Tim Boyd's Blog

Galatians 5:25, “Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.”  If you and I were reading this scripture together I would probably ask you what you think that meant.  Then you would probably answer something like “well we should be walking with the Spirit.”  I would agree and compliment you on your wonderful answer.  I think both of us would have, somewhat, missed the point of this phrase.  To keep in step with someone could signify a walk, but it also is the phrase you would use in dancing to keep up with your partner.  “in step” seems to signify, not a walk, but a dance  To be fully alive is to join God on the great dance floor of life. Many of the greatest Christian thinkers throughout history have stated that the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit (the three that make up the one God) are in a constant dance with eachother.  The concept is called the Perichoresis.  It’s from two greek words meaning “to dance among.”...

I read this in the greatest collection of sermons I've read.   The Collected Sermons of Fred Craddock . "I'm borrowing the phrase "don't fit in" from my first student church.  It was up in East Tennessee.  I worked there in the summers as a seminarian and it was about twenty miles from Oak Ridge.  Oak Ridge had gotten into place.  The atomic energy thing was booming and folk were coming and constructing that little town into a city.  Folk were coming from everywhere.  Hard-hat types, in tents and trailers and little temporary huts and all kinds of leantos.  They covered those beautiful hills with temporary quarters, wash hanging out on the fences and little kids crying through the muddy places where all these things were parked. My little church, an aristocratic little church, white frame building, beautiful little church was near by.  It was a nice church, wonderful people.  I called the board together and said, "We need to reach ou...