Tuesday, June 12, 2018 | Reflections
The church my husband serves and where we worship as a family is celebrating their 100th anniversary of the sanctuary. They’ve been a congregation for 135 years, but this year marks the 100th year they’ve worshipped in this particular sanctuary. 100 years of singing,...
Monday, June 11, 2018 | Reflections
Many organizations consider “a good leader” as the person who comes in and charts the course, steers the ship, and tells the subordinates what to do. This model of leadership is alive and well in many churches. If we hire a young and dynamic pastor, surely she or he...
Monday, June 11, 2018 | Reflections
Happy Feast of St. Barnabas. When we think about the founders of the Early Church, two come immediately to mind. St. Peter and St. Paul. Peter, the mostly loyal, always loving, often dim, the rock on which the Church was built. Paul, the zealot, protecting the...
Monday, June 11, 2018 | Reflections
The post God is Enough: God is at Work appeared first on d365 Daily Devotionals. This post appeared here first: God is Enough: God is at Work [D365 Daily Devotions]
Sunday, June 10, 2018 | Reflections
Genesis 3:8-15 “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid… and I hid myself.” A reading like the one we have this morning from Genesis seems like a no-brainer. There are half a dozen or more sermons begging to be plucked out of this...
Sunday, June 10, 2018 | Reflections
Hide and Seek is a coffee-hour ritual for the children at our church. The joyful shrieking of toddlers echoes through the parish hall and around campus as they playfully search each other out. As I write this meditation, I’m sitting in my office listening to a...
Saturday, June 9, 2018 | Reflections
Today we celebrate the commemoration of St. Columba, best known for his missionary work in Ireland and Scotland and his establishment of three religious communities, perhaps the most famous of them at Iona, a tiny island off the coast of Scotland. Columba set up Iona...
Saturday, June 9, 2018 | Reflections
College basketball is a quasi-religion in my part of the world, and March Madness is its most holy season. Folks identify with their preferred school or athletic conference and tout their allegiances on shirts, vehicles, billboards, and even tattooed on their skin....
Friday, June 8, 2018 | Reflections
Fear is the preoccupation with the question, “What if?” What if I don’t do well on the exam? What if I don’t get the job? What if the diagnosis is grim? Truth be told, none of us can live out our days without at least a passing glint of fear. More than a hundred...
Friday, June 8, 2018 | Reflections
Readings for the feast day of Roland Allen, Friday, June 8, 2018: Psalm 119:145-152 Numbers 11:26-29 2 Corinthians 9:8-15 Luke 8:4-15 In our Gospel parable today about the sower and the seed, we are reminded that we are not in control of the outcome of...
Thursday, June 7, 2018 | Reflections
On a good night, the community kitchen serves more than a hundred meals to those who would otherwise go hungry. Many men and women in our area lead lives of social and economic scarcity, so part of our mission is to ensure that there is always enough for everyone to...
Thursday, June 7, 2018 | Reflections
Matthew 14:13-21 Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. – Matt. 14:19 Doing an examen, which is a looking back in prayer...
Wednesday, June 6, 2018 | Reflections
The third chapter of Ecclesiastes is surely at the top of the charts of familiar Bible verses. Thanks to Pete Seeger’s setting of the song, “Turn! Turn! Turn!”, the verse also found favor at the top of the Billboard charts. But too often, a biblical text’s familiarity...
Tuesday, June 5, 2018 | Reflections
It took a long time for spring to warm up the north coast, but finally I found myself back in the lake, larger than Galilee, still substantially cooler, swimming. For me, swimming in open water, in the lake or especially the ocean, has become a form of prayer. For...
Tuesday, June 5, 2018 | Reflections
When my parents visit us, they almost always attend our church. Preaching is an important part of my vocation, and I look forward to it—except when Mom is sitting in the front row. I wonder if Jesus feels that all-too-familiar twinge of anxiety when he teaches in his...
