Imagine you are at a baseball game.  It’s the bottom of the 9th inning and your team is losing by 3 runs.  There are two outs.  The batter hits a grand slam and the game is won.  Can you imagine the shouts and the cheers that break out?

Ezra says that something like this happened when the people saw their Temple beginning to be rebuilt.  After so many years of it destroyed and the people a captive in a foreign land, they finally are home and God’s house is being rebuilt. The sadness that they had before, suddenly changes to great expressions of joy by making all the sounds that human beings could ever make.

How important it is to find a place for God in life!  Beyond the physical temple or church building, God lives with those who love and want to serve God.  When you find friends who also desire to love and serve God the why I pray that you do, there will be great joy and happiness.  It will be like a Grand Slam when everyone runs to home plate . . . to be “at home” with God living with us!

Ezra 3:7-13

Bible Breaths Learn More…
Example:
“Your graciousness, forever” v. 11

Tuesdays are dedicated to the Old Testament books of history
and the Hebrew “Writings.”

These Firestarters are for families with children. For the Firestarters in the original edition, I recommend the ebook.  You will have the entire program of well over a thousand of these introductions with you on your phone or tablet! Check the menu options at the site for more information.

There’s a long body of water that separates Europe from Africa called the Mediterranean Sea. The name means “The Sea in the Middle of the Land.”  The Holy Lands of the Bible are on the eastern shore.  Just north of these sacred lands was a great city called Tyre.  It was a very important city for trade, because products from the East would come by land to that city, and would make the rest of their way west by water.

It was a city that did not honor God—a proud place, because of all the wealth that came to it for being such a famous city.  Instead of trusting in the God of Israel, Tyre trusted only in wealth as a kind of god.  The city is pictured like the many ships in its harbor, tossed about in a hurricane—the “hurricane,” being the nations around Tyre that are going to conquer it, just as a hurricane sinks a ship.  

St. Matthew tells what happened when the disciples where in a storm and Jesus was asleep in the boat.  Invite Jesus into your “boat,” and he will protect you from all the storms of life (Matthew 8:23-27).

Ezekiel 27:26-36

What are “Bible Breaths”? Learn More…
Example:
“You alone calming my storms.” Matthew 8:23-27

Mondays are dedicated to the reading of the Hebrew Prophets.

These Firestarters are from a new edition of The Bible Through the Seasons being developed for families with children. For the Firestarters in the original edition, I recommend the ebook.  You will have the entire program of well over a thousand of these introductions with you on your phone or tablet! Check the menu options at the site for more information.

I was once pastor of a church in Vineland, the largest city in New Jersey—not by the number of people living in it, but by its size.  For many years a major product of the land was grapes.  Lots of vine-yards make up a vine-land!

  Beautiful purple grapes bounce about on the branches of the vines, waiting for the day of the harvest.   Jesus uses the example of vines to help his disciples understand how they are connected to him.  Jesus is the vine, we are the branches.  When we are so linked to Jesus, beautiful fruits come from our lives. 

As you sit and pray, feel your whole self connected to Jesus.  Through the Holy Spirit, Jesus’s love and life are flowing into you, giving you life, just as the branches receive life from the vine.  When you get up from your time of prayer, spend the rest of the day remembering that you are a beautiful branch on the sacred vine which is Jesus.         

John 15:1-8

What are “Bible Breaths”? Learn More…
Example:
“You the vine, and I a branch”

Sundays are dedicated to the Gospels from the Revised Common Lectionary
During the Easter Season, are read from the Gospel of John.

These Firestarters are from a new edition of The Bible Through the Seasons being developed for families with children. For the Firestarters in the original edition, I recommend the ebook.  You will have the entire program of well over a thousand of these introductions with you on your phone or tablet! Check the menu options at the site for more information.