Will Vaus

In an article in  Christianity Today  several years ago, Bill Glass wrote: What is our country’s biggest problem? A lack of a father’s blessing. The FBI studied the 17 kids who shot their classmates in towns like Paducah, Kentucky; Pearl, Mississippi; and Littleton, Colorado. All 17 shooters had only one thing in common: they had a father problem. I see it so much; it’s just unbelievable. There’s something about it when a man doesn’t get along with his father. It makes him mean; it makes him dangerous; it makes him angry. On the day before Father’s Day, I was in North Carolina in a juvenile prison. I ate lunch with three boys. I asked the first boy, “Is your dad coming to see you tomorrow on Father’s Day?” He said, “No, he’s not coming.” “Why not?” I asked. “He’s in prison.” I asked the second boy the same question and got the same answer. I asked the third one why his dad wasn’t coming, and he said: “He got out of prison about nine months ago, and...

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make our joy complete. In these opening four verses of 1 John the author tells us three important things: about his purpose, about himself, and about Jesus. Let us look first at what John tells us about his purpose in writing…. First, John tells us it is his desire for his readers to have fellowship with them. The “we” and the “us” in the opening of this letter probably refers to the group of disciples gathered around John the Evangelist in Ephesus. John’s desire is tha...

How do you feel about graveyards? Call me strange, but I like visiting them. I like wandering through graveyards and reading the epitaphs. Here are some humorous ones…. I was supposed to live to be 102 and be shot by a jealous husband. I told you I was sick. He loved bacon. I made some good deals and I made some bad ones. I really went in the hole with this one. Died: from not forwarding that text message to 10 people. We finally found a place to park in Georgetown. And then there is the epitaph my mother told me she wants on her tombstone: Alive and Well. Which brings us to our Scripture for today, all about a tomb that existed 2000 years ago, that some claimed was vacated. Listen for God’s word to you from Mark 16:1-8…. When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him.  2  And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen...