Give to God the Things That Are God's

Preached By Lynn Davis, Lay Servant at Centre UMC

  

Today, the Lord put it on my heart to expound on the New Testament reading of Matthew 22:15-22. The question the Pharisees tried to use to entrap Jesus…..the question about paying taxes.

Strike the Rock

            Two years ago I was in the mountains of Western Maryland for a week of vacation at my family’s stomping grounds just west of Deep Creek, near Oakland. My mom’s family is all from out that way, and we’ve made annual pilgrimages since I was a kid, but it was my first time back in years. A lot was familiar; the eighty-year-old cabins hadn’t changed much. Some things, however, were different. The biggest difference that I remember was stepping out to take in the mountain landscape and seeing, about 10 miles away, gigantic wind mills cluttering the skyline. New construction for cleaner energy. They were huge, and they were ugly.

You Give Them Something to Eat

            In the middle of the lush fields and summer green of Forest Hill, the desert can seem a long way off. The closest desert, as far as I can tell, is somewhere out west, Texas, maybe, or New Mexico or Colorado. Here it’s easy to forget what deserts are like—or to pretend that they don’t exist.