Monday, April 23, 2018 | Reflections
Peter is here to teach us an important lesson today: Moments of frustration can be opportunities to experience the relentless nature of water. Water, even in small quantities, is powerful. Over a long period of time it can carve canyons and shatter cement. It is...
Monday, April 23, 2018 | Reflections
A good and wise friend recently suggested that repentance/metanoia/transformation are at the heart of the Kingdom of God. The key is confession and reconciliation, but confession, an ancient and holy practice, is one we tend to avoid, or even reject. Are we...
Monday, April 23, 2018 | Reflections
The post Led by Love appeared first on d365 Daily Devotionals. This post appeared here first: Led by Love [D365 Daily Devotions]
Sunday, April 22, 2018 | Reflections
Fear. Anxiety. Uncertainty. Security. Prejudice. These emotions and more prompt us to place labels on people. These labels offer tidy definitions that help us deal with people who are different from us. The problem is that humans are far too complex to be fully...
Sunday, April 22, 2018 | Reflections
“Your best friend is the one who: seeing him reminds you of Allah, speaking to him increases your knowledge, and his actions remind you of the hereafter.” — Al-Muhasibi I want to tell you a story: There were two close friends who had been...
Saturday, April 21, 2018 | Reflections
I wonder if we make enough space in our lives to experience holiness. Our lives are much easier if we hold God and other things that require vulnerability at arm’s length. These holy things may be unclean, unfamiliar, foreign, or profane and require a whole-hearted...
Saturday, April 21, 2018 | Reflections
Along with Education for Ministry (EfM), Episcopal Café, and most of the Episcopal Church as a whole, I am mourning the loss of a mentor, co-mentor, editor, friend, and incredible resource and example, namely Ann Fontaine. So many words have been written about her...
Friday, April 20, 2018 | Reflections
Although I never got to meet her in person, Ann Fontaine has been walking alongside me almost as long as I’ve been an Episcopalian. We first met when I was new to the church, around 2006, via the blogosphere. She later coerced me (in that...
Friday, April 20, 2018 | Reflections
As most readers already know my mom, Ann Fontaine, passed away earlier this week. To say I will miss her greatly is an enormous understatement. I don’t think I even realize how much I will miss her. I know from the many cards, emails, texts, and social...
Friday, April 20, 2018 | Reflections
All of us will lose something at some point in our lives—friends, family, health, jobs, opportunities, or possessions. Grief is a part of life. Faith grants us not an escape from the deep spaces of certain loss, but a container to hold them and a lens through which to...
Thursday, April 19, 2018 | Reflections
Biblically speaking, food is more than simply fuel for the body. Food offers space for community and is the direct means of connection, religious experience and worship, sacrament and miracle. Saul takes some food and regains his strength in this holy context. Many of...
Thursday, April 19, 2018 | Reflections
The Feast Day of St. Alphege I am visiting our daughter in south Florida. She has a screened-in porch overlooking her backyard, and I have been sitting out here in the cool mornings to write. This morning daylight seeps slowly, incrementally, into the world....
Wednesday, April 18, 2018 | Reflections
Philip is compelled by the Holy Spirit to talk to a strange, foreign person parked on the side of the road in the literal middle of nowhere. The man to whom he goes could have been a criminal, a crazy person, anyone. But the Spirit nudges these strangers together,...
Wednesday, April 18, 2018 | Reflections
Mark 16:9-12: Now after he rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons. She went out and told those who had been with him, while they were mourning and weeping. But when they heard that he was...
Tuesday, April 17, 2018 | Reflections
Jesus comes to save our souls. His work on the cross takes all the junk out of our hearts and discards it, offering us something beautiful and life-giving in its place. We just have to be willing to make the transaction. And that’s a hard kind of will to muster. Simon...
