Will Vaus

In an article way back in the summer of 2000,  The New York Times   reported: J. P. Morgan & Company, a bank worth $21 billion, was disconnected from the Internet on June 13, 2000 for failure to pay a $35 bill. The venerable Wall Street firm found itself without a Web site or an e-mail connection to the outside world because it had failed to renew the registration of www.jpmorgan.com, the domain name that serves as its address on the World Wide Web. Throughout the day, clients were unable to visit the Web site or exchange e-mail messages with the firm’s bankers and traders. All that frustration could have been averted if Morgan had sent a check for $35 for the annual registration fee to Network Solutions, a domain-name registrar in Herndon, Virginia. It pulled the plug on Morgan six weeks after Morgan’s bill came due and after sending the firm at least three bills, said Chris Clough, vice president for corporate communications at Network Solutions. [1] It make...

Once there were two gentlemen in England who owned a pasture. Most of the time they didn’t do anything with their field, so they allowed local shepherds to graze their sheep on their property. Then one day these two men, Guy and Will, decided to build an outdoor skating rink in the middle of their pasture. Shortly after they were finished, a shepherd leading his flock decided to take a shortcut across the rink. The sheep, however, were afraid of the ice and wouldn’t cross it. Desperate, the shepherd began tugging them to the other side. “Look at that,” remarked Guy to Will. “That bloke is trying to pull the wool over our ice.” Now, I promise not to pull the wool over your eyes with this sermon, but I will warn you that the sermon has something to do with shepherds and sheep. Listen for God’s word to you from Luke 15:1-7… Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him.  And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fel...

The story is told of Sir Ernest Shackleton, the famed explorer of Antarctica, placing the following ad in the newspaper: Men Wanted: for hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful, honor and recognition in case of success. Shackleton died in 1922, and this story began circulating in 1944, so it may be a myth. But it bears a striking resemblance in tone to Jesus’ call to discipleship in Luke 14, which is not a myth. Listen for God’s word to you from Luke 14:25-33… Now large crowds were traveling with him; and he turned and said to them,  “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.  Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.  For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to comple...