Will Vaus

For some reason, Paul keeps reminding me of song lyrics. This week I am reminded of the lyrics by Sammy Cahn: “Love and marriage, love and marriage, they go together like a horse and carriage.” That’s what our passage from Ephesians 5:21-33 is all about. Listen for God’s word to you…   Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing  her by the washing with water through the word,   and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.   In this same way, husb...

Listen for God’s word to you from Ephesians 5:1-20…   Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people. Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving. For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person—such a person is an idolater—has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.   Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient. Therefore do not be partners with them. For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light   (for the fr...

We all know the story of the Titanic. The opulent, 900-foot cruise ship sank in 1912 on its first voyage, from England to New York. Fifteen hundred people died in one of the worst maritime disasters of all time.   How did it happen? The most widely held theory, for some time, was that the ship hit an iceberg that opened a huge gash in the side of the liner. But an international team of divers and scientists later probed through the wreckage and found that the damage from the iceberg was surprisingly small. Instead of a huge gash, they found six relatively narrow slits across the six watertight holds.   It just goes to show that small damage, below the water line and invisible to most can sink a huge ship. In the same way, seemingly small things can sink our lives.   To avoid sinking we need to be whole vessels. In a word, we need to have integrity. Webster defines integrity as: (1) an unimpaired condition: soundness, (2) firm adherence to a code of especially moral or art...