Living In God’s Amazing Grace
You never know what people are going to say – This week I was in a doctor’s office (nice guy) and mentioned I was going to travel to Israel next week. He immediately told me, “My son went to Israel and was able to be baptized in the Jordan”. He was thrilled, clearly to share that with me, and I had many questions, but kept them to myself. “How wonderful” I replied. And the doctor wished me a blessed trip. Continue reading “Baptized in the Jordan”
Essentials of Faith. If you wrote a list of essentials of faith, what would it include? Worship, Catechism, The Bible, fellow believers? Just as each of us learn in an individualized way to read, or write, or do math, so we each learn about Faith in our own way. But the Bible is a central piece of that. God gave us a legacy of documents (yes, they were individual documents before they were compiled) and we have learned about Faith and God and ourselves from them for thousands of years. This statement has a lot of ‘weight’ to it, though, doesn’ t it? I meet people all the time who are so intimidated by the enormity of the Bible that they have never gotten the bravery together to study the Bible, or even read it for pleasure. And, in my experience, folks ‘build a wall’ of their own perceived inadequacies as far as the Bible, and keep their distance from the Bible as though it had an electric fence around it. That’s too bad. Continue reading “Lutheranism 101 – The Bible”
Christmas Eve worship is a moment to connect to both the light and dark in our lives, and in God’s promises. Our inner life yearns for acknowledgement of that duality. Continue reading “A liminal time”
I took the picture of the sanctuary at Holy Cross last week, after the last of the Advent decorations went up. Light, dark, luminarias on the chancel, and the Creche. These elements are the reason I go to church.
Life is far from easy. The nights are cold right now, and I take note of the humanity huddled on the streets of our town. I have the privilege of knowing about so much of the struggle that people I know and serve as pastor are going through. There is grief, there is emptiness, there are feelings of failure, and fear for the future.
So I go to church. Because I have found people there to be trying hard to be real – not to hide behind busy-ness and noise – but to let the story of Christmas touch them. Continue reading “Why church for Christmas?”
I note the obvious differences
in the human family.
Some of us are serious,
some thrive on comedy.
Some declare their lives are lived
as true profundity,
and others claim they really live
the real reality.
The variety of our skin tones
can confuse, bemuse, delight,
brown and pink and beige and purple,
tan and blue and white.
I’ve sailed upon the seven seas
and stopped in every land,
I’ve seen the wonders of the world
not yet one common man.
I know ten thousand women
called Jane and Mary Jane,
but I’ve not seen any two
who really were the same.
Mirror twins are different
although their features jibe,
and lovers think quite different thoughts
while lying side by side.
We love and lose in China,
we weep on England’s moors,
and laugh and moan in Guinea,
and thrive on Spanish shores.
We seek success in Finland,
are born and die in Maine.
In minor ways we differ,
in major we’re the same.
I note the obvious differences
between each sort and type,
but we are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.
We are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.
We are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.
Continue reading “We are more alike – and why we need to remember that”