Pastor's Blog

Tomorrow will be three months without Melinda.    I can’t even begin to say how disorienting it has been without her.    That’s the best word for it, I think.   Disorienting .   At least, that’s the word that keeps popping into in my head.   We did everything together, went everywhere together, talked about everything and nothing.   I’ve heard some people say it’s wise for couples to have a “life outside of marriage,” to have some independence and personal space.   I don’t subscribe to that form of wisdom.    Someone much wiser said that the two shall become one.   And so it was for us.   Our lives were thoroughly intertwined, and neither of us would have had it any other way.   Melinda was a constant presence, a true companion and confidant in every way.   Life isn’t right without her.   Not for me, not for our children.   Tonight, our youngest (Olivia) is attending her first formal event as a hi...

The Dutch theologian, Herman Bavinck, began his short, but masterful book on   The Christian Family   by observing that   the history of the human race begins with a wedding . This is significant because marriage is one of the things that sets human beings apart from everything else that God has made. Man is unique in this relationship. He is created differently in this respect from those creatures both above and below him—that is, differently from both angels and animals—and created for different purposes, too. The animals he created by the word of his command. He literally   spoke   them into existence:    “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures,” he said, “and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens” (Gen. 1:20). And in obedience to his command, they sprang into being. “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds, livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according t...