In the town of Stepanavan, Armenia, there is a woman whom everyone calls “Palasan’s Wife”. She has her own name, of course, but townspeople call her by her husband’s name to show her great honor. When the devastating 1988 earthquake struck Armenia, it was nearly noon, and Palasan was at work. He rushed to the elementary school where his son was a student. The façade was already crumbling, but he entered the building and began pushing children outside to safety. After Palasan had managed to help twenty-eight children out, an aftershock hit that completely collapsed the school building and killed him. So, the people of Stapanavan honor his memory and his young widow by calling her Palasan’s wife. Sometimes a person’s greatest honor is not who he or she is but to whom he or she is related . The highest honor of any Christian is to be called a disciple of Jesus Christ, the One who laid down his life for us. [1] Today we are going to examine six ...
I well remember the first time I preached. It was in my home church, La Jolla Presbyterian in California. I was in eleventh grade, and it was Youth Sunday. (See photo above!) The young people of the church did everything in the service that day and it was all organized by the youth pastor. He picked one middle school student, one high school student (me), and one college student to deliver the sermon. Thus, the three of us had to coordinate our messages. We each had ten minutes and, as I recall, I was the only one to go overtime. (Some things never change.) We had two services in my home church with about seven hundred people in each service. I remember that I was a little bit nervous and so my throat got rather dry about halfway through my message in the first service. Thankfully, there was a glass of water in the pulpit. I took a sip of water and said something funny about it. Everyone laughed. Therefore, I did the same thing in the second service. However, some of my friends f...