Paulin Memorial Presbyterian Church

06/07/2026

Thanks for joining us today.

05/29/2026

This June, during Indigneous History Month, we are learning more about Indigenous Healing Practices on June 20th

June 1 marks the beginning of Indigenous History Month in Canada. Learn more, and discover how you can participate here: https://bit.ly/indigenous-history-month-2026

05/19/2026

Matthew 13:31-35

A devotion by Rev. Lisa

Before diving into this day’s gospel reading, I want you to take a moment and think about how connected you would feel to the Lord if the only way you were ever able to learn about Him came from abstract philosophical teachings. Think back to your school days and you were told to try to explain what love was, but without using any personal stories or experiences. Would you be able to clearly explain to someone what love was? Or would you be struggling to find the right words to describe that great feeling that you have had in your life with vague terms as you tried to explain it to someone who had never experienced it firsthand. This was the experience that many Israelites had in the time before Jesus came to live among us. They knew that God existed and that God was with them but at the time they believed that trying to explain who God was in regular human language was to do a disservice to the Lord. After all, they were talking about the creator of heaven and earth, and any words that they might use to describe the Lord would be seen as being far too earthy or not holy enough to describe the wonder of the living God.

So many of the teachings about the Lord were more abstract and harder for everyday people to understand, let alone put into practice. This led to people feeling distant from their God because they struggled to find the right words to describe their relationship with Him. This was the situation that Jesus walked into at the start of his earthly ministry, the people of God wanted to draw closer to their great creator but many of them had no idea how to do so in a way that was properly respectful to the Lord. Then along comes Jesus who told his followers that you didn’t need to worry about your word not being holy enough to offer up to the Lord, in the Lord’s prayer Jesus told his followers to call out to the Lord with the word Daddy. And in today’s gospel reading we see Jesus grounding his teachings not in some abstract way but instead by using common everyday experiences to open peoples eyes to what God was doing all around them. In today’s reading Jesus compared the coming kingdom of heaven as something small that was able to have a big impact on the world around it. A mustard seed, which is a small seed, is known to almost everyone, in Israel it was able to grow to a huge plant that not only was able to grow in the harsh weather of the region but also was able to offer shade and shelter to many, both human and animals. And when you live in an area where not many trees grow the gift of shade can mean the difference between life and death. Jesus also compared the coming kingdom of heaven as being similar to yeast, were it only takes a small amount to create enough bread to feed a family. In today’s reading we see how Jesus was able to use simple every day things to better help people both in the past and us today to better understand how God’s kingdom can have a lasting impact on our lives and the world around us.

Thanks be to God, amen.

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05/13/2026

Matthew 13:24-30, 13:36-43

A devotion by Rev. Lisa

Today we continue digging deeper into the parables of Jesus, and we're invited to stop and think about the parable of the wheat and the w**ds. Before looking into today’s gospel reading, I need to explain a little bit about first century farming in order for today’s reading to make sense. Many of us don’t understand why a w**d might be so dangerous to farmer, that his helpers would believe that it was better to throw it all away both the good and the bad. So in order to fully understand the today’s parable I need to tell you a little bit about a plant called the bearded Darnel, a plant that until it comes to a head looks just like wheat, and a w**d that as it grows warps it roots around the wheat so that by taking out the w**d you also kill the good plant. Now what makes this w**d so dangerous is that if eaten it will cause people to become sick, and it has a bitter taste. The only way to safely separate the wheat from the Darnel is after everything has been harvested, for only then will you be able to pick the good wheat from the w**ds.

Jesus told this parable for several reasons, the first was to remind us that we, as humans, are not called to judge one another, judgement alone will belong to the Lord. From our viewpoint we cant tell what is good from what is not, and we don’t want to be like the farmhands whose only solution was destroy everything because we can’t judge what is good and what is not. And this is a good thing to remember because it is so easy in life to judge something as being good or bad, or to seek to tear down everything that we think might be dangerous in the world, and often people seek to do this in Jesus’ name. But with our human eyes we can’t fully tell what a healthy plant is and what is dangerous to us. Now this does not mean that we are free to do whatever we want because we don’t know fully what is good for us, because God still gave each and everyone of us a brain and the bible to help guide us in making good decisions. But what it does mean is that we are not called to judge others if they happen to make a different decision than our own, as long as they are not harming anyone.

All of us are not going to walk the same life path, and we need to be ready to accept someone who speaks differently than we do, who worships differently than we do, as long as they are doing no harm then we can leave it up to the Lord to sort out the wheat from the w**ds. Instead, we can focus on the more important things like seeking to love our neighbor as ourself rather than seeking to judge them without ever walking a mile in their shoes,

Thanks be to God, amen.

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05/12/2026

Matthew 13:1-23

A devotion by Rev. Lisa

Before diving into this day’s scripture reading, I invite you to take a moment to stop and think about the way in which you plant your garden. Are you the type of person who carefully maps out your garden, making sure that everything will look picture perfect? Are you the type of person who has sperate garden for different types of plants, one for perennials, and one for vegetables? Or do you just throw everything together and hope that it will grow? Have you ever worried that you would run out of plants long before you run out of places to put them? There are many different approaches to gardening, but the one thing that the majority of gardeners would agree with is that there has to be some care put into where you choose to plant any given plant. After all, a plant that needs lots of sun would die in the shade and vise versa. And yet, in today’s gospel reading we hear Jesus telling the story of a foolish farmer, who carelessly cast his seeds in all types of soil both good and bad.

I call this farmer in Jesus story foolish, and those who first heard this story would agree with me, because the farmer was not only planting seeds for a flower garden but also planting a field that would feed his family, and his community. Unlike today when if we underestimate how much seed we need to grow, the famer in today’s parable would not be able to go to the store and buy more because he had a limited amount of something so precious, seeds. This is why famers in Israel would make sure to only plant their seeds in good soil, one that had been cleared away from rocks and w**ds, because if your life depended on the food that you produced you would do everything in your power to make sure that you had the perfect soil. And this makes sense both in Jesus' day and in ours today, but in today’s gospel reading Jesus was not talking about a farmer who was seeking to grow wheat or some other food source. Instead he was talking about how our Heavenly Father, choosing to spread the seeds of the coming kingdom of heaven. Once again, it may look foolish in our eyes, to plant the seeds of the kingdom in places where it might not grow, but thankfully our God is more generous than we might be with such a precious gift. God allows the seeds of his kingdom to be planted in all different types of people's hearts, those who will be able to grow the kingdom without much effort and those who may or may not be able to grow those seeds in their life and their community. Our God wants everyone to have a chance to grow the kingdom in their life, this is why He sent Jesus to earth to live among us, so that all of us, no matter who we are or where we came from, can receive the good news of the gospel.

And here is the most wonderful thing, the seeds the farmer struggled to grow in the bad soil that Jesus described, is soil that can be transformed with a bit of hard work and dedication. Rocks can be removed from soil, w**ds can be pulled out and even the hard earth can be broken up and transformed into good soil. And if that is true for the soil that Jesus talks about, it is also true about the hearts that God so generously plants the seed of the gospel with-in. There is no one on earth who is predestined to be the bad soil, just as it means that there is no person who is predestined for the bad place. Instead, it is up to each one of us to decide what we want to do with the gifts that God has given to us, knowing that we have all that we need to prepare our hearts for God’s gifts at any time in our life, as long as we are willing to put in the work to prepare ourselves for God’s coming kingdom.

Thanks be to God, amen.

05/11/2026

Matthew 12:46-50

A devotion by Rev. Lisa

How often have you thought about Jesus' family? I know that we talk a lot about Mary and Joseph during the advent season, but once Jesus starts his earthy ministry, how often do you think about his family other than Mary, his mother? I am willing to bet that you don’t often think about the earthy family of Jesus because we don’t hear too much about them in scripture other than today’s gospel reading. We see that Jesus's earthy family struggled with his ministry, in the gospel of Mark we're told that Jesus family and friends tried to stop him from leaving home to follow God’s plan. But in today’s reading we hear about how his family wanted to talk to him, perhaps to convince him to go back home, to settle down and raise a family. To chose a life that would not bring him into conflict with the religious elite, to chose to follow the Lord in a safer and more accepted way than what he was doing now.

In many ways they acted the same way that we might act if our loved one decided to do something that was a bit dangerous, or might lead them too far from home. After all think for a moment about how you would feel if your child decided that they were going to join doctors without borders, or that they were going to take part in a mission project to Gaza or some other part of the world where war is on going. Would you be willing to let them go, or would you be tempted to hide their passport in the hopes that they would find a safer line of work? The same thing can be said about Jesus' family/ But Jesus was quick to remind them, and also us today, that if we want to follow him we can’t always take the path of least resistance. After all if Jesus had followed his family home, you and I would still be held captive to the power of sin and death, and our world would still be waiting on a savior.

There are times when we need to take a risk for the sake of the gospel and for the sake of God’s beloved people. When we do that we might come in conflict with our birth family but even if we happen to lose our earthy family, we will be blessed with a heavenly one. For when we dare to follow the will of the Lord then we are also counted as members of Jesus' family.

Thank be to God, amen.

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