • Not inviting cousin so-and-so (personal) — Party guest lists with their in-groups and out-groups contrast with Jesus, for whom there is no outgroup. → Jesus Likes to Party
  • Not tempted by murder confession (personal) — The pastor jokes that ‘thou shall not kill’ is easy for him, unlike the harder command to welcome. → Welcome
  • NYC wine-club dating service (current-events) — A wine influencer’s pay-for-women-free-for-men dating table as a ‘third space’ where people risk connecting. → Every Act of Faith
  • Obi-Wan Kenobi ‘who’s the more foolish’ line (pop-culture) — Obi-Wan’s retort to Han Solo (‘Who’s the more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows him?’) frames foolishness as a comparative term. → Restless with Foolishness
  • Obsolete jobs replaced by technology (historical) — Typewriter repairman, switchboard operator, lamplighter, town crier, ice cutter — vanished professions setting up the lost art of the messenger. → Easter: He Is Not Here Among the Dead
  • Ocean’s Eleven Heist (pop-culture) — Heist films center on a treasure as the goal, like the worldly goals that motivate us. → What Is My Sacred Story?
  • Offering song ‘Lord I’m lost, be my way back’ (literary) — The offering song’s plea (‘Lord I’m lost, be my way back’) illustrates Jesus finding and sheltering the lost. → Big Boat
  • Oliver Twist’s plea (literary) — A thirsty child becomes Oliver (‘Please sir, can I have some more?’), illustrating insatiable craving. → The Bread of Life: What Are You Hungry For?
  • One solution, three problems (industrial agriculture critique) (other) — Extended critique of how removing cattle-crop rotation for chemicals created cascading ecological harms, mirrored later onto fragmented Christian life. → One Straw Revolution
  • One Weird Trick web ads (pop-culture) — The bogus internet ‘one weird trick’ advertising gimmick (shut down by the FTC) frames the series’ question of whether one real change could transform a life. → Come and See, Come and See
  • One-word names of military history (Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, Wellington) (historical) — The remembered great commanders are those who found an advantage and pressed it, unlike McClellan. → The Rescue
  • Online discourse and PR talking points (current-events) — Internet keyword-policing and PR coaching (‘answer the question you wish was asked’) illustrate the un-loving ways of responding to others’ words. → Love Believes All
  • Online niche affinity groups (17th-century satirical poetry) (current-events) — The internet’s ability to match obscure niche interests illustrates how affinity can mimic but fall short of true friendship. → Wherever You Go
  • Open kitchen cabinets confession (personal) — The pastor confesses he leaves every kitchen cabinet open, illustrating how varied and personal our senses of responsibility are. → Responsibility
  • Opening Day and Spring Training Optimism (personal) — Every team starting 0-0 with hope of a new season frames Lent as a fresh start: ‘Is this going to be your year?’ → Go From Your Country
  • Oprah giving away cars (pop-culture) — A car dealer pulling an Oprah giveaway every week would go bankrupt, illustrating the inefficiency of divine forgiveness. → I Believe in the Forgiveness of Sins
  • Oracle of Delphi ‘know thyself’ (historical) — Greek philosophy’s self-knowledge maxim contrasted with Jesus’s command to follow him instead. → Follow Me, Follow Me
  • Ordination interview on evil (personal) — Pressed by an angry examiner before 15 pastors, the preacher defended that evil is not a ‘thing’ lest God be made the author of evil. → Let’s Talk About the Devil
  • Ordination questions on going on to perfection (personal) — Being asked at ordination whether he is going on to perfection and would reach it in this life, framing perfection as completion by God, not sinlessness → Baptism
  • Origin of biblical chapters and verses (historical) — Monks divided the Bible into readable chapters and later verses for commentary, showing the divisions are human and context still matters. → Lifted Up: Reading the Bible as Jesus Reads It
  • Origin of the Methodist name and the Holy Club (historical) — The Oxford Holy Club’s insult-name ‘Methodist’—rooted in a Galen-era medical dispute over who could be a doctor—shows that everyone, not a select class, can seek a transformed heart. → I Believe in the Holy Catholic Church
  • Origin of the name ‘Methodists’ / Galen and the ancient doctors (historical) — The Methodists were an ancient democratic school of doctors believing anyone could be a doctor; Wesley embraced the insult because anyone can be made holy. → Saints and Sinners
  • Origins of Memorial Day (historical) — Memorial Day began after the Civil War as Decoration Day to honor forgotten and vandalized military graves, tied to remembering ineffable loss. → Trinity Sunday
  • Outdoor worship and Travis County drought (personal) — Rain ruining the preacher’s outdoor services made him resent the water from above, blind to the drought’s need for it. → Waters Above, Waters Below
  • Over-specifying a dinner restaurant (personal) — Adding too many requirements to a Mexican restaurant choice illustrates how loading meaning into a text leaves God less space to move. → The Cup
  • Owning a house means your neighbor does not (other) — Owning a house excludes your neighbor from owning it, contrasting the world’s zero-sum scarcity with God’s non-exclusive, non-scarce economy. → Having the Son: Living a More Real Life by Faith
  • Oxford college kids asking John Wesley for guidance (historical) — The early Methodists’ question ‘How is it with your soul?’ frames the sermon’s central self-examination. → Reset Your Soul
  • Oxford English Dictionary (literary) — English readers can trace a word’s first use and history, unlike rare Hebrew words known only from a single biblical mention. → What’s Next? (Builders and Names)
  • P=p-i performance equation (other) — Performance equals potential minus interference, applied to how self-doubt interferes with hope. → Living Hope
  • Pagan creation myths (historical) — Greek (Uranus/Gaia), Babylonian, Japanese, and Norse creation stories contrast with the unique Jewish/Christian God who creates from nothing. → The Wager (Part 1)
  • Pagan Pantheons and the God Uranus (historical) — Greek and Sumerian gods’ sexualized identities contrast with the Father language Jesus uses, which is about relationship not procreation. → Our Father, Who Art in Heaven, Hallowed Be Thy Name
  • Pagan weather gods including Storm of the X-Men (pop-culture) — Thor, Zeus, and Marvel’s Storm illustrate humanity’s tendency to assign storm-power to gods, contrasted with Jesus’ real power as creator rather than a mutant ability. → Be Still
  • Painting a room and organizing a closet (personal) — Small finished projects that give a satisfying sense of visible accomplishment, like Jesus reaching Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. → Palm Sunday
  • Painting and prep-work (personal) — The rookie mistake Wilson made painting was skipping prep; the best prep leaves the least evidence, as John’s work is hidden in the life of Jesus. → The Four Questions: Who Is Coming?
  • Paleo diet and crossfit hipsters (current-events) — The ‘paleo’ diet is a modern invention that skips 10,000 years of development, illustrating how recent our food assumptions really are. → Reset Your Body, Reset Your Body
  • Palm Sunday crowd to Holy Week jeers (biblical) — The same crowd cheering Jesus later cried ‘crucify him,’ showing laurels and crowds turn quickly. → Follow Me
  • Palm Sunday crowds turning to ‘crucify him’ (biblical) — The same crowd that cheered Jesus later jeered him, warning against trusting crowd approval. → Follow Me
  • Papier-Mâché Foundation (other) — Any foundation built apart from Christ is like papier-mâché — it only takes one splash to collapse. → A Foundation of Water
  • Parable of the 99 sheep and the one lost (biblical) — The shepherd leaves the 99 to rescue the wandering sheep not to reprimand but to bring it home, modeling love that does not seek its own. → Love Does Not Seek Its Own
  • Parable of the houses on rock and sand (biblical) — Hearing and doing the word builds on rock that withstands wind and water; hearing without doing builds on sand that is swept away, illustrating that loving Jesus means keeping his commandments. → Good News: What Is Evangelism?, A Foundation of Water
  • Parable of the Sower (biblical) — Jesus’ parable of seed on path, rock, thorns, and good soil illustrates the cost of being tilled by God so we can bear fruit. → Ash Wednesday, Ash Wednesday
  • Parable of the talents (biblical) — The servant who buries his talent out of fear shows how we can bury rather than offer the light of Christ. → Praise
  • Parable of the two debtors (biblical) — The man forgiven 500 denarii loves more than the one forgiven 50, showing that seeing how much Jesus saved us from draws us closer to God’s love. → Restless with the Past
  • Parable of the Two Sons (Matthew 21) (literary) — Contrasts the son who refuses then obeys with the one who agrees then doesn’t, to define the specific hypocrisy Jesus condemns — saying without doing. → Come Down, Don’t Delay
  • Parable of the workers in the vineyard (biblical) — Workers hired at different hours all receive the same denarius, showing grace is given equally regardless of when one comes to faith. → Not to Us
  • Parents who only give stuff (other) — Parents who merely hand over things without teaching you to be yourself illustrate that giving alone is not love. → Love Abides
  • Parents’ forbidden liquor cabinet (personal) — The adolescent pull toward the forbidden cabinet illustrates the false assumption that God withholds something good via the tree. → Anoint the Dust
  • Paris Summer Olympics family watching (personal) — The pastor’s family enjoying different Olympic sports illustrates the human drive to strive for excellence and greatness. → The Cup
  • Party that never gets old (other) — The new creation is the best party imaginable that never gets old, tiring, or boring, illustrating embodied eternal joy. → I Believe in the Resurrection of the Body and the Life Everlasting, I Believe in the Resurrection of the Body and the Life Everlasting
  • Pascal’s ‘you would not seek me if you had not already found me’ (literary) — Pascal’s line frames the Spirit as the consolation that inspires us to seek God again and again. → Ascension Sunday / Mother’s Day: Where Did Jesus Go?
  • Pascal’s Christ saying ‘you would not seek me’ (literary) — Pascal’s line that we’d not seek Christ unless already found, illustrating that seeking the kingdom is itself a sign it’s present → The Reign of the Spirit
  • Pascal’s console yourself (literary) — You would not seek me if you had not already found me — we cannot short-circuit the act of faith → The Portico of Solomon
  • Pascal’s wager / hedging bets (historical) — The rich giver diversifying his investments is framed as hedging his bets on God’s existence, unlike the widow who bets everything on God. → Two Economies: Heavenly Abundance and the Widow’s Mite
  • Pascal’s wager sermon series and the Mystery of Jesus (literary) — Last month’s Pascal series plus Pascal’s ‘you would not seek me if you had not found me’ frame seeking the true light. → The Star
  • Paschal Homily of St. John Chrysostom (historical) — The ancient Easter sermon proclaiming Christ’s victory and welcome of all laborers regardless of when they came, framing the whole service. → Easter Sunrise Service: The Paschal Homily of St. John Chrysostom, Easter Sunrise Service, Easter Sunrise Service, Easter Sunrise Service (Chrysostom Sermon), Easter Sunrise Service (Chrysostom’s Paschal Homily)
  • Passover and the death of Egypt’s firstborn (biblical) — The Exodus killing of innocent Egyptian sons is recapitulated in Herod’s slaughter, exposing the assumption that some deserve death → The Holy Innocents and the Problem of Evil
  • Passover and the Exodus (biblical) — Salvation of the Hebrews at the cost of Egyptian children and soldiers, another model where others are sacrificed. → How We Are Saved
  • Passover and the Exodus Flight (biblical) — The Hebrews flee Egypt without waiting for bread to rise, the origin of unleavened bread and freedom. → Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread
  • Passover house-cleaning before Jesus’s visit (biblical) — Bethany household clearing out leaven illustrates the awkward, upside-down moment in which Mary’s extravagant act breaks in → Extravagant Faith: Mary’s Anointing and the Gift of the Mitzvah
  • Passover Seder Dayenu (literary) — ‘It would have been enough’ becomes a frame for God’s abundant overflow in creation and salvation. → Distinctions: Message and Messenger in Creation
  • Passover Seder’s four questions (biblical) — The child asking why this night is different prompts us to ask why this morning of worship is different. → Praise
  • Pastor learning to run after college (personal) — Wilson’s struggle to build a running and morning rhythm models the daily, ongoing choice to follow Jesus. → Follow Me
  • Pastor Wilson’s military family lineage (personal) — His grandfathers (WWII Europe and Iwo Jima), great-grandfather (WWI France), father-in-law (IDF), and ancestors back to the Revolution illustrate his fascination with concrete military history despite never serving himself. → Who Suffered Under Pontius Pilate
  • Pastor’s advice to tell the story of your fears (personal) — Counsel to write down or share fears with a trusted friend shows that naming fears aloud makes them manageable and dispels them. → Holy Conferencing
  • Pastor’s family move to Bee Creek during the pandemic (personal) — Difficulty meeting new neighbors and the church amid distanced greetings and Evensong illustrates how hard neighboring has become. → Love Neighbor
  • Pastor’s Friday day off vs Sabbath (personal) — He takes Fridays off since he works Sundays, but insists Friday isn’t his Sabbath - Sabbath is God’s, never possessed by man. → The Voice of Sabbath
  • Pastor’s morning routine and Alina’s joke about sleeping till 8:45 (personal) — His prayer, workout, and language routine model starting each day with gratefulness and rhythm. → Follow Me
  • Pastor’s nonstandard ordination path (personal) — Going through UMC ordination ~15 years ago, he fit neither the seminary nor second-career bucket, illustrating not fitting easy categories. → The Voice of Sabbath
  • Pastor’s own version of Simeon’s song (personal) — His recently written paraphrase (‘All of my life… now I can sleep’) reimagines the Nunc Dimittis. → Three Ways of Saying Thank You
  • Pastor’s refusal to delegate in prior appointments (personal) — his independent insistence on doing everything himself robbed others of the opportunity to do a mitzvah → Extravagant Faith: Mary’s Anointing and the Gift of the Mitzvah
  • Pastor’s shy nature and dream vacation (personal) — The preacher’s shyness, dislike of phone calls, and reading-on-a-mountain dream vacation show that courage to evangelize comes only from God. → Love Abides
  • Pastor’s teenage independence by limiting his needs (personal) — His form of teenage rebellion was refusing to spend money or admit needs, illustrating how refusing to admit need keeps you from being helped or saved. → Why Is He Coming?
  • Patek Philippe watch and jet boat (other) — Luxury possessions that will burn away contrast with a neighbor’s love that endures into the new creation. → What do we hope for?
  • Paths painted with fake gold (other) — Destructive ways of life look appealing like fake gold but tear us from community, neighbor, and God. → The Birth of Jesus
  • Patient as a noun at the doctor (other) — A wordplay on ‘patient’—the doctor’s patient asked to be patience incarnate—to show love is patient and patience is love. → Elizabeth and Scott
  • Patrons painted into biblical scenes (historical) — Rich benefactors had painters insert themselves and their families into biblical scenes, showing how a society distorts sacred images to flatter itself. → Eye of the Camel
  • Patterns of grief like wearing black (other) — Cultural mourning customs show grief is a natural and valued response, not a negativity to be avoided. → What We Remember
  • Patton on fixed fortifications (historical) — General Patton’s quip that fixed fortifications are ‘a monument to man’s stupidity’ illustrates that a wall is useless without people to man it. → The Gate
  • Paul Simon, ‘50 Ways to Leave Your Lover’ (pop-culture) — The 1975 song’s litany of escape routes frames the sermon’s 12 ways we ‘leave our lover’-the God who loves us-by avoiding resurrection. → 12 Ways to Avoid Resurrection, 12 Ways to Avoid Resurrection
  • Paul’s résumé / CV of credentials (biblical) — Paul lists his Pharisaic credentials like a job application, yet even the ‘best’ could not save himself. → Who Gets to Be Saved
  • Pea-Soup Fog Driving (other) — Suffering limits vision like creeping through thick fog where you can barely recognize what is right in front of you. → Restless with Suffering
  • Peace/Piece homophone (literary) — The homophone peace/piece (whole vs. part) frames how Jesus gives true peace and how we honor a piece of Glynis. → Glynis Frye Memorial
  • Pecan pie out of a hot oven (nature) — Grabbing a hot pan without a mitt and getting burned shows the world’s immediate action/reaction consequences, contrasted with the delayed consequences of Matthew 25. → New Year’s Eve (Christ the King Sunday)
  • Pelagius (historical) — The 5th-century English writer’s emphasis on a moral life apart from grace exemplifies the tragedy of works-righteousness. → What Should We Do to Be Saved?
  • Pennsylvania Brethren baptism schism (historical) — A church split over whether baptism required moving or still water, conveniently aligning with each congregation’s distance from a river, showing how absurd-seeming divisions felt vital to those involved. → We are One
  • Pennsylvania Brethren baptism split (historical) — A sect dividing over baptism in moving versus still water shows how geography and context shaped the Jew-Samaritan divide. → Love Neighbor
  • Pennsylvania judge’s sentencing before lunch (current-events) — A study found a judge gave harsher sentences right before lunch and lighter ones after, showing how low blood sugar affects judgment. → First Attempt (Temptation of Jesus)
  • Pentecost tongues of fire (biblical) — The disciples letting the Spirit in at Pentecost illustrates transformation that comes from lowering our guard in worship. → Trouble in River City
  • People at Safeway and Costco (personal) — The strangers we pass at Safeway, Costco, and restaurants are the ordinary people to whom we have freedom to be light. → Broken Rod
  • People we pass at HEB and Costco (personal) — The freedom in Christ frees us to love the ordinary people we pass daily rather than walking by them in anxiety. → Broken Rod
  • Perfume covering the smell of rot (other) — Herod’s fine purple cloth, gold, and perfumes covered a heart at war with itself and the smell of rot. → Reset Your House
  • Personal brushes with the justice system (personal) — His minimal encounters (family court, traffic stops, cops checking a backyard fire) show experience shapes one’s idea of justice. → Justice
  • Personal budgets reveal desires (other) — How we spend our money and time reveals what we truly value and whether we live by generosity or scarcity, hope or fear. → Trinity Sunday
  • Pestering the lapsed about God (personal) — Nagging someone who has turned from God only pushes them away; like the waiting father, we must wait and show love instead. → Being Sheep
  • Peter and John’s foot race to the tomb (biblical) — John (the ‘beloved disciple’) winning the race to the empty tomb in his own Gospel, showing John’s account as uniquely eager and coy. → The Concrete Faith of Thomas
  • Peter Bohler conversations (historical) — Bohler’s confident assurance of faith moves Wesley toward his own → The Calling and the Called
  • Peter Comforting Jesus Like a Child (other) — Peter rebukes Jesus the way one consoles a child teased by ‘Mary Margaret,’ missing that Jesus must walk the road to the cross. → Restless with Suffering
  • Peter drawing his sword for Jesus (biblical) — Peter’s misguided sword-drawing illustrates a disciple seeking Jesus’ good even without understanding. → Wherever You Go
  • Peter Maurin: ‘make it easier for people to be good’ (historical) — The French mystic (Catholic Worker co-founder) cited as the preacher’s vision for the church removing barriers rather than guilting people into goodness. → Sacred Story: Aligning Our Lives with Who We Claim to Be, Our Sacred Story, The Church of the Future
  • Peter praised then rebuked as Satan (biblical) — Jesus praising Peter for confessing the Messiah and then saying ‘Get behind me Satan’ shows Jesus sees us for who we are, not who we think we are. → New Year’s Eve (Christ the King Sunday)
  • Peter preaching at Pentecost (biblical) — Many had heard the resurrection message before yet were transformed by the Spirit at Pentecost, showing the Spirit changes those who receive it. → Pentecost
  • Peter says it’s too early to be drunk (biblical) — Peter’s claim that the disciples aren’t drunk because it’s only 9am, joked as showing Peter hadn’t met many real drunks, illustrating the crowd’s confusion at Pentecost. → Show Us the Father
  • Peter the denier preaching at Pentecost (biblical) — A fisherman who denied Jesus three times became the voice through whom God transformed the world at Pentecost. → Revival
  • Peter wanting to build a house on the mountain (biblical) — Peter’s desire to stay and build dwellings illustrates the temptation to cling to the mountaintop instead of descending toward the cross. → Who Is Jesus? The Transfiguration
  • Peter’s Pentecost sermon and the 9am drunk joke (biblical) — Peter jokes the disciples can’t be drunk at 9am, framing Pentecost as the birthday of the church. → The Church in the Past
  • Peter’s threefold denial (biblical) — The eager disciple who saw the glory later denies Jesus, showing that failure does not negate a genuine encounter with God. → Who Is Jesus? The Transfiguration
  • Peter, James, and Paul leaving their old lives (biblical) — Peter and James leaving their nets and Paul abandoning his life as persecutor show that following the Spirit means change and letting go. → Aerodynamics
  • Pharaoh who did not know Joseph (biblical) — A new king who no longer remembers Israel’s story sees them only as a numerous, unknown threat and moves to oppress them, illustrating fear of what is not understood. → Who Do You Say That I Am?
  • Pharisees are fair, Sadducees are sad (other) — English mnemonic distinguishing the legalistic Pharisees from the Sadducees who made a deal with Rome → Under the Wing
  • Philippians 2 Christ hymn (biblical) — Quoted to show Peter wanted Jesus to exploit, not empty, his equality with God — the theological heart of the rebuke. → Peter Wants the Warmth Without the Weight
  • Pick a room and examine its objects (personal) — Practical invitation to choose one room, look at the objects, and prayerfully ask whether each draws you toward or away from God. → Reset Your House
  • Picky Youngest Child at Bedtime (personal) — His son claims hunger but refuses fruit, showing the difference between need and mere want. → Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread
  • Picturing a chair, cat, or baby vanishing into nothing (other) — Conveys the absolute void before creation by imagining a familiar object ceasing to exist. → The Gift of the Trinity
  • Pilgrims and Roman numerals in old-city Jerusalem (nature) — Groups of pilgrims tracing the stations marked by Roman numerals on Jerusalem’s walls embody entering deeply into Christ’s passion. → Waving from the Sideline
  • Pious old woman (Aquinas) (literary) — Aquinas’s line that all theology articulates what one pious old woman believes shows theology serves faith, not vice versa. → Justice
  • Pirate Treasure Map (pop-culture) — Pirates chase a mapped treasure, an image of the goals that drive our stories. → What Is My Sacred Story?
  • Pirelli tires and regulated power units in Formula 1 (pop-culture) — Because power units and tires are standardized, aerodynamics is what separates teams, just as how the church meets the world distinguishes it. → Aerodynamics
  • Pizza Hut as largest kale buyer (pop-culture) — In the 90s Pizza Hut bought the most kale just to decorate salad bars, proving tastes and habits can change. → Reset Your Body, Reset Your Body
  • Plato’s Allegory of the Cave (literary) — Plato’s prisoners watching shadows on the wall depicts humanity mistaking shadows for reality and needing to climb out to see the truth, a salvation narrative. → Where Are We
  • Plato’s Cave (literary) — Plato’s allegory of the cave (paideia vs logos) frames darkness and light as ancient metaphors for ignorance and truth. → Animals and God’s Promise (Children’s Message): The True Light Already Shines
  • Playing basketball with his kids (personal) — Blocking his sons’ shots vs. getting rejected illustrates how rejection feels bad but can be moved past → The Harvest
  • Playing Hunter / keeping a promise to play (personal) — Children’s message: agreeing to play together but not following through isn’t fun, illustrating that following God means doing what we say we’ll do. → Antichrist: Becoming the Villain
  • Playing poker with grandfather John Huebel (personal) — Childhood poker games (five card draw ‘Dr. Pepper’ wild cards) set up the poker adage about deception and being the sucker. → Love Believes All
  • Playing the Ball Where It Lies (other) — The golf temptation to move a bad lie when nobody is watching illustrates honest confession of sin versus pretending to God that the bad shot never happened. → Start From Where You Are
  • Plugging ears singing la-la-la (other) — We plug our ears and sing ‘La, la, la!’ to avoid uncomfortable truths — image of willful deafness to reality. → Be Opened
  • Plugging your ears, la la la (other) — The antichrist move of ignoring the world’s pain just to feel good about oneself → Original Sin
  • Plutonium (other) — Plutonium doesn’t look powerful yet is deadly by radiation even before becoming a bomb, illustrating tremendous power hidden in unremarkable-looking things. → Spicy Mustard
  • Pogroms and Jews expelled to Poland (historical) — Centuries of antisemitic pogroms (often scapegoating Jews for plagues) and the 14th-century expulsion from Germany illustrate the deadly fruit of supersessionism. → Arise, Shine: The Light of Epiphany and the Grafting In of the Gentiles
  • Point de vue du Gras by Nicéphore Niépce (historical) — The earliest photograph (held in Austin) marks how humans began capturing images in a new way. → All Peoples and Creatures
  • Polishing a car under grackles (nature) — A freshly polished car ruined by a colony of grackles shows what baptism is NOT—not a wash job undone by later sin. → Aldersgate
  • Politicians racing to talking points (current-events) — Modern politicians and online users regurgitating talking points show the collapse of honest debate. → The Church in the Present
  • Pope Francis’s field hospital after battle (current-events) — Pope Francis’s image of the church as a field hospital that heals wounds first rather than checking cholesterol, modeling mercy-centered community over purity. → Field Hospital
  • Possessing a car, watch, or cat (other) — We cannot possess Jesus the way we possess a car, watch, or cat, raising the question of what it means to ‘have’ God’s Son. → Having the Son: Living a More Real Life by Faith
  • Post-COVID churchgoers who never returned (current-events) — People who got used to sleeping in during COVID closures and never came back illustrates drifting faith and the question ‘why are you here.’ → Faith the Size of a Mustard Seed
  • Potter Stewart ‘know it when I see it’ (historical) — Justice Stewart’s famous phrase illustrates how justice often goes unarticulated yet recognizable. → Justice
  • Pour one out (other) — Extended metaphor of dumping out and pouring out every non-love desire (anger, pride, jealousy) to show those things are not who we truly are. → Who is Christ?
  • Practicing 10,000 hours and still not matching elite athletes (pop-culture) — No amount of practice makes one throw like Aaron Rodgers/Tom Brady or shoot like Steph Curry, showing the limits of will against given ability. → Freedom in Christ
  • Practicing double bass for four hours (personal) — The preacher lost himself practicing string bass so completely he forgot to eat, illustrating how the crowd was so absorbed in Jesus’s word they weren’t thinking about food. → How many people did Jesus feed?
  • Praise music vs. hymns (other) — Distinguishing the modern genre of praise music from biblical praise in Psalm 150. → Praise
  • Praising a newborn or a dog (personal) — Everyday praise (good boy, muddy dog) illustrates praise as response after the fact. → Praise
  • Pray for the Longhorns to win (personal) — McCabe’s counsel to pray for what you actually want so God can shape your desires → Prayer
  • Pray, Preach, or Die (personal) — A teacher’s saying that a Christian preacher should always be ready to pray, preach, or die points to the stark question of where one’s faith lies. → Jesus Wept
  • Prayer as Entirely Useless Time (other) — A teacher’s image of prayer as unproductive lingering at the beach with someone you love, no heavenly resume points gained. → Come and See
  • Prayer as honored ambassador (other) — Prayer stands before God as an honored ambassador, giving joy to the spirit and peace to the heart. → Prayer and Converse with God Is a Supreme Good
  • Prayer as lingering at the beach (other) — A teacher’s image of prayer as ‘entirely useless time’—like lingering at the beach with a loved one—illustrates prayer as unproductive, loving presence with God. → Come and See
  • Prayer is like falling in love / lingering at the beach (other) — extended metaphor that prayer is unproductive, timeless presence with a beloved → Prayer
  • Prayer is like throwing up to God (personal) — A teacher’s image that prayer means putting everything out before God without self-consciousness. → The Birth of Jesus
  • Prayer journal during COVID (personal) — Elizabeth wrote Scott’s name in her prayer journal during COVID and prayed ‘Lord, where have all the good men gone,’ illustrating answered prayer. → Elizabeth and Scott
  • Prayer of Saint Francis choir anthem (literary) — The choir’s anthem on St. Francis’s prayer models the self-giving life of love that consoles, understands, and gives. → The Cup
  • Prayer stained glass window at Covenant UMC (personal) — the church window anchoring this entry in the sermon series, framing prayer as a response to God → Prayer
  • Praying instead of saying I’ll pray for you (personal) — Show love by actually praying, loving, and forgiving rather than merely announcing it. → Cantata: Show, Don’t Tell
  • Preacher always wanting to remain silent (personal) — The preacher admits he’s bad at these games and instinctively chooses silence/cooperation over the ‘rational’ betrayal. → Love of God, Love of Neighbor
  • Preacher has never murdered but fails to love (personal) — Confession showing the love commandments are far harder than the Ten Commandments → The Ten Commandments
  • Preaching the lectionary vs. self-chosen series (personal) — His move from lectionary preaching to elaborate self-chosen sermon series, which became too focused on himself, illustrates the value of receiving a text rather than choosing the easy path. → Not Easy to Watch
  • Premarital counseling, telling the love story (personal) — Asking a couple to each tell how they met yields fresh perspectives, like the two creation accounts. → Anoint the Dust
  • Preppers stockpiling for disaster (current-events) — Being ready for the Son of Man is not hoarding food and water like a doomsday prepper but refusing to delay love, service, and worship. → Mercy Revealed
  • Pretending to run out of gas on the lake (other) — Refusing help while stranded and claiming ‘I meant to run out of gas’ pictures how we cling to our vices and victimhood even after encountering Jesus. → How many people did Jesus feed?
  • Prevent Defense in Football (pop-culture) — Teams late in a game play a fearful prevent defense focused on tomorrow’s outcome, like Christians who mitigate injustice instead of boldly confronting it in the present. → Broken Rod, Broken Rod
  • Priests as roughnecks (other) — Levitical priests worked two-weeks-on, two-weeks-off like oil roughnecks because the bloody slaughter work was so hard. → Magnify
  • Prodigal son’s older brother (biblical) — The resentful older brother seeking his own glory illustrates the jealousy faithful Christians feel toward latecomers receiving grace. → Not to Us
  • Professor on Orthodox-Catholic reunion (personal) — A professor predicted the Eastern Orthodox and Catholic churches will never reunite because they would never agree on who controls the property. → We are One
  • Prophet of the stock market (other) — A market ‘prophet’ predicts the future, unlike Isaiah, showing biblical prophecy is not mere future-prediction. → The Prophecy
  • Pros and cons list (personal) — The discomfort of weighing arguments for and against introduces the idea of counting the cost of following Jesus. → The Cost
  • Protective gear and the X-ray room (personal) — Wearing protective gear (lab gloves, X-ray shielding) signals an activity isn’t safe, illustrating that difficult faith requires the armor of God. → This Teaching is Difficult
  • Pruitt residence phone answering as a child (personal) — Answering the home phone that was never for him shows how little we expect a call to be for us. → Screening God’s Call
  • Pruitt-Igoe Housing Project (historical) — The state-of-the-art St. Louis housing complex funded to build but with no funding to maintain illustrates that the real cost of any building is in upkeep and rebuilding, not construction. → Come and See the Trouble — Come and Start Rebuilding
  • Psyche vs. Zao Greek word study (literary) — Distinguishes psyche (soul/essence of who you are) from zao (mere biological living) to argue Jesus means loving your true self, not loving being alive. → Fragments
  • Psychology as ‘study of souls’ (literary) — The Greek ‘psyche’ behind ‘psychology’ shows the soul (nephesh) is the life-force, not a body-separated entity. → Reset Your Soul
  • Pulled Over by Lakeway PD (personal) — Getting pulled over for going 31 on Lakewood Boulevard right after doing a good turn shows we live in a broken world where rain falls on just and unjust alike. → Where Are We
  • Pulling the Not-Carrot (personal) — The instinct to yank an obvious weed so the carrots can grow illustrates our natural urge to judge and uproot others. → Waiting
  • Pulling weeds by the roots (nature) — Pulling only the green tops leaves the roots, so weeds return, explaining ‘radical’ change to the roots. → The Bread of Life: What Are You Hungry For?
  • Putting on Our Nicodemus Hats at the Table (personal) — Imagining communion through an outsider’s shock (‘Are you cannibals?’) argues the faithful response is to take the sacrament more seriously, not less. → Go From Your Country
  • QR code to website stations page (current-events) — A handout QR code links to an online stations walkthrough so the mobility-challenged can still pray through Christ’s passion. → Waving from the Sideline
  • Quentyn and plot armor in A Dance with Dragons (pop-culture) — George R.R. Martin’s character Quentyn believes he has ‘plot armor’ and is the story’s center, but is burned by a dragon instead of becoming king, illustrating the deadly illusion of thinking we are the center of the story. → Who Sits Upon the Throne
  • Quid pro quo / ‘friend in Jesus’ (other) — The transactional ‘do this and Jesus will do that’ bargaining that instrumentalizes Jesus, which the Transfiguration refuses. → The Transfiguration
  • Quirinius, Governor of Syria (historical) — The biographical detail of Quirinius (consul, tutor to Augustus’s heir, governor) shows the named Roman power-figures of history are precisely the ones God did NOT enter history through. → Christmas Eve: God Enters History
  • Rabbi Seated to Teach (historical) — Second Temple teaching took place with the rabbi seated and students gathered around, so to bring children to Jesus was to seek to have them taught. → Like a Child
  • Rachel and Tanner met through work (personal) — Rachel noticed Tanner at morning meetings in the same work unit, then moved into the same apartment, before a non-work text led to their first date. → Rachel and Tanner
  • Radical means getting to the roots (literary) — The etymology of ‘radical’ (root) illustrates that Christian faith stands on nothing beneath Jesus Christ. → How We Are Saved
  • Raising chickens and vegetables in Jolleyville (personal) — Childhood self-sufficiency, growing food with family after moving to Jolleyville. → Memorial for Estalena Ferguson Aylieff, A Service of Death and Resurrection for Estalena Ferguson Aylieff
  • Rare cancer treatment news (other) — Hearing of a new treatment for a rare cancer and joining a study as a rare example of news that is earnestly something you genuinely need. → Good News: What Is Evangelism?
  • Rashi on Hagar as Pharaoh’s daughter (literary) — Rashi’s midrash that Hagar was a daughter of Pharaoh who chose to be a handmaid in Sarah’s house, illustrating the rabbinic reading of Genesis 16. → Hagar, Sarah, and the Birth of a People
  • Rashi on naming Ishmael (literary) — Rashi’s claim that the Holy Spirit rested on Abram so he named Ishmael though he had not heard the angel’s words. → Hagar, Sarah, and the Birth of a People
  • Rashi on the angels sent to Hagar (literary) — Rashi’s note that a separate angel was sent for each statement to Hagar, explaining the repeated ‘and an angel said to her.’ → Hagar, Sarah, and the Birth of a People
  • Raspberries on Isle Royale (personal) — Eating ripe wild raspberries alone for an hour after dodging a moose, illustrating the strange power of a fruit-bearing tree in full fruit. → Fruitfulness
  • Rasputin, theosophy, and Aleister Crowley (historical) — The early-1900s occult revival (Crowley influencing Hubbard/Scientology and an Ozzy Osbourne song) shows astrology never went away. → The Star
  • Ravens and lilies of the field (nature) — Jesus’ images of birds God feeds and lilies God clothes, illustrating freedom from anxiety over consumption. → The Gift of Jesus
  • Raymond Brown on the magi (literary) — Scholar’s reflection that the Gentile magi meet God through nature but need the Scriptures to find the Messiah. → The Prophecy
  • Raymond Brown’s planetary conjunction theory (literary) — Brown’s The Birth of the Messiah argues a planetary conjunction best explains the unusually bright Christmas star. → The Star
  • Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (literary) — Carver’s story names the ambiguity of the English word ‘love’ that Jesus’ command does not share. → A New Commandment
  • Reading Bible stories to preschoolers (personal) — Young children’s literalism (Noah, wise man on the rock, This Little Light of Mine) shows how the capacity for symbol develops. → Symbols and Signs
  • Reading Hebrew in Genesis 1 vs Genesis 2 (personal) — The preacher can read Genesis 1 but not Genesis 2 in Hebrew, showing how different the two accounts are. → Anoint the Dust
  • Reading John 14 at funerals (personal) — The pastor’s habit of reading John 14 at memorial services illustrates the passage’s power to offer hope and consolation in the face of trouble. → The Joy of the Lord is Our Strength
  • Reading the Bible as a college freshman (personal) — Personal discovery that the Ten Commandments aren’t central and ‘the law’ means all of Torah → The Ten Commandments
  • Reading the Bible like a mystery novel with a known ending (literary) — A teacher’s advice to read Scripture like a whodunit whose twist (Christ is risen) you already know, so you can spot all the clues. → The Church of the Future
  • Reading The Hobbit aloud as a family (personal) — frames the sermon: the quiet, character-focused life mirrors the undramatic work of sanctification → Sanctification
  • Real life Minecraft (Hunter) (personal) — Brief reference to playing real-life Minecraft with Hunter, evoking imaginative child’s play that holds a real and unreal world together. → Having the Son: Living a More Real Life by Faith
  • Reality TV and Survivor (pop-culture) — Reality shows hand the audience someone to root for and despise, the same black-and-white framing we wrongly impose on Scripture. → Election, Not Selection
  • Rear guard military term (historical) — A rear guard protects a marching army’s flank so the rest can face forward, picturing God as our rear guard freeing us to shine. → Light of the World
  • Rear naked choke and the ukulele intro video (personal) — Wilson’s Brazilian jiu-jitsu practice as family discipline frames faith as showing up through difficulty, not mastery. → Jacob’s Grappling Technique
  • Receiving a gift and shelving it (other) — thanking someone for a gift then forgetting it on a shelf, illustrating how we neglect the undeserved gift of the Spirit given at baptism → The Reign of the Spirit
  • Receiving visitors mid-cleaning (personal) — the discomfort of guests arriving while your house is torn apart, paralleling the household’s distraction when Jesus comes → Extravagant Faith: Mary’s Anointing and the Gift of the Mitzvah
  • Recounting a trip in full detail (other) — Relaying every detail of a trip would take as long as the trip itself, so stories must be summarized to be meaningful. → What We Remember
  • Red Sea movies (pop-culture) — The Ten Commandments and The Prince of Egypt making the Red Sea iconic, contrasted with the lesser-known rock-at-Meribah miracle done by the same staff. → Give Me Water
  • Redwood seed comparison (nature) — If Jesus had preached on the Pacific coast he might have used the redwood seed — small but growing into the largest living organism — to make the same point about small faith yielding immense growth. → Faith the Size of a Mustard Seed
  • Refilling the Oil Lamp (literary) — An oil lamp runs out unless refilled, picturing the need to replenish our light through prayer, worship, scripture, and serving together. → Broken Rod
  • Refilling the oil lamp (biblical) — Keeping a first-century oil lamp lit by refilling it pictures sustaining our light through prayer, worship, scripture, and service. → Broken Rod
  • Refiner’s Fire (other) — The Spirit as a refining fire that burns away what is not love, also the fire of creation and Pentecost still spreading today. → Credo: I Believe in the Holy Spirit
  • Reformation cutting of feast days as inefficient labor market (historical) — Protestant suppression of saints’ days and holidays explains why Christians came to be seen as joyless rather than celebratory. → Jesus Likes to Party
  • Refusing to ask for advice on plumbing or technology (personal) — The preacher’s stubborn pride in solving home problems alone illustrates how hard and humbling it is to admit need. → Lead Us Not into Temptation
  • Rehearsal of Concept (R.O.C.) military dry walk-through (historical) — The US military’s pre-rescue planning practice illustrates the complex logistical effort behind the cave rescue and salvation. → How We Are Saved
  • Reimagining property insurance (other) — An extended metaphor framing a church’s existential risk through the lens of property insurance. → Shifting A Church’s Risk Profile
  • Remembering baptism through those who loved you (personal) — Those baptized as infants remember through the people present, illustrating that faith is communal memory → Remember and Be Thankful
  • Remembering Bob Weeks and Bob Fossick (personal) — The preacher’s gratitude for two departed members models inhaling and being inspired by the memory of the saints. → What We Remember
  • Remodeling a home vs. building up (other) — Extended metaphor that an addition or remodel is not a true build-up, contrasting superficial change with love that constructs from the ground up. → Love Builds Up
  • Removing rocks from a child’s path (personal) — A parent clearing stumbling stones he once tripped on illustrates making goodness easier without forcing it. → The Church of the Future
  • Renaissance painting of a camel inside a needle (historical) — A rich Renaissance patron commissioned a painting of a tiny camel drawn inside a needle’s eye to exempt himself from Jesus’ warning to the rich. → Eye of the Camel
  • Render unto Caesar (biblical) — Jesus’ teaching on coins bearing Caesar’s image illustrates biblical citizenship as the question ‘who are your people?’ → The Gate
  • Renting AFI top-100 films from Hastings as a kid (personal) — Preacher’s boyhood habit of systematically renting every classic film introduces his love of movies and sets up the Casablanca illustration. → Restless with the Past
  • Repainting the altar / changing the chair (other) — An altar repainted or a chair re-cushioned stays itself, illustrating accidents versus the substance that makes a thing what it is. → Do this!
  • Rescued from drowning (other) — The asymmetry between thanking a stranger and thanking the one who saves you from drowning shows the deeper, asymmetrical praise owed to God. → Praise
  • Resentful cousin and leaf-blowing neighbor (personal) — Everyday grudges show that giving God our heart means concretely letting go of resentment. → The Gift
  • Resetting a frozen computer (personal) — Growing up with an Apple IIe and early Macintosh, learning that a stuck computer just needs a reset without asking why, contrasted with how much harder it is to reset our lives. → Reset Your House
  • Resetting a frozen computer or router (personal) — Growing up with an Apple IIe and Macintosh; the genius-bar fix of just resetting a stuck machine, no ego, models how a new year lets us reset our lives. → Reset Your House
  • Restless in the barber’s and dentist’s chair (personal) — Childhood inability to sit still illustrates restlessness as the mind longing to be elsewhere doing other things. → Restless
  • Restless Scrolling and Switching Hobbies (current-events) — People skim Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok and switch sports and hobbies, restlessly seeking the bread of life. → Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread
  • Restoring an old desk with toxic wood stripper (personal) — God strips and rebuilds us like a carpenter disassembling, stripping, and regluing furniture → The Mercy of Fire
  • Resurrected Christ showing his scars (biblical) — Christ kept his wounds after resurrection, showing healing does not erase our experiences and we can look broken to the world yet whole to God. → Healing Wounds
  • Retirement from the French for retreat (other) — The word’s origin shows there is a legitimate Christian place for retreat and stepping away to clear the head. → Freedom for Neighbor
  • Revelation read since c.390 as the struggle within the human heart (historical) — Since about 390 some Christians have read Revelation not as us-versus-them but as the struggle within the heart between Babylon and the one on the throne, putting responsibility on us to live a heavenly life now. → Who Sits Upon the Throne
  • Revoked Visitor Card (personal) — Pastor tells new members their visitor card is revoked and they must now welcome others, illustrating membership as servanthood. → Privilege
  • Rich Uncle’s Estate / Severance Package (other) — Treating God’s love like inheriting a rich uncle’s estate or a three-month severance illustrates the wrong, passive way to receive the gift of God. → Us and Them
  • Rich young man told to sell everything (biblical) — Jesus’ undetailed command to “sell everything” shows how his teachings usually lack specifics, making the very precise colt instructions strikingly odd. → Palm Sunday: From Hosanna to Passion, Waving from the Sideline
  • Rich Young Ruler and Zacchaeus (biblical) — The rich young ruler put a limit on his generosity and stopped short, while Zacchaeus let God transform him without limit. → What Is My Sacred Story?
  • Richard Bauckham on creator and lamb as theological center (literary) — Scholar Richard Bauckham’s claim that the creator and the lamb are the theological center of Revelation, framing the chapter 4 throne vision at the heart of the created order. → Who Sits Upon the Throne
  • Righteous posters vs. righteous people (current-events) — Social-media commenting and judging people online, illustrating that God calls us to build up neighbors on the internet, not to be righteous posters. → Love Builds Up
  • Rivendell / the Last Homely House (literary) — good days are ‘soon told and not much to listen to,’ like the gradual, undramatic story of sanctification → Sanctification
  • Road to Emmaus breaking of bread (biblical) — Jesus breaking bread opens the disciples’ eyes, underscoring the bodily nature of the resurrection. → Reset Your Body
  • Road to Emmaus unrecognized Jesus (biblical) — The disciples not recognizing the risen Jesus shows the life to come is a transformed, different kind of life. → What We Remember
  • Robert Altman and the MAS*H loudspeaker/PA announcements (pop-culture) — Altman’s director’s commentary on adding the base loudspeaker and Radar O’Reilly’s announcements as a unifying visual thread — ‘otherwise we might as well call it radio’ — illustrates that faith must be lived/visible action, not mere internal voice-over. → Faith the Size of a Mustard Seed
  • Robert Caro on the Texas hill country (literary) — Caro’s LBJ biography calls the hill country ‘a trap baited with water’—green-looking but too dry to farm, like rocky soil that looks good but can’t sustain roots. → Growth
  • Robert Frost’s ‘The Road Not Taken’ (literary) — two diverging roads, read as a paraphrase of Jesus’ narrow/wide gate, showing we cannot travel both paths at once → The Reign of the Spirit
  • Robert Grosseteste’s Optics (historical) — A medieval monk wrote the West’s first scientific text on light, driven by Scripture’s centrality of light to who God is, marking a breakthrough in empirical science. → Arise, Shine: The Light of Epiphany and the Grafting In of the Gentiles
  • Rock bottom as a cave, not a valley (other) — Unlike a valley you can see, a cave hides the floor, so you only know rock bottom after you’ve hit it and start coming back up. → He Descended into the Dead
  • Rocky training montage (pop-culture) — Jacob has no off-page training montage; his ‘technique’ is grit and refusal to let go, not preparation. → Jacob’s Grappling Technique
  • Roman Consuls and the January Calendar (historical) — Julius Caesar’s calendar and the one-year, prosecution-immune Roman consulship illustrate why the new year was tumultuous and politically charged, including possible influence on US inauguration timing. → Freedom: A New Covenant for a New Year
  • Roman emperor in the Coliseum (historical) — Thumbs up/down emperor rejected as a false image of God who instead is the God of resurrection. → Drawn by the Father
  • Roman roads (historical) — Rome endured by maintaining roads, but building them stripped the soil—roads link communities yet are themselves barren, like trampled hearts. → Growth
  • Roman triumph slave whispering Memento Mori (historical) — The slave reminding the victorious general ‘you will die’ warns against the intoxication of self-glory and ignoring God. → Screening God’s Call
  • Romans 8’s ‘more than conquerors’ (biblical) — Paul’s assurance that nothing — including angels or demons — can separate believers from the love of God, used as the climactic ground for letting go of fear about spiritual forces. → Jacob’s Ladder
  • Romans Road / sinner’s prayer (other) — Common evangelism methods that stop at justification, used as a foil for the fuller Wesleyan understanding of salvation. → What is Salvation?
  • Rome claiming every story and the stolen Menorah (historical) — Rome swept across the world claiming each people’s story as its own (stealing the Temple Menorah, granting citizenship with bread and trial rights), a life-denying counterfeit to the throne of heaven that Revelation exposes. → Who Sits Upon the Throne
  • Rome’s hunger for honor in battle (historical) — Ancient men needed war every 20-40 years to prove their worth, showing the worldly link between conflict and identity. → Heavenly Battles
  • Romeo and Juliet balcony scene (“What’s in a name?”) (literary) — Juliet’s “a rose by any other name” speech frames the sermon’s central question of what a name is and whether it matters. → God Told Adam and Eve
  • Rorschach test (other) — Jesus functioning as a Rorschach test of sorts illustrates how people project and read themselves onto Christ. → We Are God’s Children, But We Are Not Finished Yet
  • Roster of conquering generals (historical) — Napoleon, Robert E. Lee, Grant, Pershing, Patton, and Nimitz represent the worldly power our God refused, choosing to lose so our souls could win. → Who Suffered Under Pontius Pilate
  • Roughneck on an Oil Rig (other) — Zechariah’s rotational temple priesthood compared to two-weeks-on, two-weeks-off rig work, both intense and bloody. → He Ascended into Heaven
  • Rowan Williams debating Richard Dawkins (current-events) — Williams telling Dawkins that a God who is just part of material existence cannot save us illustrates that the Creator must transcend creation to be Savior. → I Believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth
  • Rowan Williams interview on judgment (current-events) — The former archbishop argues judgment is on love, not rule-keeping, and ‘the next thirty seconds are decisive,’ framing the sermon’s title. → The Next Thirty Seconds
  • Rowan Williams quote on blessedness (literary) — ‘To be blessed is simply to be where God would have you be’ defines blessedness as God’s presence, not achievement. → Saints and Sinners
  • Rowan Williams, Tokens of Trust (literary) — Williams’s reflection on knowing God as faithful love and mercy illustrates a God who refuses to be fitted into our categories. → Shining
  • Roxanne Quimby and Burt’s Bees land donation (historical) — Founder of Burt’s Bees donated 87,500 Maine acres, framing the trail’s setting → Communion
  • Royce Gracie winning the first UFC (pop-culture) — The unassuming ‘guy in pajamas’ who wasn’t even the best in his family won by showing up, mirroring Jacob’s unlikely strength. → Jacob’s Grappling Technique
  • Rudyard Kipling’s poem ‘If’ (literary) — Its vision of manhood and keeping one’s head offers a virtue-based reason not to panic, short of the Christian one. → Don’t Panic
  • Rule of threes (three hours/days/weeks) (other) — The survival adage about shelter, water, and food all serve the larger goal of being rescued. → Rescue
  • Rumbling bellies when a preacher runs long (personal) — Churchgoers always notice missed lunch and grow restless — unlike the crowd so hungry for the word they ignored their hunger. → Why Do We Worship? The Assembly and the Bread of Life
  • Running again after COVID and ankle surgery (personal) — The preacher’s loss of running to a bone tumor and ankle surgery, then resuming training for a half marathon, frames love as a practice requiring discipline and recovery. → Palm Sunday
  • Running hills around Lakeway (personal) — Struggling with unpracticed hill runs shows that loving enemies and forgiving the unforgivable takes practice. → Palm Sunday
  • Running pace-setters (personal) — Pace-setters who run segments alongside an athlete illustrate fellow Christians who walk the journey of faith with us and for whom we set the pace. → The Race
  • Ruth the welcomed foreigner (biblical) — Ruth the alien and stranger who clung to Naomi and became grandmother of David and a cornerstone for Christ, a model of clinging to Jesus. → Whose Name?
  • Ruth, the non-Jewish great-grandmother of David (biblical) — Ruth’s inclusion proves Matthew’s genealogy is not about pure Jewish blood but God’s relationship with the world. → Emmanuel = Mercy
  • Sabbath-Washing (other) — First-century parallel to cross-washing: keeping one ritual habit to claim superiority over even the anointed one of God. → Privilege
  • Sack of Rome (historical) — The sack of Rome serves as an example of the external threats the church contends with during the present millennial age. → Revelation Notes
  • Sacrificing the queen in chess (other) — Treating ‘be last to be first’ as a winning strategy misses the point, like a temporary sacrifice to ultimately dominate. → Last Place
  • Sailboat on Lake LBJ (personal) — Taking out his cousin’s unfamiliar sailboat and being unable to do nothing once launched illustrates that the question of God leaves no neutral, do-nothing option. → The Wager (Part 1)
  • Saint Crispin’s Day speech from Shakespeare’s Henry V (literary) — Henry’s ‘we band of brothers’ battle speech, contrasted with the life of faith where the battle is already won — our job is to witness to Christ’s victory, not fight for it. → Reset Your World
  • Saint Francis selling everything (historical) — God’s call to Francis to sell all and give to the poor, raised to argue that the God who called Francis is the same God who calls us today. → Sacred Story: Aligning Our Lives with Who We Claim to Be
  • Saint Francis selling everything for the poor (historical) — Shows God still calls people to radical transformation; the God of Francis is not different from God today. → Our Sacred Story
  • Sainte-Chapelle in Paris (historical) — Cited as a favorite example of Christian stained-glass art → The Ten Commandments
  • Sales and ‘getting to the close’ (other) — The salesperson chasing the close stands for the peddler Paul warns against, contrasted with being a people of sincerity. → Sacred Story: Aligning Our Lives with Who We Claim to Be
  • Salespeople trying to get to the close (other) — Contrasts a peddler chasing the sale with the church as a people of sincerity seeking transformation. → Our Sacred Story
  • Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well (biblical) — The unclean Samaritan offered living water shows God’s grace reaches us where and as we are. → Water
  • Samaritan’s Purse nonprofit (current-events) — The large relief nonprofit named for the Samaritan shows how the figure gets idealized in culture. → Love Neighbor
  • Samson as the Jewish Goliath (biblical) — Samson, given great strength but undone by pride, foreshadows the danger of being the powerful one who is blinded by his gifts. → David and Goliath
  • Samuel anointing David over his brothers (biblical) — God passes over the strong, handsome brothers to choose young David, because God sees the heart, not the outside. → Love Does Not Seek Its Own
  • Samuel Wesley’s Latin commentary on Job (historical) — Samuel Wesley hiring curates so he could work on his Job commentary sets up how John came home to serve as curate of Wroot. → The Holy Club
  • Santa Pudenziana apse mosaic (historical) — Post-Constantine majesty creeping into depictions of Jesus → If Jesus Drew a Portrait of You
  • Sarah and Elizabeth’s symmetry (biblical) — Elizabeth (like Sarah) is too old and Mary too young—two barrennesses God overcomes. → Magnify
  • Saul of Tarsus at Stephen’s stoning (biblical) — Saul’s seemingly fixed, predictable life shows God can intervene and change anyone, countering the assumption people can’t change. → Reset Your Soul
  • Saving yourself with the Longhorns or Cowboys (other) — Trying to give meaning to life through sports teams, job, family, or politics will fall short and lose your life. → Take Up Your Cross
  • Schadenfreude (other) — The German term for delight in another’s pain illustrates the violence in the heart that makes God’s peace seem abhorrent or scary. → What Does God Ask of Us?
  • Schadenfreude over the lost sheep (other) — Our delight in others’ comeuppance contrasts with the shepherd who seeks even the sheep that ‘deserved’ to be lost. → Being Sheep
  • Schmemann on fasting as a real fight (literary) — Schmemann’s image of starting the fast over after each failure, with patience, illustrates that holiness has no shortcut. → Ash Wednesday
  • School Spirit at A&M Consolidated (personal) — The preacher’s high school spirit days playing ‘Eye of the Tiger’ on Fridays, contrasted with the Holy Spirit to show how ‘spirit’ is an ambiguous word. → Credo: I Believe in the Holy Spirit
  • Schumacher’s 1994 and 1997 last-race collisions (historical) — Schumacher knocking out Damon Hill (1994) and crashing into Villeneuve (1997) illustrates wins won by trickery that leave a bad taste. → A Sermon on Endings: The Patience of Simeon
  • Schweitzer’s quest for the historical Jesus (historical) — Seekers of Jesus’ face keep finding their own reflection looking back (eisegesis) → If Jesus Drew a Portrait of You
  • Science fiction and fantasy prophecies (pop-culture) — Dune’s Lisan al-Gaib, Star Wars, DragonLance, Wheel of Time, and Game of Thrones all hinge on prophecy, framing how we hear the word ‘prophecy.’ → The Prophecy
  • Scopes trial and Inherit the Wind (historical) — Bryan vs. Darrow over teaching evolution in Tennessee, which became Inherit the Wind, illustrates the cultural baggage attached to the word ‘fundamentalist.’ → Good News: What Is Evangelism?
  • Scott calmed by the Facebook page (personal) — Scott said visiting the Facebook page calmed him down, showing the patient devotion practiced on the way to marriage. → Elizabeth and Scott
  • Screen-every-time phone call (personal) — The person whose name on the screen you never answer names the everyday enemy we all actually have. → Heavenly Battles
  • Screening phone calls and spam robocalls (personal) — The preacher’s preference for texts over calls and screening unknown numbers illustrates how we screen God’s call. → Screening God’s Call
  • Scriptures as swaddling clothes, not swords (other) — Scripture is not a sword to beat people with but the swaddling clothes that hold the baby Jesus offered for us. → We are One
  • Scrooge in A Christmas Carol / Scrooged (pop-culture) — the classic dramatic conversion story that movies prefer over the slow work that follows → Sanctification
  • Scylla and Charybdis (literary) — the Odyssey’s twin monsters illustrate the twin errors of over- and under-believing in the supernatural → Legion
  • Sea of Galilee compared to Lake Travis (nature) — The Sea of Galilee is large enough (twice Lake Travis’s surface) that a storm can rage on one side while the other stays calm, showing why fishermen feared uncontrollable storms. → Be Still
  • Secret society with a secret handshake (other) — An in-group club guarding secret knowledge illustrates the false gnostic idea that God’s truth is reserved for a select few. → The Power Unit
  • Seeing through a glass darkly (literary) — We are blind to our own blind spots, but Jesus still sees and loves us → If Jesus Drew a Portrait of You, The Church in the Present
  • Seinfeld - Jerry dates his female double (pop-culture) — Jerry falls for a woman identical to himself, showing that loving someone is not making them just like yourself. → Love Does Not Seek Its Own
  • Seinfeld finale Good Samaritan law (pop-culture) — The show’s last episode hinging on a Good Samaritan law illustrates the cultural shorthand of the Samaritan. → Love Neighbor
  • Seinfeld rental car reservation (pop-culture) — Jerry’s bit on knowing how to take a reservation but not hold it illustrates that anyone can claim Christianity but the key is holding to the faith. → Holding the Faith: Doing What You Say, Come and See
  • Selecting the perfect peach (nature) — Picking the ripe peach by rejecting the bruised and unripe ones illustrates that selection is exclusive, unlike God’s election. → Election, Not Selection
  • Self-driving cars and liability (current-events) — Self-driving cars are stalled not by technology but by the legal question of who is liable in a crash, illustrating that faith cannot be on autopilot. → The Driver
  • Selling something called ‘ordinary’ (other) — A mock sales call pitching a product as ‘ordinary’ shows how nobody wants the ordinary, framing the scandal of naming half the year ordinary time. → Show Us the Father
  • Seminary book on food in the Bible (personal) — The preacher’s own seminary thesis that biblical food is about who you eat with, not what it does to you, reframing food away from moralism. → If You Fall Down
  • Seminary summer at the Duke campus bookstore (personal) — Working a low-pressure bookstore job (Harry Potter campers, absent-minded professors) gave the preacher time to research a Bible-and-food book. → Opened Eyes
  • Seminole Canyon Cave Drawings (nature) — Ancient cave drawings near Del Rio illustrate how caves have long shaped the human imagination. → Where Are We
  • SEO Job at a Plumbing Company (personal) — The preacher’s post-seminary SEO job optimizing plumbing-part words illustrates the constant manipulation of language to capture attention. → Tell Everyone That Jesus is Alive
  • Serious Musicians’ Lightness (personal) — Real musicians focus on expression beyond the notes because execution is taken care of, illustrating recognizable mastery and trust. → Come and See
  • Sermon on the Mount as unachievable ideal (biblical) — Treating the Beatitudes as impossible sells short God’s grace; Scripture’s commands are meant to be achievable and transforming. → Holy Conferencing
  • Servant untying sandals (historical) — Untying a master’s sandal was a servant’s task, so John feeling unworthy even of that shows the immense gap to Jesus. → The Baptism of the Lord
  • Setting and resetting the table (other) — Reset is a plain English word, like setting a table, then resetting it after something happens. → Reset Your House
  • Seventh-grade football as offensive guard (personal) — Being placed where the least athletic kids go, ending his athletic career, as part of the contingent shape of his life. → The Rescue
  • Shakespeare vs TikTok reels (pop-culture) — The stylistic gap between Genesis 1 and 2 is like Shakespeare versus a set of TikTok reels, illustrating how translation flattens a text’s character. → Creation from Nothing: Genesis 1 and John 1 Together
  • Shared hobbies that don’t unite the church (personal) — Loving UT, Formula 1, boats, knitting, or pickleball is not what binds the church; the word of God is what cuts through the world’s drag. → Aerodynamics
  • Sharing about a new baby (personal) — People naturally love to share when they or their children have a baby, modeling the joy that should drive sharing our faith. → Good News: What Is Evangelism?
  • Sharing Location to Find a Friend (personal) — Meeting a man at the same establishment but in different buildings, found only by sharing phone location, shows how easily we can be lost even when we think we are not. → Where Are We
  • Shaving in the mirror (personal) — The preacher’s discomfort with mirrors and how a reflection distorts us illustrates how hard it is to see ourselves as we truly are. → Who Am I?
  • She never really cussed (personal) — Her quiet, gracious character — the preacher wishing he could have been more like her. → Memorial for Estalena Ferguson Aylieff
  • Sheep are stupid and vulnerable (nature) — Sheep’s unintelligence and defenselessness (drowning in ponds, easy prey for wolves) shows humans’ real condition before the shepherd. → Being Sheep
  • Sheep without a shepherd (children’s message) (nature) — Domesticated sheep can’t survive or protect themselves alone, like the aimless crowds Jesus had compassion on. → Election, Not Selection
  • Shepherd seeking the lost sheep and father celebrating the returning son (biblical) — God will not chop us down but seeks and celebrates our return → A Sign
  • Shepherds and the Little Drummer Boy at the stable (other) — Unlike the kings with prepared gifts, the shepherds and drummer boy show the overwhelmed believer asking what they can give the God who is love. → Saying Yes to God
  • Shibboleth at the bridge crossing in Judges (biblical) — The tribal password test in Judges illustrates how the virgin birth is misused as a litmus-test shibboleth. → Who was conceived from the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary
  • Shibboleth at the Jordan (Gileadites and Ephraimites) (biblical) — A password that sorts insider from outsider illustrates how we mark people as safe or unsafe. → Symbols and Signs
  • Shoddy Pool Foundation (personal) — A family’s pool cracked because the concrete was poured before the rebar was set, illustrating the cost of a bad foundation laid in haste. → A Foundation of Water
  • Shopping list with macadamia nuts and cranberries (personal) — Questioning whether you really need macadamia nuts or cranberries, evoking the fussy specialness of Christmas preparations. → A Bundle of Need
  • Short-form social video (current-events) — TikTok, Instagram reels, YouTube shorts of K-pop Demon Hunters dancing in a Target are present then gone with no subtext to interpret. → The Lamb of God
  • Show Don’t Tell writing adage (personal) — From the preacher’s college English major: good writing shows rather than tells, just as Jesus shows who he is by his deeds rather than a yes/no answer. → Cantata: Show, Don’t Tell, Come and See
  • Shrub in the desert (biblical) — Jeremiah’s image of the one who trusts in his own strength, parched when droughts come. → Water
  • Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse (literary) — The line that fasting and praying let you out-wait anyone inspired his strategy of arriving early, illustrating dogged commitment. → What is our sacred story?
  • Sign of Jonah (biblical) — A symbol understood only retrospectively, like Christ’s death and resurrection. → Symbols and Signs
  • Signaling from an island (nature) — On an island you signal rather than exhaust yourself, modeling conserving energy in a survival situation. → Rescue
  • Signing 50 pages at a house closing (other) — Pointless closing documents from an 1853 lawsuit contrast with faith, which needs no concrete signed contract about our future with God. → What is Hope?
  • Simeon’s song (Nunc Dimittis) (biblical) — Simeon’s spontaneous song, sung nightly worldwide since at least 516 AD, models worship as thanks. → Three Ways of Saying Thank You, Three Ways of Saying Thank You
  • Simeon’s song (Nunc Dimittis) (biblical) — Simeon’s spontaneous song of praise sung nightly since at least 516 AD models thanking God through worship. → How to Say Thank You
  • Simon and Garfunkel ‘The Sound of Silence’ (pop-culture) — ‘Hello darkness my old friend’ echoes the bleak close of Psalm 88, the only psalm ending in unrelieved darkness. → A Sermon on Endings: The Patience of Simeon
  • Simon Magus and the sin of simony (biblical) — Simon’s attempt to buy the Spirit (Acts 8) exemplifies the false lights that dazzle but cannot save. → The Star
  • Simon the magician in Acts (biblical) — Simon’s wish to buy apostolic power shows the perennial exploitation of God’s good for profit. → Distinctions: Message and Messenger in Creation
  • Singing together in a crowd (other) — The good feeling of all singing the same song at a concert or church service illustrates the powerful, often un-understood pull of the praising crowd shouting Hosanna. → Palm Sunday
  • Sinking Ship Full of Ice Cream (other) — Gorging on ice cream as a boat sinks feels good but isn’t good, illustrating feel-good news versus genuinely transforming good news. → Binding the Strongman
  • Sinner’s prayer as get-out-of-jail-free card (pop-culture) — Salvation wrongly imagined as a Monopoly-style card you earn by saying the sinner’s prayer, contrasted with holistic, sanctifying salvation. → He Will Come to Judge the Living and the Dead, Upside Down
  • Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (literary) — Gawain only survives the axe once he removes the protective belt and stops clinging to life, illustrating that letting go of self-preservation brings freedom from the fear of death. → What Does God Ask of Us?
  • Sky Daddy / Genie in a Bottle (other) — We must not treat God as a genie who grants our wishes; prayer returns us to our source to align our will with God’s. → Our Father, Who Art in Heaven, Hallowed Be Thy Name
  • Slavery and family-values idolatry (historical) — Southern slavery and domestic violence justified by ‘Christian/family values’ show values becoming idols that distort the gospel. → I Believe in Jesus Christ, His Only Son, Our Lord
  • Slumped fans at eliminated playoff games (pop-culture) — The camera panning to fans with slumped shoulders and tearful eyes when hope of victory is lost illustrates hanging your head in desperation. → Why Do We Worship? The Assembly and the Bread of Life
  • Small farm plots of Western North Carolina (personal) — Seminary-era memory of small, land-constrained acreages contrasted with industrial monoculture scale. → One Straw Revolution
  • Snatch (Guy Ritchie film) Antwerp diamond scene (pop-culture) — Opening scene of Hasidic Jews debating the Isaiah 7 ‘almah’ translation frames the virgin/young-woman ambiguity as a Christian ‘gotcha’. → Who was conceived from the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary
  • Snow Day in Texas That Won’t Last (nature) — The fleeting Texas snow, gone by next week’s 70-degree weather, illustrates the mountaintop experience the disciples wrongly wanted to last forever. → The Transfiguration
  • So Many Rules (personal) — Wilson’s service on standing rules committees for both conference and jurisdiction, played as ironic contrast to the rule-free retreat. → October Pastor Report
  • Soap opera characters dying and returning (pop-culture) — Soap operas normalize characters dying and coming back, unlike the genuinely jarring reality of resurrection. → Opened Eyes
  • Social clubs with a different story (other) — Golf clubs, pickleball, Kiwanis, and Rotary gather around different stories, unlike the church gathered solely around Jesus Christ. → Holy Conferencing
  • Social media high-performer routines (CEOs, Olympians) (current-events) — Modern fascination with elite daily routines parallels Wesley’s holy-life models, but aimed at transformed lives. → Follow Me
  • Social media influencer self-care (current-events) — No amount of optimized routine or influencer life-hacks can self-actualize us away from sin → Original Sin
  • Socks vs. heirloom pearls and watch (personal) — Simple gifts (socks) versus heirloom gifts that carry past, present, and future meaning, framing Jesus as a gift across all three. → The Gift of Jesus
  • Solomon and the divided baby (biblical) — The Hebrew word nigzar (‘cut/divide’) first appears in 1 Kings 3, illustrating Christ’s total separation from the land of the living. → Was Crucified, Died, and Was Buried
  • Someone screaming during sermon under I-35 (personal) — A man standing and screaming at a Church Under the Bridge service illustrates the agency people have in the present moment. → The Church in the Present
  • Someone you admire as holiness (personal) — Picturing an admired person of courage and care redefines holiness as sharing love, available to everyone. → Love Covers a Multitude of Sins
  • Song of Simeon (biblical) — Simeon’s gratitude over the infant Jesus shows non-rivalry, paralleling Eli’s gladness that God speaks through the child Samuel. → Sabbath and Prayer
  • Sorting at cafeteria tables (personal) — People sitting at different tables and choosing who is worthy of their time shows our constant self-sorting that the Trinity calls us to abandon. → Trinity Sunday
  • Sorting at the cafeteria tables (personal) — Kids and adults sorting themselves by preference shows how church wrongly sorts the likable from the unlikable. → Wisdom’s Call
  • Sorting good guys and bad guys into buckets (other) — Labeling countries, states, and teams good or bad is the neat dualism that removes the need for faith. → Anoint the Dust
  • Sourdough Starter and Wild Yeast (nature) — Leaving flour and water out lets wild yeasts grow, illustrating why matzah must be made in under 19 minutes. → Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread
  • South Park: Jesus vs. Satan wrestling match (pop-culture) — The Pay-Per-View bout (pasty hippy Jesus vs. a giant red beast) shows how worldly we are conditioned to picture power as muscles and might. → Heavenly Battles
  • Special forces qualifying tests (other) — Faith is sometimes wrongly presented like special forces training, a series of qualifying tests for a heavenly reward, contrary to grace. → I Believe in the Resurrection of the Body and the Life Everlasting
  • Special forces qualifying training (other) — Faith wrongly presented as a series of qualifying tests for a heavenly reward, illustrating the temptation of works-righteousness against grace. → I Believe in the Resurrection of the Body and the Life Everlasting
  • Speck in your neighbor’s eye, log in your own (biblical) — Fixating on others’ faults blinds us to our own → A Sign, What Is My Sacred Story?
  • Speeding ticket and intention (personal) — An officer judges your speed, not your intention, showing how the letter of the law cares only about the words on the page. → Eye of the Camel
  • Spending $300 at Hobby Lobby (current-events) — Resetting your house is not about buying religious decor or painting over things to hide them. → Reset Your House
  • Spicy mustard with a kick (other) — The pastor’s favorite spicy mustard with a little kick, an extended metaphor for a faith with bite that refuses domination and seeks to witness rather than win. → Spicy Mustard
  • Spilled coffee and the meaning of ‘accident’ (personal) — An accidentally spilled coffee illustrates Aristotle’s category of ‘accident’ (inessential) versus essential substance. → Do this!
  • Spirit Halloween and Ghosts (pop-culture) — Halloween costumes, ghosts, and New Year’s ‘spirits’ illustrate the cultural meanings of ‘spirit’ as invisible-yet-present, leading into the Spirit as fully God yet unseen. → Credo: I Believe in the Holy Spirit
  • Spirit set on fire with longing (other) — One who tastes the heavenly food of prayer burns with eternal longing for the Lord, his spirit aflame. → Prayer and Converse with God Is a Supreme Good
  • Splanchnizomai as a bowel movement (other) — Notes the Greek word for the father’s compassion derives from ‘bowels,’ literally a gut-level, visceral mercy. → The Prodigal Son and the Ministry of Reconciliation
  • Spock’s sacrifice in The Wrath of Khan (pop-culture) — ‘the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few’ as the utilitarian logic underlying Judas’s objection → Extravagant Faith: Mary’s Anointing and the Gift of the Mitzvah
  • Spontaneous neighborhood pickup games (personal) — Boys on the block meeting up unplanned to play football and baseball as a picture of organic neighbor connection. → Love Neighbor
  • Sports all-time records and childhood Olympic obsession (personal) — As a kid loving home-run and rushing records and Olympic champions, illustrating the human fixation on finding ‘the best.’ → Who Gets to Be Saved
  • Sports cliche on getting back up (pop-culture) — The cliche that it’s not how you fall down but how you get back up that counts, framing grace as the way we rise after temptation. → If You Fall Down
  • Sports preparation and blown calls (pop-culture) — Ads praising preparation over the game, and ‘don’t put yourself in position to need that call,’ illustrate preparing our lives to be interrupted by neighbor-love. → Love Neighbor
  • Sports Radio Politics (current-events) — Over 30 years the language of sports radio took over American politics, turning it into a team sport, illustrating dangerous tribalism. → Us and Them
  • Sports rivalries (Cowboys-Giants, OU-Texas) (pop-culture) — Famous sports rivalries frame the deeper rivalry between Herod and Jesus, Caesar and God. → Rivals
  • St. Aelred on enlarging the horizon of love (historical) — Aelred’s call to expand our love by contemplating the humanity of the Lord answers the restlessness of acedia. → Restless with Foolishness
  • St. Andrews New Testament Professor on Paul the Physicist (personal) — A friend’s interview describing Paul’s interest in the physical world and the puzzle of Paul’s ‘third heaven’ in 2 Corinthians 12. → He Ascended into Heaven
  • St. Cyril of Jerusalem on the two comings (historical) — Cyril’s preaching on a first patient coming and a glorious second illustrates Advent looking back and forward at once. → When will he come?
  • St. Luke’s Houston pastor on habits not values (personal) — A clergy-call colleague’s church having ‘habits’ instead of ‘values’ inspires the call to make values into action. → Restless
  • St. Paul’s Cathedral Christmas Eve attendance, 1804 (historical) — Only four people attended Christmas Eve in 1804 London, showing there’s no simple progress from ‘primitive’ to modern belief. → The Star
  • Stale chili powder (nature) — Five-year-old chili powder with no spice left updates Jesus’ ‘salt that lost its saltiness’ for the faith that no longer flavors a life. → Whoever Is Not Against Us: Denominations, Control, and How You Follow Jesus
  • Stalin’s ‘one death is a tragedy’ quote (historical) — We can relate to one death but not a million, because grief flows from particular love. → What We Remember
  • Stanley Hauerwas on going to church to be told we have no enemies (literary) — His quip that cosmic struggle sounds like a child’s video game exposes our wish to deny we have any enemies to pray for. → Heavenly Battles
  • Staph infection under a bandage (other) — Bandaging an open wound without treating the infection keeps you on the surface, like believing in Christ without the descent. → He Descended into the Dead
  • Star of Bethlehem as two aligning planets (nature) — The star can be a planetary alignment and a sign of God’s love at once, illustrating an overflowing rather than flat reality. → Christmas Eve: Is Reality Flat or Overflowing?
  • Star of Bethlehem as two planets aligning (nature) — The Bethlehem star can be a natural planetary conjunction and also a sign of God’s love, illustrating that more than one thing can be true at once. → Christmas Eve Service: Is the World Flat or Overflowing?
  • Star Trek 5 / Starship to Heaven (pop-culture) — We can’t visit heaven via a starship; heaven is not another planet but the source in whom we live and move and have our being. → He Ascended into Heaven
  • Star Trek V: Flying to Heaven (pop-culture) — Captain Kirk flying the Enterprise to heaven illustrates that God is not a far-off material place but the source in whom we live and move and have our being. → Where Are We
  • Star Wars / Luke Skywalker (pop-culture) — Anyone can be a hero, but there comes a point when it’s just not going to happen. → Antichrist: Becoming the Villain
  • Star Wars expanded universe fandom (personal) — The preacher’s youthful obsession with reading all 45 Star Wars novels and online debates illustrates how foolishness is always relative and contextual. → Restless with Foolishness
  • Star Wars rebellion against the evil empire (pop-culture) — Preacher’s first encounter with the idea of rebellion; rebellion makes sense when there is an evil empire to fight against. → Sin as Rebellion: The Freedom Not to Rebel
  • Starting and Tending a Fire (nature) — Fire needs spark, fuel, and oxygen, and must be relit and fed daily, picturing how love must be continually tended to keep us in the light. → Keeping the Fire of Love Burning
  • Starting small with a 40-day fast (personal) — Advising a beginner to fast a meal rather than 40 days illustrates starting the means of grace where you are. → Reset Your Soul
  • Stations of the Cross pilgrims in Jerusalem (other) — Groups of pilgrims walking the stations in the Holy Land illustrate the ancient practice of entering deeply into Christ’s last moments, which the congregation will do via QR code. → Palm Sunday: From Hosanna to Passion
  • Stations of the Cross, Westminster Cathedral design (historical) — The sanctuary display modeled on Westminster Cathedral’s stations illustrates the ancient pilgrim practice of walking Christ’s last moments. → Waving from the Sideline
  • Stealing fruit as a kid (personal) — Being caught in a childhood mistake of stealing fruit illustrates the loneliness of being caught in sin and the urge to deny, divert, or distract. → Jesus Our Advocate
  • Stephen Ministers program at Bee Creek (personal) — The congregation’s Stephen Ministers who walk with and listen to the hurting exemplify being active participants in God’s transformation rather than fixers. → Why Is He Coming?
  • Stepping into a warm room by a fireplace (nature) — Coming in cold to the bones and warming by a fire pictures the felt presence of God dissolving fear and giving safety. → Trinity Sunday
  • Stepping into a warm room from the cold (nature) — Coming in cold and feeling the fire’s warmth depicts the felt safety of the Holy Spirit’s presence. → Wisdom’s Call
  • Steve Bienkowski, retired NYPD rescue diver (personal) — Live interview showing how rescued people can become their own worst enemy in the water, paralleling how we get in our own way with God. → What Should We Do to Be Saved?
  • Steve Earle, ‘I Ain’t Ever Satisfied’ (pop-culture) — The song illustrates the restless human heart that is never satisfied apart from God. → Freedom: A New Covenant for a New Year
  • Stoic mountain-climbing philosophy with his kids (personal) — Telling his kids ‘15 miles to go’ even on a 2-mile hike, so they don’t make the end unbearable by expecting it too soon. → He Descended into the Dead
  • Stone too big for God to lift (other) — The logical contradiction exposes the false assumption that God is on the same material plane as creation. → Sabbath and Prayer
  • Stonewall Jackson outwitting Frémont (historical) — A Civil War valley passed on the hike, underscoring the diversity of places and cultures crossed. → The Far Country: God’s Journey to Us
  • Storms on the Sea of Galilee (nature) — The disciples being more familiar with sudden Galilee storms than with Jesus illustrates how we trust the passing of life’s storms more than the word of God. → What Does God Ask of Us?
  • Straightening a crooked building with a crowbar (other) — Trying to make ourselves righteous by works is like trying to straighten a crooked building with only a crowbar, which cannot happen. → Justification
  • Stranded in Lake Travis (other) — Extended metaphor of God reaching out a hand to someone flailing in the middle of Lake Travis, who suffers if they refuse to admit they need help and grab it. → Love Covers a Multitude of Sins
  • Stuck on the side of the road (personal) — Wilson’s own experience being stranded contrasts with the far graver trapped-in-a-cave need for rescue. → What is Salvation?
  • Student of the Year in Walking (personal) — The preacher’s lone high-school award amid friends bound for Stanford and West Point shows our worth is not measured against our peers’ resumes. → The Rescue
  • Sudden $100,000 windfall (personal) — An unexpected no-strings gift forces a choice between freedom and insecurity, mirroring the servants’ response to the talents. → Do Or Do Not
  • Sufjan Stevens’ ‘The Transfiguration’ (pop-culture) — Lyrics (‘Lost in the clouds, a voice / Son of Man, turn your ear’) quoted to evoke the awe of the heavenly voice at the transfiguration. → The Transfiguration, The Transfiguration, The Transfiguration
  • Sufjan Stevens, “The Transfiguration” (pop-culture) — Stevens’ song that retells the Transfiguration and invites listeners into its chorus reopened the preacher’s attention to the event and frames the sermon’s close. → Who Is Jesus? The Transfiguration
  • Sufjan Stevens, ‘Casimir Pulaski Day’ (pop-culture) — A song about a girlfriend dying of cancer, wrestling with hope and faith amid suffering, illustrating complex faith. → The Transfiguration
  • Summer kids’ sleep schedule (personal) — Children waking unpredictably (7:30 vs 5:30am) as everyday evidence experience denies pure predetermination. → Drawn by the Father
  • Summer of George (Seinfeld) (pop-culture) — The Seinfeld ‘Summer of George’ plot illustrates squandering or corrupting a good gift through complacency. → Us and Them
  • Summer of George (Seinfeld) (pop-culture) — George Costanza’s hyped ‘summer of George’ collapses into disappointment, illustrating how our anticipated future time to shine rarely arrives as planned. → Restless with Our Future
  • Summer pastorate at High Rock Lake (personal) — Wilson’s seminary-summer lake ministry near Lexington, NC, where he did twelve funerals for strangers who welcomed him in, teaching him to speak truthfully and with dignity over the dead. → Who Do You Say That I Am?
  • Summit Fever (nature) — The burst of energy climbers feel near a mountaintop, illustrating the Spirit’s empowering push at Pentecost. → A Burning Sensation (Summit Fever: A Pentecost Sermon)
  • Sun, moon, and tides (nature) — Light, seasons, and tidal cycles God set in the dome of the sky are the conditions trees need to bear fruit. → Fruitfulness
  • Sunday as the eighth day / little Easter (other) — Worshiping on the day Jesus rose marks the start of the New Creation. → Praise
  • Sunday school classes in 1745 (historical) — Early Sunday schools teaching children to read valued children as opportunities not instruments, modeling enduring values over trends. → The Chassis
  • Sunday Sense vs Monday Sense (personal) — Not having a separate ‘church sense’ and ‘business sense’ shows truth-telling as a resurrection mindset with real-world consequences. → Upside Down
  • Super Bowl sports cliches (pop-culture) — Football platitudes like ‘one game at a time’ and ‘it’s not how you start but how you finish’ set up the contrast between finite games and the open-ended length of a life. → Spilling Things: God Offers Us a Chance for a Do-Over
  • Superhero / Iron Man suit of grace (pop-culture) — God does not zap you with ‘superhero juice’ to do whatever you want; grace walks with you rather than leaving you where you are. → Palm Sunday, Palm Sunday
  • Superhero needs a supervillain (pop-culture) — The narrative craving for a villain of equal power illustrates how dualism wrongly inflates the devil into God’s rival. → Let’s Talk About the Devil
  • Superheroes (Avengers / X-Men / Captain America / Wonder Woman) (pop-culture) — The unreachable gap between us and comic-book superheroes contrasts with sainthood, which anyone can attain by grace rather than by birth or super strength. → Saints and Sinners
  • Superman heating toast with laser vision (pop-culture) — Jesus refuses to use divine power for his own convenience → No Distinction
  • Supermarket bags of fruit (personal) — Store-bought bags of grapes and oranges hide the hands that pick them and make fruitfulness only a distant metaphor. → Fruitfulness
  • Supporting actors in the movie of our life (other) — Other people are not supporting actors in the movie of our life but individual agents made in God’s image. → Love Covers a Multitude of Sins
  • Supreme Court Justice dream with an island on the Potomac (personal) — The preacher’s childhood plan to become a Supreme Court Justice with an island on the bay illustrates the ‘what do you want to be’ question and how our aspirations differ from God’s concern for the heart. → We Are God’s Children, But We Are Not Finished Yet
  • Surveys of those who left the church (current-events) — The number one reason people give for leaving the church is hypocrisy or judgmentalism of Christians. → Light of the World
  • Susanna and Samuel Wesley’s fight over the king (historical) — Susanna refusing to say Amen to a prayer for King William illustrates conscience-bound conviction in Wesley’s formative household → The Calling and the Called
  • Sweeping beer bottles at Resort Ranch (historical) — Members arriving early to clean a party venue before Palm Sunday worship illustrates the church’s take-care-of-business DNA. → What is our sacred story?
  • Swimming across Lake Travis to prove God’s love (personal) — We don’t have to swim Lake Travis or volunteer for everything to earn God’s love; sometimes faith’s first move is simply to rest. → Go to Sleep, Isaac
  • Swimming pool rules vs. Wesley’s General Rules (other) — Wesley’s General Rules aren’t prohibitions like ‘no running at the pool’ but active tools for living out God’s promise on our life. → How not to make Jesus King
  • Synchronizing watches in movies (pop-culture) — The countdown to synchronize watches shows how mechanical clock time replaced sun-based living. → When will he come?
  • T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Cultivation of Christmas Trees’ (literary) — Eliot’s 1954 poem on childlike wonder at the tree, linking the first-remembered Christmas to a final great joy and fear, the first coming to the second. → The Cultivation of Christmas Trees
  • T.V. Munson grafting saves French wine from phylloxera (historical) — A Texan agronomist grafted French vines onto pest-resistant wild Texas rootstock, saving Europe’s vineyards while both grape varieties stayed themselves — a picture of Gentiles grafted into Israel’s promise without replacing it. → Arise, Shine: The Light of Epiphany and the Grafting In of the Gentiles
  • Taking off shoes vs. washing feet (personal) — The discomfort of letting someone wash your feet or refusing to remove your shoes illustrates the pride that runs both directions. → Maundy Thursday
  • Taking shoes off for no one (personal) — Comfort washing another’s feet but refusing to bare your own illustrates pride running both directions. → Maundy Thursday
  • Taking sons Dominic and Ephraim to first Astros game (personal) — Bringing his boys to their first game (Astros got 20 hits) frames the pastor’s investment and rising anxiety as the season turned. → How We Fill Our Waiting
  • Tall poppy syndrome in Australia (personal) — Preacher’s miserable year at Newcastle High after moving to Australia in eighth grade, where peers tore down anyone standing out, illustrating tearing down vs. building people up. → Love Builds Up
  • Tamar and Judah / Perez (biblical) — A child of incest in the line shows the genealogy is not a ‘blood prophecy’ of good blood. → Emmanuel = Mercy
  • Tanner asking the friend if Rachel was single (personal) — Tanner asked Rachel’s friend if she was single, and the friend feigned not knowing. → Rachel and Tanner
  • Tax collectors and idolatrous coins (historical) — Explains why tax collectors were despised — they handled coins bearing Caesar’s face, making them impure in that culture. → The Prodigal Son and the Ministry of Reconciliation
  • Tax collectors and prostitutes entering the kingdom first (biblical) — Illustrates that those judged outsiders by external law-keeping standards are welcomed ahead of the self-righteous. → Come Down, Don’t Delay
  • Taylor Swift inviting a fan on stage (pop-culture) — Being invited to participate though you feel unworthy, like communion’s invitation → Communion
  • Teacher on never knowing who you marry (personal) — A teacher’s claim that you can’t predict a spouse 20 years out shows that love is sustained by daily presence, not prediction. → Easter Sunday: Works of Love
  • Teacher’s apricot guess (personal) — A teacher who thought the forbidden fruit was an apricot because she loved apricots, illustrating how the fruit’s real meaning is its location on the tree, not the food itself. → If You Fall Down
  • Teacher’s line on regret (literary) — ‘Someone who has no regrets is someone not fully human’ frames honest confrontation of our own failures. → David and Goliath
  • Teacher’s quotation on forgiveness as medicine (literary) — A quoted teacher describes forgiveness as an all-powerful medicine that can heal any wound, but only if we wish to be healed. → Healing Wounds
  • Teacher’s quote on love that will not play fair (literary) — A quote that God’s dangerous love demands we give away what we think is ours to feed and shelter others. → The Church in the Past
  • Teachers counting kids at BeeLoved childcare (personal) — Childcare teachers constantly counting children shows that in small groups it’s easier not to leave anyone behind. → Who Gets to Be Saved
  • Teaching children not to trespass on yards (personal) — Explaining to children why you don’t cut through a stranger’s Texas yard illustrates the everyday meaning of trespass as entering property without permission. → Forgive Us Our Trespasses
  • Teaching children to say thank you at Christmas (personal) — His kids practicing manners and gratitude for Christmas gifts frames the whole sermon’s question of how to respond to a gift. → How to Say Thank You
  • Teaching kids to say thank you (personal) — His children practicing manners and gratitude at Christmas models responding to the gift rather than the object. → Three Ways of Saying Thank You, Three Ways of Saying Thank You
  • Teaching the kids poker (personal) — Teaching his sons card games by playing fast rather than dwelling on rules illustrates that practice precedes theory. → Justice
  • Teddy Roosevelt’s ‘The Man in the Arena’ (historical) — Roosevelt’s 1910 speech contrasts the critic with the one who strives in the arena, calling believers to be in the arena with Christ. → A Sermon on Endings: The Patience of Simeon
  • Telling a Struggling Friend to Be Patient (personal) — Advice to wait is easy to give but hard to receive when you are the one jobless, single, or awaiting a medical specialist. → Waiting
  • Temple priesthood as a roughneck two-weeks-on rotation (other) — Comparing temple service to oilfield shift work explains why the priest and Levite were heading downhill home past the beaten man → Ask Me Anything
  • Ten Commandments on the capitol lawn, not the Beatitudes (current-events) — Why governments post the Decalogue but never the Beatitudes, revealing how Christianity is reduced to universal moral law disconnected from Jesus. → Pentecost
  • Ten men needed for a synagogue (historical) — The Jewish minyan tradition is traced to Abraham’s bargaining for ten righteous people in Sodom, illustrating his mercy. → Go to Sleep, Isaac
  • Ten-year-old Wilson preferred receiving presents (personal) — His childhood love of receiving gifts over giving sets up the contrast with the heart-gift God truly wants. → The Gift
  • Terminator’s nude arrival (pop-culture) — Arnold Schwarzenegger arriving nude from the future and seeking clothes, used to imagine the risen Jesus’ body without his stripped garments. → The Concrete Faith of Thomas
  • Terry Eagleton on Optimism (literary) — Eagleton’s critique of optimism as ‘moral evasion’ and the enemy of hope, distinguishing Christian hope that can face grave truth from cheerful psychological disavowal. → Laborers in the Vineyard: Grace, Community, and Mortality
  • Terry Eagleton on optimism vs. hope (literary) — Quotation from Eagleton’s Hope Without Optimism distinguishing the optimist’s temperament from genuine hope rooted in God. → Eternal Life
  • Tertullian on prayer as the offering (historical) — Tertullian’s quote that prayer is the offering God asked for, dedicated with the whole heart and crowned with love, illustrating prayer as the true sacrifice God desires. → Fragments
  • Texas A&M and the 12th Man (E. King Gill) (historical) — A&M symbols and the 1922 12th Man story illustrate how symbols deepen relationship and belonging. → Symbols and Signs
  • Texas A&M and the 12th Man (E. King Gill) (historical) — The 1922 Aggie 12th-man story (anyone willing and ready can be called in) parallels the common ‘you can be David’ reading of the story. → David and Goliath
  • Texas cedar allergies (personal) — A local aside that congestion forces mouth-breathing, grounding the breathing illustration in the congregation’s life. → Reset Your Soul
  • Texas ERCOT winter blackout (current-events) — The February 2021 Texas power crisis where blackouts fell on just and unjust alike, illustrating how we respond to extreme situations and care (or not) for neighbors. → Ash Wednesday
  • Texas freeze and the generator temptation (current-events) — The frozen winter storm week illustrates restlessness and the temptations to pride or self-doubt over having (or not) a generator. → Restless
  • Texas industrial farming and roadside peaches (personal) — Modern farming’s scale makes it feel impersonal, abstracted from the people who eat the food. → One Straw Revolution
  • Texas public school testing bureaucracy (current-events) — Administrators structuring everything around test results pre-categorize kids by their expectations, like clay already baked. → Subterranean Hometown Blues
  • Texas Sports Rivalries (personal) — The preacher growing up surrounded by Oilers/Cowboys, College Station/Bryan, and UT/A&M rivalries illustrates the human instinct to divide into ‘us and them.’ → Us and Them
  • Texas y’all and Pittsburgh yinz (personal) — Regional dialect aside illustrating Jesus honing his question from ‘who do people say’ to the pointed ‘who do you say I am.’ → Take Up Your Cross
  • The 28.8 modem downloading a 3MB song (personal) — Generational gap in technology illustrates how alien the Temple’s significance is to us now → The Portico of Solomon
  • The 80/20 principle (other) — When 20% of people do 80% of the work, the church cannot be at its best, like an F1 car with a bad driver who keeps crashing. → The Driver
  • The Adams family and General David Adams (personal) — Claimed Revolutionary-War-general ancestor illustrates the cultural prestige attached to lineage. → Emmanuel = Mercy
  • The Anarchy and ‘new king, same as the old king’ (historical) — Medieval succession wars (the Anarchy, Empress Matilda vs. Stephen, the War of the Roses) where peasants shrugged ‘new king, same as the old king’ — illustrating that resetting our world means focusing on life right where we are, not on distant centers of power. → Reset Your World
  • The angel’s ‘thigh lock’ submission (personal) — A submission with no equivalent in jiu-jitsu technique, used to show the encounter with God as supernatural, beyond technique, exposing human limitation as the site of grace. → Jacob’s Grappling Technique
  • The Apostles’ Creed empirically tested (literary) — Most creedal claims (virgin birth, Pilate) are unobservable and unrepeatable, unlike sin which we witness again and again → Original Sin
  • The B-I-B-L-E nursery song (pop-culture) — How a children’s song (‘I stand alone on the word of God’) shapes a flawed, individualistic imagination of the Bible. → The Bible
  • The Big Lebowski / The Dude Abides (pop-culture) — The Dude, who only cares about his rug and ‘abides,’ is used to explore what it means to abide in God. → Learning to Abide: The Means of Grace
  • The book of Job and the wager with the Satan (biblical) — Job’s loss of family, property, and health following the wager between God and the Accuser illustrates an endless loop of shipwrecks where God, not the sufferer, makes the bet. → The Wager (Part 2)
  • The boy with loaves and fishes (biblical) — Offering what little he had (not giving up, not pretending to have more) becomes the means Jesus uses to feed the crowd. → Jacob’s Grappling Technique
  • The broad way and the narrow way (biblical) — Media culture’s ‘be happy, take it easy’ broad road contrasted with Christ’s narrow way of fighting and suffering toward genuine happiness. → Ash Wednesday
  • The Brothers Karamazov and Ivan vs. Alexei (literary) — Dostoevsky’s novel of failure: Alexei answers Ivan’s argument from the problem of evil not with refutation but by embracing his brother and seeking out Father Zosima. → Palm Sunday: Practicing Living
  • The Canaanite woman (biblical) — The woman who persisted and pressed Jesus for crumbs, unlike the rich young ruler, models faith that does not walk away from the hard encounter. → Not Easy to Watch
  • The child pretending to be a pirate (personal) — A child who pretends to be a pirate (stick as sword, box as sailboat) balances two worlds, illustrating how faith lets us live in this world as citizens of a more real one without it being mere pretend. → Having the Son: Living a More Real Life by Faith
  • The childhood horse (personal) — Chris had a horse as a child and loved it, showing her lifelong devotion to caring for animals. → A Service of Death and Resurrection for Christine Renée Jarl
  • The children’s song ‘In the Beginning’ (personal) — Wilson’s own children’s song distills creation to its essentials so kids can sing and remember God’s loving creative work. → Trinity Sunday: In the Beginning (Song of Creation)
  • The Church’s One Foundation hymn (literary) — The hymn naming Jesus Christ as the church’s one foundation is affirmed as true, with Jesus’s parable adding another way to see that foundation. → The Chassis, A Foundation of Water
  • The cold open (pop-culture) — Like SNL’s first sketch or a podcast’s opening segment, you can’t start with the climax; Advent is the getting-ready before Christmas. → The Four Questions: Who Is Coming?
  • The college question for teenagers (personal) — Pruitt recalls dreading ‘where do you want to go to college?’ until realizing people just wanted a story to fill in, showing how the future can feel ominous in moments of transition. → Restless with Our Future
  • The contingent moments of Gettysburg (historical) — Oliver Howard’s stand, Chamberlain’s 20th Maine on Little Round Top, and Pickett’s Charge as forks where the nation’s direction hung in the balance. → The Rescue
  • The continuous gardener (nature) — A gardener who tills, weeds, and composts only once and never again grows nothing—tending the soul’s soil is an ongoing affair. → Growth
  • The Daily Examen at Evensong (historical) — The classical Examen prayer practice models building a lexicon of gratitude to talk about one’s soul. → Reset Your Soul
  • The Daniel Plan diet book (pop-culture) — A bestselling Christian diet book (Atkins/Paleo repackaged) used to show how the Bible isn’t actually about what you eat. → Opened Eyes
  • The devil quoting scripture to Jesus (biblical) — Quoting scripture doesn’t make what you say good; accountability is needed → If Jesus Drew a Portrait of You
  • The devil’s temptation of Jesus (biblical) — Williams reads the temptation stories as the devil urging Jesus to take his eye off the present for an imagined future. → The Next Thirty Seconds
  • The divine watchmaker found in a field (historical) — The 18th-century deist argument the sermon rejects in favor of God’s continual sustaining of creation. → The Gift of the Trinity, Trinity Sunday: In the Beginning (Song of Creation), Creation from Nothing: Genesis 1 and John 1 Together, Three Whats?
  • The Dodgers Probably Winning Again (pop-culture) — The gap between baseball’s universal optimism and the reality that the favorite usually wins underscores how easily hope deflates. → Go From Your Country
  • The don’t-miss Halloween house (personal) — Her elaborate Halloween decorations made her home a ‘don’t miss this house’ stop, illustrating her generosity and delight. → Glynis Frye Memorial
  • The Donatist controversy and Augustine (historical) — Augustine’s response to the Donatists’ traditores dispute teaches that the church holds wheat and chaff and only Christ may judge. → Rivals
  • The dove and the end of the flood (biblical) — The Spirit descending as a dove echoes Noah’s dove announcing the flood’s end, signaling new creation → Remember and Be Thankful
  • The Dude abides in The Big Lebowski (pop-culture) — Jeff Bridges’ character ‘the Dude’ saying ‘the Dude abides’ illustrates the rare word abide, meaning to remain or live. → Love Abides
  • The edge/aperture of a photograph (other) — Extended metaphor: every image has a limit beyond its edge, unlike God’s love which has no limit. → All Peoples and Creatures
  • The electric chair as a modern cross (other) — Imagining carrying your own electric chair to your execution while the town watches, to recover the terrible meaning of taking up the cross. → Take Up Your Cross
  • The end of The Sopranos (pop-culture) — Mark’s abrupt cut-off before the Good News is shared is like the famously incomplete Sopranos finale that leaves viewers to fill in the missing pieces. → Easter
  • The enemy you avoid at HEB (personal) — Defining an enemy as the person you dread seeing at the grocery store or answering the phone for makes ‘love your enemies’ concretely hard. → This Teaching is Difficult
  • The English Civil War and execution of Charles I (historical) — Charles I’s high view of kingship, defeat at Naseby, and 1649 execution under Cromwell show humanity learning it does not need a king. → How not to make Jesus King
  • The Ethiopian eunuch reading Isaiah (Acts 8) (biblical) — Solitary Bible reading drives us toward community and guidance → If Jesus Drew a Portrait of You
  • The Exorcist and demon-possession horror films (pop-culture) — cinema shapes our demon imagery more than the Bible does → Legion
  • The forgiven teenager thought experiment (personal) — Imagining a 15-16 year old told they’ll be forgiven no matter what illustrates antinomianism, while noting God transforms the will rather than controlling behavior. → The Race
  • The four W’s of finding wild shelter (other) — Survival rule (wood, water, wind, widowmakers) is mapped onto evaluating the health of the church. → Shelter
  • The Funeral Industrial Complex (current-events) — Five companies owning 95% of U.S. funeral homes and exploiting the bereaved illustrates how the vulnerable are taken advantage of around death. → Jesus Wept
  • The Glorious Revolution of 1688 (historical) — James II fleeing the Dutch invasion frames the political loyalty conflict shaping Wesley’s upbringing → The Calling and the Called
  • The Godfather and Don Corleone’s Favors (pop-culture) — The mob boss who grants favors with a future debt due illustrates the false image of God as one who extracts a quid pro quo, contrasted with God who only gives. → What Does God Ask of Us?
  • The golden calf (biblical) — Israel’s well-intentioned attempt to honor God by ‘doing something’ becomes idolatry, showing we need not feel useful to be loved. → What Should We Do to Be Saved?
  • The Golden Calf at Sinai (biblical) — Impatient Israelites worship the messenger instead of the message, the pattern of idolatry. → Distinctions: Message and Messenger in Creation
  • The golden calf comparison (biblical) — Abraham and Hagar likened to the golden calf as humanity’s well-intentioned attempt to follow God on its own terms. → Hagar, Sarah, and the Birth of a People
  • The good tree and its fruit (biblical) — A tree is known by its fruit, not its roots, illustrating that we are known by what we do, by grace bearing fruit even from a broken root system. → Who Am I?
  • The gospel ‘hinge’ moments toward Jerusalem (biblical) — Each gospel has a turning point where Jerusalem and Golgotha pull Jesus back → If Jesus Drew a Portrait of You
  • The Gospel of Mark’s many ‘ands’ (literary) — A literal Mark would have three times as many ‘ands’; English translators smooth them out, losing the text’s character, as also happens in Genesis. → Creation from Nothing: Genesis 1 and John 1 Together
  • The Gospel Spreading from Paul to Spicewood (historical) — Paul carried Jesus across the Mediterranean and Thomas to India, and the same story has now come to Spicewood, showing the new song reaching the whole world. → Half a World Away
  • The grafting into Israel and the church’s persecution of the Jews (historical) — Gentiles grafted into Israel yet turning on the Jewish people with persecution and mass murder, a confession of the church’s anti-Judaism → A Service for Good Friday
  • The Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov (literary) — Dostoevsky’s poem frames the three temptations as miracle, mystery, and authority, the powers that hold human conscience captive. → First Attempt (Temptation of Jesus)
  • The great chain of believers (other) — An extended metaphor of an unbroken chain from Jesus and the apostles through the present room into the future, conveying the communion of saints. → Saints and Sinners
  • The harrowing of Hell (1 Peter 4, the Apostles’ Creed) (biblical) — Christ’s descent to preach to the dead is used to argue that even hell’s population is not settled or triumphant over God’s mercy. → Jacob’s Ladder
  • The healed man born blind getting a job (biblical) — The man healed in John 9 still had to find work afterward, showing miracles have an ordinary aftermath and don’t stop at the story’s end. → Go to Sleep, Isaac
  • The Hill Country / Robert Caro (historical) — The Texas Hill Country seeming too good to be true (per Robert Caro) as another example of a deal that isn’t what it appears. → God’s Love: A Deal Too Good to Be True
  • The Holy Club at Oxford (historical) — Charles and John’s disciplined group living a Christian life shows calling and service preceding assurance → The Calling and the Called
  • The Holy of Holies in the Jerusalem temple (biblical) — The innermost temple room entered only once a year shows what it means to be most set apart from the world. → Saints and Sinners
  • The Holy Spirit is not the Force in Star Wars (pop-culture) — God does not seek balance between good and evil, rejecting the dualism that treats wickedness as God’s equal. → Heavenly Battles
  • The hymn ‘In the Garden’ (literary) — A mid-19th-century camp-meeting hymn quoted as lovely sentiment but with little theology or biblical connection. → Trouble in River City
  • The Iliad opening on wrath (literary) — Homer’s epic begins with the word for wrath, showing how central anger was to the ancient Greek imagination versus its near-absence in scripture. → The Foolishness of the Cross: Jesus Cleanses the Temple
  • The Inner Game of Tennis / The Inner Game of Music (literary) — Barry Green’s adaptation of the tennis book frames performance as potential minus interference, paralleling the life of faith and hope. → Living Hope
  • The invention of jaywalking (historical) — Auto companies lobbied in the 1920s to criminalize jaywalking and shift liability to pedestrians, showing the world’s arrangements are chosen, not inevitable. → The Driver
  • The investment-pitch conversation (personal) — Running into an old friend who shifts from talking about kids and travels to an investment opportunity shows how stakes change the moment money enters a conversation. → Come and See the Trouble — Come and Start Rebuilding
  • The Konami Code / Contra cheat code (pop-culture) — The 30-lives cheat code from Contra (up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right-B-A-Start) as the central metaphor for treating God’s grace as a way to escape consequences. → Eternal Life
  • The Konami code in Contra (pop-culture) — The Up-Up-Down-Down cheat granting 30 extra lives illustrates a faith that pretends grace removes all consequences for our actions. → What do we hope for?
  • The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey (literary) — The 1960s-70s bestseller mapping the Soviet Union and China onto Daniel illustrates modern misreadings of Revelation as end-times prediction. → Alpha and Omega
  • The least of these (Matthew 25) (biblical) — Christ identifying with the hungry, thirsty, stranger, naked, sick, and imprisoned to expose the church’s neglect → A Service for Good Friday, A Service for Good Friday
  • The least of these (sheep and goats) (biblical) — Matthew 25’s righteous who fed, clothed, and visited Jesus unawares model good soil as faith put into action. → Growth
  • The Lego building downtown (current-events) — A downtown Austin building that steps up and to the side yet still rises straight, reinforcing the image of structural uprightness as justification. → Justification
  • The Little Drummer Boy (pop-culture) — An invented, out-of-place carol contrasted as the wrong kind of gift versus the gift of the heart. → The Gift
  • The lost sheep as addict or scoundrel (other) — The shepherd searches night after night even for a sheep that was an addict, abuser, or scoundrel, undeserving of rescue. → Being Sheep
  • The lullaby with an agenda (personal) — Rocking a sleepless infant and singing the same lullaby what feels like 6,000 times illustrates how grace invites us simply to rest. → Go to Sleep, Isaac
  • The Magi Travel from Far Away (biblical) — The magi came a long way (plural in Greek, not kings nor three) to show the Christ-story reaching across distance and prompting a new song. → Half a World Away
  • The man born blind in John 9 (biblical) — ‘I was blind, but now I see’ models revival as dead souls coming alive, not church-membership transfer. → Revival
  • The manger as a dirty feed trough (biblical) — Animal feed not from Petco and saliva-filled trough underscores that Jesus’ birth was one of the least hygienic moments in history. → The Far Country: God’s Journey to Us
  • The Marathon of Life (other) — Being mid-marathon with miles still to go pictures the present struggle even as eternal rest lies ahead. → Come to Me and Find Rest
  • The Marshmallow Test (historical) — The famous self-control experiment, since disproven, showing patience is a practiced habit rather than an innate predictor of success. → Waiting
  • The Martyrdom of Stephen (biblical) — Stephen joyfully proclaiming Jesus and praying for his executioners while being stoned models a Spirit-formed faith worth striving toward. → Credo: I Believe in the Holy Spirit
  • The meat grinder of existence (other) — extended metaphor for a cruel world that will not stop smashing the rejected until God acts to make all well → Extravagant Faith: Mary’s Anointing and the Gift of the Mitzvah
  • The mind-changing meme photo (pop-culture) — A meme-ified photo underscores how genuinely hard it is to change anyone’s mind by logic alone. → Aldersgate
  • The Mismatched Roommate (other) — A tidy person gaining a roommate who never cooks or cleans, showing that life together is not about efficiency or 50/50 fairness. → The Way: Walking Together
  • The Moon Landing (historical) — Older listeners’ vivid memory of TVs wheeled into school for a man on the moon, framing wonder at a human moving through space toward the question of where Jesus ascended. → He Ascended into Heaven
  • The Music Man’s ‘Trouble in River City’ (pop-culture) — The sermon title alludes to the musical’s ‘trouble’ to frame the Holy Spirit as the bringer of good, disruptive trouble. → Trouble in River City
  • The mustard seed growing enormous (biblical) — Like the tiny mustard seed in Mark, the small bread and juice of communion is God doing something great that will grow, so feeling insignificant does not define who you are. → Who Sits Upon the Throne
  • The nearly-chosen music performance major (personal) — Having the forms signed to switch to a music major was a crossroads where his life could have gone another way. → The Rescue
  • The newborn as bundle of needs (nature) — A newborn who can do no work, fight no battles, or play football pictures the vulnerability God chose in the Incarnation. → Whoever Is Not Against Us: Denominations, Control, and How You Follow Jesus
  • The newborn infant as a bundle of need (nature) — Newborns never clean the kitchen, make messes, and wake everyone at all hours; they are pure neediness, which is how God enters the world. → A Bundle of Need
  • The objective Martian observer (other) — An alien judging you only by what you actually do illustrates that identity is revealed by deeds, not excuses or origins. → Who Am I?
  • The Office ‘Corporate needs you to tell the difference’ meme (pop-culture) — The identical-pictures meme opens the point that distinctions matter even when things look alike. → Distinctions: Message and Messenger in Creation
  • The Passover Four Questions (Haggadah) (historical) — The youngest at the Seder asks ‘Why is this night different?’; the Advent sermon series reframes it as ‘Why is this season different?’ → The Four Questions: Who Is Coming?
  • The pastor’s evolving planning tools (personal) — His cycle through productivity, bullet, and atomic planners down to a Field Notes book illustrates how we plan around our identity and that our plans won’t fit the new creation. → New Creation
  • The pediatrician’s growth-percentile chart (personal) — Checking a child’s height/weight percentile is one of the everyday ‘signs’ we anxiously seek about our lives. → The Star
  • The poker adage about the sucker at the table (other) — ‘If you can’t point out the sucker, you are the sucker’ frames the worldly fear of being deceived that love overturns. → Love Believes All
  • The potter mashing down imperfect clay to start again (biblical) — being mashed down and remade is uncomfortable for the clay but is a mercy of God → The Mercy of Fire
  • The preacher’s own dog and cat at peace (personal) — A current household where a dog and cat enjoy each other models the rare familiarity and peace pointing toward Isaiah’s vision. → Pet Blessing
  • The preacher’s recent non-milestone birthday (personal) — his own ordinary birthday opens the riff on how we misuse ‘milestone’ to mean only major life events → The Reign of the Spirit
  • The pressure to be perfect (personal) — The burden of perfect scores, schools, jobs, and spouses, contrasted with the biblical teleios meaning completed rather than mistake-free. → Glorification
  • The principal as ‘prince-apal’ (personal) — Grade-school memory of a regimented day controlled by the ‘prince-apal,’ picturing life without free will. → Drawn by the Father
  • The professional who won’t think hard at church (personal) — People with demanding careers in engineering or business come to church not wanting to think, treating worship as a feel-good boost rather than loving attention to God. → Pentecost
  • The promised large gift not yet received (personal) — Not counting on a large promised gift until it actually arrives parallels Thomas’s reasonable doubt about a resurrection claim he hasn’t yet seen. → Come and See the Trouble — Come and Start Rebuilding
  • The Quirinius census problem in Luke (historical) — The mismatch between Luke’s birth narrative and Roman records (Herod, Quirinius, Augustus, the census) shows faith rests not on one-to-one verification but on the resurrection. → Who Suffered Under Pontius Pilate
  • The Quran as dictation (other) — Islam’s view of the Quran dictated by Gabriel illustrates the first error: reading the Bible as dictated rather than inspired. → The Bible
  • The Reproaches: Christ’s Lament Against His Faithless Church (literary) — Ancient liturgical text voiced by Christ recounting God’s saving acts (Exodus, manna, vineyard) answered by the church’s betrayal, indicting the gathered church’s faithlessness → A Service for Good Friday, A Service for Good Friday
  • The Rescue (2018 Thai cave documentary) (pop-culture) — The boys must be anesthetized to be rescued, illustrating that salvation cannot come from inside the cave or from our own effort. → What Should We Do to Be Saved?
  • The Rescue (Thai cave rescue documentary) (current-events) — The 2018 Thai cave rescue of a trapped soccer team illustrates humanity’s concrete need to be saved and inability to save itself. → What is Salvation?
  • The Rescue / Thai Cave Disaster (current-events) — The 2018 Thai cave rescue documentary clip (boys trapped, divers searching) frames salvation as being trapped and lost and needing help to be free. → Where Are We, How We Are Saved
  • The Rescue documentary final clip (pop-culture) — The Thai cave rescue’s last and smallest boy, whose standard mask didn’t fit, shows rescuers refusing to leave anyone behind. → Who Gets to Be Saved
  • The reverse parable of the sower (other) — Extended original metaphor: instead of scattering seed indiscriminately, the church now hoards it for fear of the road or the bush. → One Straw Revolution
  • The Rich Fool’s Bigger Barns (biblical) — The landowner who tore down barns to build bigger ones embodies the prideful, self-satisfied earthly mind Paul warns against. → Upside Down
  • The rich man and his storage units (biblical) — Retelling of the parable of the rich fool who keeps buying storage units only to lose his life that night, showing things cannot save the soul. → Take Up Your Cross
  • The Rich Young Ruler (biblical) — The pious man who kept the commandments but walked away sad rather than sell his possessions, showing a sacred story that brackets off generosity. → Sacred Story: Aligning Our Lives with Who We Claim to Be, How to Live Our Story, Our Sacred Story, The Next Thirty Seconds, This Teaching is Difficult, Not Easy to Watch, Screening God’s Call
  • The Rich Young Ruler (biblical) — The rich young ruler of Luke 18 contrasts the grand dramatic gesture with the day-by-day generosity of Acts, and warns against putting limits on what we give God. → How to Live Our Story
  • The Richly Laden Table and Fatted Calf (biblical) — The Easter feast spread for fasters and non-fasters alike, illustrating the abundance and inclusivity of resurrection joy. → Easter Sunrise Service: The Paschal Homily of St. John Chrysostom
  • The Scouring of the Shire in Lord of the Rings (literary) — Tolkien ends not at Mount Doom but in the aftermath in the Shire, showing that even righteous victory leaves consequences that can’t be tied in a neat bow. → Get Ready for Something Big
  • The seashell window symbol for baptism (other) — The seashell in the stained glass marks baptism and invites remembrance of one’s own baptism → Baptism
  • The Ship of Theseus (Plutarch) (literary) — Plutarch’s puzzle of the rebuilt ship dramatizes the substance-versus-accident question underlying transubstantiation. → Do this!, Sabbath and Prayer
  • The smudged iota (historical) — The smallest Greek letter easily blurring into alpha or omega on old papyrus illustrates how something seemingly insignificant (an iota of the Law) still matters to Jesus. → Come Down, Don’t Delay
  • The South Park movie (pop-culture) — even secular comedy draws on demon imagery, showing its cultural saturation → Legion
  • The Spark of Friendship (personal) — The exciting spark of a new friendship doesn’t last on its own, illustrating that initial feeling must give way to sustaining fuel. → Keeping the Fire of Love Burning
  • The spiritual ‘If you cannot preach like Peter’ (literary) — The old spiritual that you can still tell the love of Jesus even if you can’t preach like Peter or pray like Paul illustrates that we need not be as holy as Job. → The Wager (Part 2)
  • The stained glass Bible window (personal) — The church’s stained glass window reminds the congregation the Bible is a gift to be received with humility. → The Bible
  • The Tax Collector (biblical) — The tax collector who offered humility instead of good deeds and was relieved of his sins, illustrating that a humble life takes sin away. → Where two or three…
  • The Ten Commandments film (pop-culture) — Most of the movie precedes Exodus 3, showing how the burning-bush moment is the essential preface the film only sets up. → I Believe in the Communion of the Saints
  • The Tetragrammaton and Hashem at the Bar (historical) — Jews never speak the four-letter name, saying Adonai in prayer or ‘the name’ (Hashem) in casual talk, illustrating the holiness of God’s name. → Our Father, Who Art in Heaven, Hallowed Be Thy Name
  • The thief on the cross (biblical) — praying before knowing Jesus, showing prayer as an act of faith in someone beyond yourself → Prayer
  • The Thomas Jefferson Bible (historical) — Jefferson cutting out gospel parts he disliked illustrates the ‘Bible Buffet’ à la carte error. → The Bible, The Power Unit
  • The Trust Clause and Methodist Splinter Groups (historical) — The 1796 US trust clause (church property held in common trust across the connection) distinguishes UMC churches from breakaway groups like the Free Methodists, Wesleyans, and Nazarenes, illustrating Methodism’s real history beyond mere respectability. → Jacob’s Ladder
  • The two-trombonists audition cartoon (pop-culture) — ‘The person next to you at an audition has practiced an hour more every day of their life’ — the warning that turned him from the music life. → The Rescue
  • The Upper Room devotional resources (current-events) — Online pandemic prayer resources offered as a practical entry into contemplation. → Love Neighbor
  • The Wall of Being Decent (other) — Everyone of any religion hits a wall just trying to be a good person, which Christian discipleship is meant to surpass. → Discipleship
  • The warm-up act and the headliner (other) — No one goes to a show for the warm-up; John the Baptist is the warm-up act who readies the crowd for the headliner, Jesus. → The Four Questions: Who Is Coming?
  • The Waterboy (1990s film) (pop-culture) — Adam Sandler’s Louisiana hero channeling anger into football illustrates modern culture’s positive portrayal of anger. → The Foolishness of the Cross: Jesus Cleanses the Temple
  • The whirlpool of what-ifs in work, marriage, and grief (personal) — Suffocating ‘what if I had done this’ counterfactuals over jobs, marriage, and loss that Christ’s love releases us from. → The Rescue
  • The Whole-Brain Child / Name It to Tame It (literary) — Parenting book’s storytelling technique for calming a child illustrates how telling our story integrates and heals the brain. → Holy Conferencing
  • The widow’s mite (biblical) — The widow’s two pennies, given not in competition with the loud Pharisees, model giving as venerating God rather than winning. → Last Place
  • The widow’s two coins (biblical) — The woman giving her two coins out of joy gives more than the rich out of abundance, showing sacrificial giving as habit. → Living Hope
  • The Widow’s Two Mites (biblical) — The widow who put her two mites in the box, proving poverty is no obstacle to the path of repentance through almsgiving. → Where two or three…
  • The woman with the sick daughter clinging to Jesus (biblical) — Her persistence in not letting go, resulting in healing, parallels Jacob’s refusal to release the angel. → Jacob’s Grappling Technique
  • The word for “dog” across languages (other) — English dog vs. Greek, Hebrew kelev, French chien, Chinese gou, German Hund show names differ by language yet point to one reality, illustrating the mystery of Adam’s naming. → God Told Adam and Eve
  • The world’s media versus the narrow way (other) — Modern media saying ‘be happy, take it easy, follow the broad way’ contrasted with Christ’s call to the narrow way of struggle. → Ash Wednesday, Ash Wednesday
  • The Worldly Philosophers (literary) — Heilbroner’s book on Ricardo, Malthus, and Adam Smith sparked his interest in economics. → I Believe in the Forgiveness of Sins
  • The Worldly Philosophers book (literary) — Reading this history of economics led him to major in economics as a practical way to study philosophy. → Drop Your Nets
  • The youngest brother who never lifted a sword (literary) — The unlikely youngest son out in the fields who looks powerless, illustrating that God chooses what appears weak. → Spicy Mustard
  • Theologian on Christ standing with sinners (literary) — A quoted theologian (Barth) describes Christ joining the evil generation in John’s baptism not for his own sake but for ours. → Freedom from Sin in the Waters of Baptism
  • Theologian on God as no bargain (literary) — A theologian’s quote that Jesus assaults the idea of a transactional relationship with God, to whom we give everything and from whom we only receive with gratitude. → Restless with Foolishness
  • There Was No Year Zero / Calendar History (historical) — The AD/BC dating system (coined by Dionysius Exiguus in the 6th c. and BC by Werner Rolevinck in 1474) wasn’t built on historical evidence of Jesus’s birth, undercutting the assumption that the calendar pins down the nativity. → Christmas Eve: God Enters History
  • Theudas and the Roman crackdown (historical) — Rome sent troops to behead Theudas for leading a crowd, contrasting with Jesus’ entry that provoked no Roman panic. → Palm Sunday: Practicing Living
  • Thief in the night (biblical) — Christ’s coming arrives unexpectedly like a thief, so Advent is a season of staying ready. → Mercy Revealed
  • Things Around the House (other) — Just as living in a home means doing chores like dishes and cleaning, abiding in God’s house means practicing the means of grace. → Learning to Abide: The Means of Grace
  • Things we do when nobody is watching (personal) — Unhygienic private habits (nose-picking, etc.) frame the question of whether we are more or less ourselves when unobserved, like the women coming to the tomb alone. → Easter
  • Think of the worst thing you’ve ever done (personal) — An invitation to recall one’s worst act, then receive the twist that God offers mercy and you are not your mistakes. → Mercy Revealed
  • Third-Century Writer Against Celebrating Birthdays (historical) — An early Christian writer held it contrary to faith to celebrate birthdays, since Christians should mark baptism or martyrdom instead. → The Cultivation of Christmas Trees
  • Thirsty little ones in Austin’s summer (nature) — Austin’s drying lake and summer heat make the ‘cup of cold water’ literal and a sign of thirst for the water of life. → Welcome
  • Thirty Years War and belief-based religion (historical) — Post-war 17th-18th c. Protestant framing redefined religion as private belief rather than practice, sidelining practices like Sabbath. → The Voice of Sabbath
  • This is fine dog meme (pop-culture) — The dog sitting in a burning building denying danger pictures our refusal to admit our need to be saved. → What is Salvation?
  • This Little Light of Mine (pop-culture) — Kids can sing it but not yet make the metaphorical leap to being light themselves. → Symbols and Signs
  • Thomas Aquinas and the faithful old woman (historical) — Aquinas said his vast theology was just an attempt to write down what the faithful old woman already knows in her heart, illustrating that faith is not measured by books read. → Pentecost
  • Thomas Aquinas’s four conditions of hope (historical) — The medieval philosopher’s criteria (good, future, difficult, possible) are helpful but insufficient because hope rests on the living God. → Living Hope
  • Thomas Aquinas’s four conditions of hope (historical) — Aquinas defines hope as a future, arduous, possible good, a helpful but ultimately unsatisfying definition. → What is Hope?
  • Thomas Malthus and the East India Company famines (historical) — Malthusian scarcity logic and the El Niño famines that killed ~30 million Indians while cotton shipped to England show how humans decide who deserves to live or die. → Who Gets to Be Saved
  • Thomas Mann’s Joseph novels (literary) — Notes Mann wrote four enormous novels on the Joseph story, underscoring its narrative weight and strangeness. → Come Down, Don’t Delay
  • Thomas seeing the scars (biblical) — The risen Christ’s scars, seen by Thomas, show the past is not erased but healed in resurrection. → I Believe in the Resurrection of the Body and the Life Everlasting
  • Thor and Zeus (pop-culture) — Pagan gods who would never let themselves be killed, highlighting the scandal that the Christian God does. → Was Crucified, Died, and Was Buried
  • Three components of fire (nature) — Fire needs fuel, oxygen, and a spark (the spark can come from another candle) as an image of how light is kindled and shared. → Light of the World
  • Three hours, three days, three weeks rule (other) — The survival rule of thumb (3 hrs without shelter, 3 days without water, 3 weeks without food) frames the whole sermon series order. → Shelter
  • Three-page Airbnb rules list (personal) — A long list of prohibitions doesn’t feel like freedom, illustrating how rules can be experienced as burden rather than gift. → Sabbath and Prayer
  • Thunder Bay and English variation (personal) — Different English across countries (e.g. Thunder Bay) shows how each person’s story has its own grammar and vocabulary. → How to Live Our Story
  • TikTok ‘How Often Do You Think About the Roman Empire’ Trend (pop-culture) — The viral trend of men thinking about the Roman Empire daily (the preacher admits he would too) is a hook for taking the Roman office of consul seriously. → Christmas Eve: God Enters History
  • TikTok subtitle context clues (pop-culture) — Modern readers use context clues to decode unknown words, a luxury unavailable for words that appear only once in ancient Hebrew. → What’s Next? (Builders and Names)
  • Tilling the soil for costly fruit (nature) — Being tilled by God is costly but trades weeds and easy plants for fruit, the only way to bear a harvest. → Ash Wednesday
  • Time machine to see Jesus (other) — Wishing to take one’s kids in a time machine to see Jesus so they’d believe, illustrating the longing to see rather than believe unseen. → The Concrete Faith of Thomas
  • Time Magazine ‘Is God Dead?’ cover (historical) — The 1966 Time cover that drew record letters, used to frame the death-of-God question that the Christian faith actually places at its center. → Was Crucified, Died, and Was Buried
  • Tipping off the other team at a UT-A&M game (other) — the Pharisees warning Jesus about Herod feels like an opponent revealing the next play, showing how surprising their help is → Under the Wing
  • Tolkien and the Battle of the Somme (historical) — WWI losses behind The Hobbit explain why Tolkien made a small hobbit, not a warrior, the hero → Sanctification
  • Tom Hanks and the pickle jar (pop-culture) — SNL Celebrity Jeopardy sketch where Tom Hanks won’t let go of the pickle and stays stuck in the jar, illustrating the comforts we refuse to release. → Walking Along
  • Too Much Candy (personal) — Candy is fun but eating too much makes you sick, illustrating that worldly things can be abused, unlike God’s love of which you can never have too much. → You Can Never Have Too Much Love
  • Too proud to ask for help unloading groceries (personal) — Pride goes both ways: too proud to kneel for another and too proud to accept help carrying groceries. → Maundy Thursday
  • Too proud to ask for help with groceries (personal) — Pride can keep you from accepting help unloading groceries or from offering it, mirroring the two-way sin of pride. → Maundy Thursday
  • Too proud to unload the groceries (personal) — Being too proud to ask for help carrying groceries or to offer help shows how pride blocks mutual service. → Maundy Thursday
  • Total darkness in Carlsbad Caverns (personal) — On a tour the guides cut all the lights and he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face, illustrating darkness as the genuine absence of light. → Creation from Nothing: Genesis 1 and John 1 Together
  • Touching the hot stove (personal) — Painful memories keep us from repeating mistakes, showing why memory of the bad matters too → Remember and Be Thankful
  • Touching the hot stove (personal) — Don’t stick your hand on the pot and get burned to learn there’s danger; receive Jesus’ word instead of learning the hard way. → Subterranean Hometown Blues
  • Tower of Babel reversed (biblical) — Where Babel scattered people and confused their languages, Pentecost draws people together to understand each other through the Spirit. → Show Us the Father
  • Tower of Babel reversed at Pentecost (biblical) — Babel scattered one-language people for their vanity; Pentecost gathers many-language people to build a temple of the heart. → Pentecost
  • Traffic on 620 after school lets out (personal) — Everyday traffic contrasts with true survival stakes to show not all fears carry equal weight. → Don’t Panic
  • Trail Lite Reduces the Shoulder (personal) — A fellow hiker whose only credential was a doctor dad and an article he’d read popped the shoulder back in, illustrating both desperation in suffering and the help that comes from others. → Restless with Suffering
  • Trail manners with the boys (personal) — Teaching his sons to be courteous on the trail and step aside for others models the mutual space-making that forgiveness requires. → Forgive Us Our Trespasses
  • Transfiguration faith vs the bleeding woman’s faith (biblical) — Peter and John needed little faith on the mountaintop where Jesus shone, but the woman who touched Jesus’ tunic showed great faith by believing when it was neither easy nor obvious. → Be Still
  • Transitive vs Intransitive Verbs (other) — Grammar of ‘saves’ as a transitive verb shows we are saved from and for something specific, not generally. → Binding the Strongman
  • Transitive vs intransitive verbs (walk, open, play) (other) — grammar lesson distinguishing intercessory prayer (transitive) from contemplative prayer (intransitive) → Prayer, I Believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth
  • Translucent Ghosts in TV and Movies (pop-culture) — White or semi-translucent ghosts on screen versus invisible ghosts in books illustrate how non-material beings defy physical laws, present yet unseen. → Credo: I Believe in the Holy Spirit
  • Transparent Substances in Sunlight (nature) — Basil’s analogy of clear objects shining when sunlight falls on them, picturing souls made radiant and grace-bearing by the indwelling Spirit. → A Burning Sensation (Summit Fever: A Pentecost Sermon)
  • Traveling Hungary with Alina translating (personal) — Visiting Hungary with Alina, who could translate, shows how radically different it is to be accompanied by someone who speaks the language — like being accompanied in our story. → How to Live Our Story
  • Traveling salesmen and snake oil (historical) — The history of traveling salesmen, snake oil peddlers, and US evangelism as examples of deceivers selling false goods. → Advent: Don’t Be Deceived
  • Treasure at the End of the Rainbow (pop-culture) — A hollow treasure goal, like the pot at the rainbow’s end, that keeps us moving toward nothing lasting. → What Is My Sacred Story?
  • Treasure in clay pots (biblical) — Paul’s image of bodies as fragile clay pots that crumble to dust yet will be remade gloriously. → I Believe in the Resurrection of the Body and the Life Everlasting
  • Tree rhymes with bee, arbre with marbre (literary) — differing rhymes across languages illustrate how stylistic norms make translation imperfect → The Crown of Salvation
  • Trendy diets, workouts, churches, and investments (current-events) — Paleo/keto/crossfit/pilates, trendy churches like Summit and Soma, and chasing ‘the next Apple/Tesla/Uber’ illustrate our craving for the next big thing instead of the eternal God. → Not a New Commandment: God’s Love Is Old, Not Trendy
  • Tribes of Israel competing in Joshua (biblical) — After entering the promised land the tribes fought and pined for the good old days, a picture of post-success church conflict. → The Church in the Past
  • Trojan horse / ransom to the devil (literary) — The devil thinks he gains a holy man to control but gets God in flesh and is defeated, illustrating Christus Victor. → How We Are Saved
  • True crime podcast confession (pop-culture) — The killer confessing when caught illustrates the narrow, after-the-fact view of confession Lent corrects. → Ash Wednesday
  • Trunk or Treat (personal) — Brenda’s well-attended October trunk-or-treat event that Wilson and his kids loved, cited as fruit of her hard work. → October Pastor Report
  • Trusting a person with your children’s lives (other) — Saying you trust someone versus putting your children in their hands illustrates the difference between believing a story and living it. → Holy Conferencing
  • Trusting doctors to declare death (personal) — We accept reports of death on the authority of doctors and family, showing that even declaring death is an act of faith. → Was Crucified, Died, and Was Buried
  • Trusting the Boat’s Captain (other) — Trusting a captain who knows the destination even if it isn’t where you expected captures the risk and trust of faith. → Discipleship
  • Trying to drive last year’s model (other) — The church tries to drive an outdated car not equipped for today’s roads, though Jesus and the resurrection are timeless. → The Driver
  • Tucker at the bus stop in UT gear (personal) — Meeting her grandson Tucker off the bus every afternoon in UT clothing illustrates her devotion to family and her Longhorn pride. → Glynis Frye Memorial
  • Turkey-induced nap (nature) — A big turkey dinner making you sleepy illustrates obvious dietary consequences versus the hidden consequences of spiritual food. → Food
  • Turtles All the Way Down (John Green novel) (literary) — Green’s novel about grief and mental illness is invoked as another resonance of the ‘turtles’ phrase, connecting the cosmic question to lived emotional pain. → Christmas Eve Service: Is the World Flat or Overflowing?, Christmas Eve: Is Reality Flat or Overflowing?
  • Turtles All the Way Down (William James anecdote) (literary) — The apocryphal William James exchange with an old lady claiming the earth rests on turtles ‘all the way down’ illustrates infinite regress and whether a flat or God-sustained reality answers the question of origins. → Christmas Eve Service: Is the World Flat or Overflowing?, Christmas Eve: Is Reality Flat or Overflowing?
  • Twelve-step first step / Bill Wilson and AA (historical) — Admitting powerlessness is a step of transformation; AA’s roots trace through the Oxford Groups and Keswick holiness Methodism → Original Sin
  • Two kids told to empty the dishwasher and care for each other (personal) — Picking the clear task over the vague one shows the temptation to do the defensible thing rather than the loving thing. → Sabbath and Prayer
  • Two Teachers in the Darkness (other) — Two teachers in the dark, one needing external light and the other being light itself, contrasts ordinary guidance with Jesus who is the light. → Animals and God’s Promise (Children’s Message): The True Light Already Shines
  • Two-Edged Sword of the Word (biblical) — Hebrews’ two-edged sword cuts through the costumes society tells us to wear. → What Is My Sacred Story?
  • Two-Face in The Dark Knight (pop-culture) — ‘You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain’ shows that becoming an antichrist can happen to any of us. → Antichrist: Becoming the Villain
  • TwoSetViolin’s mythical LingLing (pop-culture) — The joke about the over-practicing prodigy LingLing mocks the relentless drive to give up everything for success. → Sacrifice
  • Tyconius and Augustine’s reading of Revelation (historical) — Tyconius and Augustine established reading Revelation as a vision of the church’s struggle throughout the present age, ending only at resurrection and last judgment. → Revelation Notes
  • U2 ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’ (pop-culture) — Lyrics about climbing mountains and scaling walls illustrate the restless search that is only satisfied when we find Jesus. → Take Up Your Cross
  • Ukraine Kharkov offensive (current-events) — The 2022 Ukrainian breakthrough and salient against Russian lines shows military language is continuous across centuries, grounding Jesus’ suffering in real concrete history. → Who Suffered Under Pontius Pilate
  • UMC baptism liturgy ‘when nothing existed but chaos’ (literary) — The baptismal prayer ties the waters of baptism back to the waters of creation. → Distinctions: Message and Messenger in Creation
  • UMC clergy birthday group chat (personal) — Pastor recalls a birthday group chat with UMC clergy enthusing about the virgin birth, rebutting claims Methodists deny it. → Who was conceived from the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary
  • UMC membership vows (other) — The membership questions (‘will you be loyal… by your prayers, presence, gifts, service and witness’) echo baptismal language, framing church-joining as a worthwhile detour. → Waters Above, Waters Below
  • Underpaid US shot putter sponsored by Flavor Flav (current-events) — An Olympian who couldn’t make rent until Flavor Flav covered it, versus rich stars, shows athletes depend on a supporting team. → The Cup
  • Unequally yoked at church camp (personal) — A Paul-class anecdote about 2 Corinthians 6 being misread at church camp as a rule against dating outside your youth group, showing how scripture gets bent toward relationships. → If You Fall Down
  • Unused road bike in the garage (personal) — The bike bought and ridden only twice illustrates that prayer is a habit that must be practiced, not stored away. → Restless
  • Unwritten manuscript on food and dieting in the Bible (personal) — His never-edited book project that concluded there is no Jesus diet or one weird trick to lose weight. → Opened Eyes
  • Updike’s Seven Stanzas at Easter (literary) — Updike’s poem insists Christ rose bodily—molecule reknit, amino acids rekindled—or the Church will fall. → On the Third Day, He Rose Again
  • UT basketball superfan and camping out (personal) — His stubborn devotion to UT basketball (camping out for seats, riding to Denver) shows being part of something meaningful but not sacred, contrasted with church membership not being fanaticism. → What is our sacred story?
  • UT coffee-shop and message-board debates (personal) — College obsession arguing free will vs. determinism, framing the sermon’s central question. → Drawn by the Father
  • UT English major and poetry workshop (personal) — A substitute poetry instructor’s rule that only the text on the page matters taught Wilson to let the Bible speak for itself (exegesis over eisegesis). → Come and See
  • UT football and patience (personal) — Glynis’s love of UT football, which ‘has taken a lot of patience over the last decade,’ illustrates the patience that love of children and family requires. → Glynis Frye Memorial
  • UT football championship run (current-events) — A playful aside about Texas’s national championship hopes contrasts full football gear with flag-football’s lighter equipment. → This Teaching is Difficult
  • Verrocchio and Leonardo’s Baptism of Christ (historical) — Renaissance realism and naturalism entering portrayals of Jesus’ body → If Jesus Drew a Portrait of You
  • Verses Not on a Hobby Lobby Sign (current-events) — The Bible’s unsettling verses won’t be found decorating a kitchen wall; we must wrestle with them. → Go From Your Country
  • Vessel versus dam in ministry (other) — Being a vessel that lets God flow rather than a dam that blocks love depicts the minister’s true role and human nature’s urge for comfort. → Love Abides
  • Vestige as Latin for footprints (other) — We see footprints of God in creation, but creation is not God. → Distinctions: Message and Messenger in Creation
  • Vinegar and gall, the pierced side (biblical) — The vineyard branches given the water of salvation respond with vinegar, gall, and a spear-thrust to Christ’s side. → A Service for Good Friday
  • Visiting Google and Apple headquarters (personal) — The family toured Google and Apple only because they were convenient, unlike the deliberate detour pilgrims made to reach John. → Waters Above, Waters Below
  • Visiting people in hospice care (personal) — Hospice patients reduced to small actions are not limited in faith, prayer, or humanity as children of God. → Every Act of Faith
  • Volunteering Sue for health phone calls (personal) — The pastor volunteers a congregant, Sue, as a contact for advice on physical health, making the ‘do something’ call concrete. → Reset Your Body, Reset Your Body
  • Von Balthasar on contemplation as looking inward toward God (literary) — a teacher’s words framing contemplation as finding God and discovering oneself in him → Prayer
  • Waiting for Friends Who Are Late (personal) — You only wait for friends who haven’t arrived because you trust they’re coming, showing waiting is itself an act of faith. → Waiting
  • Walk to Emmaus (biblical) — Invoked as the model of full conversion and encounter that disciples wish to stay within forever. → The Transfiguration
  • Walk to Emmaus / midwinter moment (other) — Comparisons for the preeminent mountaintop conversion experience the disciples wanted to stay in. → The Transfiguration
  • Walking away from a car wreck unscathed (other) — Crediting God for surviving a crash because you have no other explanation exemplifies the impersonal deist ‘God of the gaps’ rather than the present Holy Spirit. → Pentecost
  • Walking onstage alone at UIL orchestra (personal) — the preacher’s high-school humiliation of walking out with his bass to an empty stage before 300 people, illustrating how humiliation is busted expectations plus shame → Under the Wing
  • Walking the greenbelt trails (personal) — Walking trails like the Hamilton Greenbelt and Canyonlands, where paths cross and people bump into one another, reframes trespass as straying off our path into someone else’s. → Forgive Us Our Trespasses
  • Walton family breeding a microscopic camel at A&M (other) — A hypothetical 40-year lab effort to breed a needle-sized camel parodies the rich exploiting loopholes to game Jesus’ test. → Eye of the Camel
  • Wanting to fast-forward through events (personal) — The wish to skip a party, job interview, or lunch to ‘be in the future now’ illustrates impatience with the present. → Restless with Our Future
  • Warner Sallman’s Head of Christ (1950) (historical) — The famous 1950 portrait with 500 million copies is held up as the image furthest from the biblical Jesus. → I Believe in Jesus Christ, His Only Son, Our Lord, Who is Christ?
  • Washrooms in Thunder Bay, Canada (personal) — Searching a Thunder Bay Walmart for a ‘restroom’ that Canadians call a ‘washroom’ illustrates deceptive fluency — assuming shared understanding where differences hide. → How to Live Our Story
  • Water filter on the Appalachian Trail (personal) — The preacher sent his water filter home and learned to read good vs. bad springs, illustrating discerning good vs. bad sources of spiritual water. → Water
  • Waterhouse’s ‘Lady of Shalott’ / Pre-Raphaelites (historical) — Background on the Pre-Raphaelite movement’s rejection of Raphael and Michelangelo, situating Rossetti’s artistic milieu. → Saying Yes to God
  • Wayne’s World — “We’re not worthy!” (pop-culture) — Wayne and Garth bowing to Alice Cooper illustrates the natural sense of unworthiness in the presence of beauty. → The Baptism of the Lord
  • We Are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder (literary) — The hymn referenced alongside Jacob’s earlier ladder dream as the congregation’s shared song memory. → Healing Wounds
  • We are Lazarus quotation (literary) — A teacher’s words that the baptized are Lazarus, unbound from the shroud of death to live a dangerous Lazarus life of witness. → Every Act of Faith
  • Wedding at Cana (biblical) — Jesus turning water into choice wine points to the abundant feast of wine awaiting us eternally with God. → I Believe in the Resurrection of the Body and the Life Everlasting
  • Wedding ring as a sign of love (other) — A ring of wood or diamond shows the gift’s value lies in being a sign of something deeper, like God’s love. → The Gift
  • Wednesday morning Bible-in-a-Year small group (personal) — References the church’s small group working through Kings and Chronicles as the source of the Jehoram example of persistent disobedience. → Come Down, Don’t Delay
  • Weeds I do not like (Dr. Seuss riff) (literary) — A Green-Eggs-and-Ham-style litany (‘not in my yard, not on a barge’) opens the sermon to show weeds are low-effort, high-return, and not all growth is good. → Growth
  • Wemby and a Spurs championship parade (personal) — Even a hoped-for Spurs title and San Antonio parade would fade like everything else, illustrating the unsatisfying transience of worldly markers. → Get Ready for Something Big
  • Wendell Berry and Wes Jackson (literary) — Seminary reading in American agrarian writers that shaped the preacher’s thinking on land and faith. → One Straw Revolution
  • Wer weiss wie nahe mir mein Ende (literary) — The 17th-century German countess’s stark hymn on mortality set by Bach for this Sunday’s cantata, linking the vineyard parable to the inevitability of death and grace freely given. → Laborers in the Vineyard: Grace, Community, and Mortality
  • Wesley and the singing Moravians in the storm (historical) — The Moravians calmly singing hymns amid a deadly storm gave Wesley a faith he wanted, sparking his small-group spirituality. → Revival
  • Wesley brothers’ Holy Club and the 22 Questions (historical) — The Oxford Holy Club’s daily self-examination questions illustrate the Methodist pursuit of holiness. → Saints and Sinners
  • Wesley denying communion to Sarah Hopkey (historical) — Wesley’s passive-aggressive refusal of communion to his former fiancee illustrates the sin of moralism and living in the past. → Restless with the Past
  • Wesley vs. Whitefield controversy of 1744 (historical) — the predestination split and Moravian dispute frame Wesley’s insight that grace is a growing thing, not finished at its start → The Reign of the Spirit
  • Wesley’s ‘almost Christian’ (historical) — The commandments don’t even make us an ‘almost Christian’ in John Wesley’s language → The Ten Commandments, Discipleship, Pentecost, Eye of the Camel
  • Wesley’s ‘Duty of Constant Communion’ (historical) — Wesley’s sermon argues for frequent communion because Jesus commands it and we meet God there. → Praise
  • Wesley’s ‘Metaphysical Sermons’ and the Model Deed (historical) — Wesley’s later sermons on angels, devils, and the nature of humanity were excluded from the 1760 Standard Sermons required by the Model Deed and instead published in the Arminian Magazine, so they’ve been dismissed for 248 years as non-doctrinal. → Jacob’s Ladder
  • Wesley’s 1738 conviction about grace (Aldersgate) (historical) — Wesley’s realization that holiness is not about what you do but about being fully loved by God grounds the message of grace. → Saints and Sinners
  • Wesley’s Covenant Service and prayer (historical) — John Wesley’s New Year Covenant Service, where people make a two-way covenant with God, models the mutual yielding the congregation prays together. → Arise, Shine: The Light of Epiphany and the Grafting In of the Gentiles
  • Wesley’s Duty of Constant Communion (historical) — Wesley’s sermon answers why Methodists commune: because Jesus commands it and because it is good. → This Teaching is Difficult
  • Wesley’s edited Book of Common Prayer (1784) (historical) — Wesley sending his edited Anglican liturgy to the new American church illustrates the structured roots of Methodist worship. → Praise
  • Wesley’s editing of the Book of Common Prayer (historical) — Wesley’s quick pen cut the 39 Articles to 25 and shaped the 1784 Sunday Service, explaining why early American Methodists cut and later restored the descent clause. → He Descended into the Dead
  • Wesley’s failed mission to Georgia (historical) — His arrest and flight from Georgia shows that calling is not measured by external success → The Calling and the Called
  • Wesley’s General Rules riffing on Micah 6:8 (historical) — Wesley’s three rules map onto Micah’s do justice / love mercy / walk humbly with God. → Justice
  • Wesley’s heart strangely warmed (historical) — The same Spirit at Pentecost settled on Wesley and spread Methodism, and is still at work at Bee Creek today. → The Church in the Past
  • Wesley’s Primitive Physic (historical) — John Wesley’s home health book and plain rules on air, food, and water show health as part of showing the light of Jesus. → Reset Your Body
  • Wesley’s three General Rules (historical) — do no harm, do all the good you can, follow the ordinances of God as concrete guides for sanctified living → Sanctification
  • Wesleyan Covenant Prayer (historical) — The early-Methodist practice of gathering at the new year to recommit to God, recited together at January 2 worship. → Notes from the Pastor: Resetting Yourself with God in the New Year
  • Wesleyan Covenant Service prayer (historical) — The ‘I am no longer my own, but thine’ covenant prayer models new-year recommitment that only makes sense beyond individualistic freedom. → Freedom: A New Covenant for a New Year
  • Wesleys as tired teenagers at Oxford (historical) — Charles Wesley and friends, fed up with hypocrisy, recruited older brother John, modeling living as if the gospel were true. → Whoever Is Not Against Us: Denominations, Control, and How You Follow Jesus
  • Wesleys preaching at the coal mines (historical) — John and Charles Wesley preaching before 6am shifts and organizing meetings illustrates uniting heart and head against complacent faith. → Freedom: A New Covenant for a New Year
  • West Texas roads built for rare rain (personal) — Far West Texas highways are engineered around rainfall that comes only a few times a year, because storms hit fast and destroy roads not built for runoff just as the house on sand washes away. → Be Still
  • What have you done for me lately (other) — A sarcastic quote capturing how humans sneak works-righteousness in, which is not how God looks at us. → I Believe in the Resurrection of the Body and the Life Everlasting
  • What Would Jesus Do (WWJD) (pop-culture) — a helpful but vague rule of faith, contrasted with Wesley’s more concrete General Rules → Sanctification
  • What Would Jesus Do Bracelets (pop-culture) — The WWJD bracelets of the preacher’s youth framed faith as ethical behavior rather than martyrdom-style discipleship. → Discipleship
  • When Harry Met Sally ‘I’ll have what they’re having’ (pop-culture) — Wesley wanting the Moravians’ faith is like wanting what someone else is having. → Revival
  • Whiskey advent calendars starting December 1 (current-events) — Commercial advent calendars ignore the real Advent (starting Nov 30) to stay shelf-stable, illustrating how Advent has been secularized. → The Birth of Jesus
  • WHO drowning statistics for men (current-events) — Men drown at twice the rate of women due to riskier behavior, contrasting modern recklessness with the disciples’ realistic fear of storms. → Be Still
  • Why can’t we see God? (the child’s question) (personal) — The earnest questions children ask about seeing, knowing, and hearing God, which adults learn to ignore, frame the whole sermon. → Shining
  • Wild (the movie / Pacific Crest Trail) (pop-culture) — Reference to the film Wild’s Pacific Crest Trail setting, contrasted with the harder-to-resupply Appalachian Trail, framing the rigor of his hike. → Love Covers a Multitude of Sins
  • Wild apple tree in Virginia (personal) — Sitting for an hour eating fresh apples off a wild tree, illustrating fruitfulness experienced firsthand rather than as supermarket abstraction. → Fruitfulness
  • Wild berries, mushrooms, and field-dressing game (nature) — Unknown berries, mushrooms, and sick game animals can knock you out faster than bad water, illustrating how harmful spiritual food endangers the soul. → Food
  • Wild cats larger than wild dogs (nature) — Though domesticated dogs outsize domesticated cats, lions and tigers dwarf the largest wolves, and wild predators never cohabit gracefully. → Pet Blessing
  • Wild Kratts villain Polly Paver (pop-culture) — The PBS show’s asphalt-loving villain who cheers Joni Mitchell’s paved paradise illustrates the trampled-road soil where seed is pecked away. → Growth
  • William Morgan visiting prisoners (historical) — An Oxford student’s prison visits became a core practice of the Holy Club, embodying concrete love of neighbor. → The Holy Club
  • William Seymour’s conversion at Simpson Chapel (historical) — The Azusa Street Revival leader’s 1895 conversion in a Methodist chapel links Methodism to Pentecostal worship. → Praise
  • William Temple on original sin as empirically proven (historical) — The wartime Archbishop of Canterbury’s line that original sin is the only empirically proven doctrine, seen in hearts and institutions alike. → Lost & Found: Lost, Let’s Talk About the Devil
  • William Temple’s empirical doctrine joke (historical) — Original sin is the only empirically observable Christian doctrine because we can see brokenness repeated everywhere → Original Sin
  • William Temple: original sin as the only empirical doctrine (historical) — Temple’s WWII remark grounds original sin in the visible evil of the era → The Holy Innocents and the Problem of Evil
  • Wilson’s call to ministry in Peru (personal) — Running up a sand hill outside Lima and feeling his ambitions turn to dust was the preacher’s own Aldersgate moment of redirection. → Aldersgate
  • Wilson’s college and seminary acceptances (personal) — The relief of getting into UT Austin, seminary, and ordination illustrates our craving to be settled in an in-group. → The Next Thirty Seconds
  • Wilson’s mother saying life’s not fair (personal) — His mother’s refrain ‘life’s not fair, Wilson’ captures the hard truth that gifts are not doled out equally. → Freedom in Christ
  • Wilson’s own humbling early jiu-jitsu training (personal) — Getting armbarred/choked as a beginner illustrates the humility and long failure before any traction in a life of faith. → Jacob’s Grappling Technique
  • Wimber, Arder, and the conversion of Yoni Adonyi and Alina’s family (personal) — A chain of revival-born love (Vineyard movement to Bill Arder to Yoni Adonyi) that led to the preacher’s wife Alina becoming a Christian, showing revival changes lives quietly across the world. → Revival
  • Wine as purified water in Jesus’s day (historical) — Ancient winemaking made bad water safe, underscoring that Jesus was no teetotaler and genuinely came to celebrate. → Jesus Likes to Party
  • Wings of eagles (Isaiah 40) (biblical) — The closing benediction borrows Isaiah’s imagery of mounting up on eagles’ wings to bless renewal in worship. → Trouble in River City
  • Wipe the dust off your shoes (biblical) — Jesus telling disciples to move on shows he was not a maximalist, freeing us to serve purposefully rather than exhaustively. → The Birth of Jesus
  • Wise men’s gift of incense (biblical) — The magi bringing incense to the infant Jesus grounds the use of incense in worship from the very beginning. → What We Remember
  • Wool combed thousands of times (other) — The Greek image for Christ’s brilliance, like wool combed thousands of times, conveying the dazzling whiteness of the vision. → The Transfiguration
  • Workplace Mindfulness for Productivity (current-events) — Companies push meditation to make workers more efficient, showing how prayer gets distorted into something centered on ourselves rather than God. → Our Father, Who Art in Heaven, Hallowed Be Thy Name
  • Works seasoned with the salt of God’s love (other) — Acts of charity become a palatable offering to God when seasoned with the salt of his love. → Prayer and Converse with God Is a Supreme Good
  • World fire myths (literary) — Prometheus, Maui, Azazel in Enoch, and Loki all bringing/stealing fire, showing humanity’s universal fascination with fire as divine. → Light of the World
  • World War I and the cycle of national humiliation (historical) — France, Russia, and Austria each entering 1914 with something to prove demonstrates how the ancient warmongering instinct persisted into the modern world. → Heavenly Battles
  • Worship is not a weekly TED talk (pop-culture) — Worship is not an entertaining TED talk with music; the pastor cannot drive the church alone. → The Driver
  • Worship the series of truths, not Jesus (teacher’s saying) (personal) — A seminary teacher’s warning that clinging to proofs of the resurrection makes an idol of the proofs rather than Jesus. → How We Are Saved
  • Writing Children’s Bible Songs (personal) — The preacher’s five years of writing Bible-based children’s songs for chapel models sharing good news plainly for all ages. → Tell Everyone That Jesus is Alive
  • Writing preconceptions and dissolving them in water (personal) — The congregation writing preconceptions of Revelation and of God’s limits, then dissolving the papers in water stations, enacts God’s freedom from self-imposed limits. → Alpha and Omega
  • Wrong Mountain Hike near Mt. Wilson (personal) — Hiking alone before dawn with a headlamp, the pastor climbed halfway up the wrong mountain and had to shimmy along an exposed ridge, illustrating the folly of going it alone. → The Way: Walking Together
  • WWII fire bombings of Dresden and Tokyo (historical) — Atrocities by Nazis, Japanese, British, and Americans alike illustrate that no nation stands outside original sin → The Holy Innocents and the Problem of Evil
  • Year Compass Booklet (other) — A free reflection booklet for reviewing the past year and planning the next, used as a tool for spiritual self-location (‘if we don’t know where we are, it is hard to know where we are going’). → Notes from the Pastor: Resetting Yourself with God in the New Year
  • Year-old bread in 18th-century France (historical) — Pre-modern peasants baked bread once a year and ate rock-hard loaves to survive, showing how radically the human diet has changed. → Reset Your Body
  • Yeast leavening three measures of flour (biblical) — Jesus’s parable of hidden, pervasive growth of the kingdom of God. → The Gift of the Trinity
  • Yoda’s ‘do or do not, there is no try’ (pop-culture) — Yoda’s line to Luke contrasts the third servant who merely tried with the first two who did. → Do Or Do Not
  • Yoni, father-in-law from communist Romania (personal) — His mandatory army service made him hate camping, showing different people have good reasons for their aversions. → Don’t Panic
  • You and Jesus are BFFs (personal) — The complacent Model Two believer who assumes they’re on the good team and need do nothing different. → Upside Down
  • You can’t be half pregnant (other) — Just as no one can be partly pregnant, you can’t be ‘kinda saved’ or ‘kinda loved’ by God; salvation claims all of you. → Show Us the Father
  • You can’t sell a fast (current-events) — There are no Lenten chocolates or Lententines because Lent’s call to give up things resists consumer marketing. → Ash Wednesday
  • You give off an aroma (other) — Riffing on Paul’s image that believers spread the aroma of Christ (not just post-workout sweat) to show we carry Christ’s identity. → Advent: Don’t Be Deceived
  • Youth answering the sermon questions (personal) — The pastor hands the sermon over to the congregation’s youth, who answer prepared questions, modeling hope by listening to and honoring those already called by God. → The Joy of the Lord is Our Strength
  • Youth football team that never won (personal) — Kids stayed joyful losing until they got competitive and started crying over losses, showing that proximity to success is what makes defeat painful. → Peter Wants the Warmth Without the Weight
  • Zacchaeus and the children’s song (biblical) — The repentant tax collector who pledges restitution and joy in response to Jesus’ grace, modeled (via the Sunday-school song) as the opposite of the rich young ruler. → Sacred Story: Aligning Our Lives with Who We Claim to Be, Our Sacred Story
  • Zacchaeus’s pledge (biblical) — Zacchaeus changing his story by giving up control and self-centeredness models finding a purpose worth living for. → How to Live Our Story, How to Live Our Story
  • Zach Greinke Pulled in Game 7 (personal) — The pastor’s frustration at watching the manager pull a sharp Zach Greinke at the 2019 World Series, only for relievers to give up the lead, sets up the sermon’s grudging aside about rest and readiness. → Come to Me and Find Rest
  • Zao and the modern zoo (other) — Notes zao shares a root with our word ‘zoo’—where living things are—to illustrate it just means biological aliveness like a monkey or mouse. → Fragments
  • Zechariah struck mute fails the test (biblical) — A lifelong holy man can’t handle the angel and is struck mute, while young Mary says yes—contrasting faithful response. → Magnify
  • Zero-sum giving and sacrifice (other) — Giving costs a meal out or a vacation day, making generosity an act of faith since our gifts are zero-sum but God’s are not. → Praise
  • Zeus without lightning bolts (literary) — The mistaken image of God as a powerful but distant Zeus illustrates the false projection of a far-off deity onto the God of the Bible. → I Believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth
  • Zodiac signs of the preacher’s family (personal) — The preacher noting he and his children are Libra, Scorpio, Virgo opens the topic of astrology’s hold on us. → The Star
  • Zombie movies / heroism in collapse (pop-culture) — The fantasy that if everything collapses I could finally be a hero, exposing how we all picture ourselves as heroes not villains. → Antichrist: Becoming the Villain
  • Zoom interview manners (current-events) — Pandemic-era etiquette about not being a mouth-breather illustrates how breathing matters in close conversation. → Reset Your Soul
  • Zuckerberg Weighting ‘Congratulations’ (current-events) — Zuckerberg personally tweaked the algorithm to boost ‘congratulations’ posts, showing how news is engineered for engagement. → Tell Everyone That Jesus is Alive

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