Why do we give things up or take things on during the season of Lent? It is certainly not something that Jesus’ first followers did. There is some evidence that early Christians fasted forty hours between Good Friday and Easter, but the custom of spending forty days in prayer and self-denial did not arise until […]

This morning I want to focus on Peter, one of the main characters in our Gospel reading for today. Peter appears frequently throughout the Gospel of Matthew. Some of his appearances are humorous and some are tragic, but they are always human. He is full of all the good and bad that is in each […]