This past Christmas, we lost Snoopy. A strong gust of December wind knocked him off his perch near our back door – breaking his nose, and thus ending a long and storied career of holiday ornamentation. Julie and I weren’t ready to let Snoopy go, but time and the elements made the decision for us.Continue reading “For Everything a Season”
Category Archives: Sermons
Entertaining Angels
Late Saturday last, I sat on a folding chair in a quiet room at Northgate Care Center. Seated with me, a wife mourning the loss of her husband, whose spirit having just been freed from his body, lay slightly reclined but peacefully and mercifully still on the nearby bed. Through the small gap of theContinue reading “Entertaining Angels”
Help When You Need It Most
Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message at the funeral service for Thomas William “Tommy” Thomson, an elder and patriarch of First Presbyterian Church in Waukon, Iowa, on Saturday, February 3, 2024. Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by Jonathan Safran Foer and Scott Hoezee inform the message. Oskar Schell is the lead character in the novelContinue reading “Help When You Need It Most”
Remembering and Finding Hope
Listen to the Word that God has spoken … I am one of the many who’ve witnessed the ferocity of God’s anger. He allowed that I be tossed into the deepest of darkness, where my flesh and skin wasted away, where my brittle bones cracked under the weight of affliction. Bitterness besieged; tribulation enveloped, andContinue reading “Remembering and Finding Hope”
The Bravest Thing We Can Ever Do
Since the start of Advent in mid-November, we’ve been asking an honest question: How does a weary world rejoice? Just exactly how do the pale and downtrodden – everyday folks like you and I – find good reason to shout for joy and bang the drums over the arrival of Jesus in Bethlehem? Particularly soContinue reading “The Bravest Thing We Can Ever Do”
Treasuring and Pondering
This morning’s Scripture lesson offers the Bible’s only account of Jesus as a growing boy. On the cusp of becoming a teen-ager, Jesus and his family are back in Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover, and Mary and Joseph experience every parent’s worst nightmare – they lose track of Jesus and spend a frantic couple ofContinue reading “Treasuring and Pondering”
‘We’re All Good Goats’
Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message during the funeral for Timothy Gene Gress on Monday, January 8, 2024, at First Presbyterian Church in Waukon, Iowa. Scholarship commentary, and reflection by M. Eugene Boring, Scott Hoezee, and Dennis Linn inform the message. Reading the Bible is as much about challenge as it is about comfort,Continue reading “‘We’re All Good Goats’”
A New Broom Sweeps Clean
What I’m about to share with you will make a finicky housekeeper cringe. Our living room and foyer still harbor pockets of Christmas mess: Small piles of gifts and stocking-stuffers sorted neatly by recipient; cardboard and packaging destined for recycling; a cast-aside instruction manual sternly forbidding “use of this appliance in a bathtub or otherContinue reading “A New Broom Sweeps Clean”
Making Room
Now children, here is how God came to you: And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed. And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of theContinue reading “Making Room”
‘Mortals, Join the Mighty Chorus’
The miracles surrounding the birth of Jesus begin to pop and sizzle long before that cold, dark night in a manger stall. Months earlier, an angel visits a man named Zechariah and shares astounding word that he and his wife, Elizabeth – long past her child-bearing years and like Zechariah long resigned to being childlessContinue reading “‘Mortals, Join the Mighty Chorus’”