Gaining a heart of wisdom
Sunday Scripture Double digit temperatures and wintry sunshine called me outdoors. The dog and I headed for the wooded trails where the ground was frozen solid with no mud and very little ice to speak of. We did speak of it, though, because it was glorious to be walking between rows of bare trees on… Continue reading Today’s Walk is Today’s Blessing
Sunday Scripture At the beginning of a new year and the winding down of the old, I love to look back on where I’ve been. With a coating of frosty white on the surface of my garden, it’s hard to imagine that just three months ago I was harvesting cucumbers and green beans by the… Continue reading Join Me in Remembering a Bountiful Year
Sunday Scripture By now, the Christmas season has landed in your home with all it's busy and delightful frenzy. Plans drafted and resolutions made back in the first week of Advent may be starting to wear thin as deadlines loom and energy wanes. Let's pause for a moment here to remind ourselves of the purpose… Continue reading Full of Grace and Truth
What is it about little white lights in December? We wrestle a giant tree into our living room, and every year I do my level best to make the green tangly wires disappear into the fragrant branches so the small twinkly lights can work their magic. We place white lights in every window, wrangling extensions… Continue reading Behold the Glory ~ Scripture Sunday
Sunday Scripture Using the lens of what C.S. Lewis called "the baptized imagination," I try to picture what it must have been like for Jesus's brothers to sit around the breakfast table or to do weekend chores with a sinless sibling. After John, the Gospel writer, had opened his own lens wide enough to take… Continue reading Celebrating God in the Neighborhood
Became. On this first Sunday of Advent, pause with me for a moment to soak in the stunning presence of the word "became" in connection with God the Son. Immutable and eternally uncreated, God became something else: Infinite became finite; Eternal became temporal; Invisible became visibly a baby, born in a remote part of Palestine and tethered to flesh… Continue reading The Word Became Flesh ~ Sunday Scripture
We're four days away from Thanksgiving here in the United States, and since the fourth Thursday in November is late in the month this year, we've had lots of time to prepare ourselves for a celebration of gratitude. How are you doing? I will confess to a certain grumpiness over the collision of holidays ahead… Continue reading Are You Showing the Symptoms of Gratitude Derailed? Sunday Scripture
What do you bring with you when you come to God? Psalm 95 suggests thanksgiving as cargo: "Oh come, let us sing to the Lord! Let us shout joyfully to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving; Let us shout joyfully to Him with psalms." (Psalm 95:1, 2) I'm thinking about… Continue reading What Will You Bring to Worship? – Sunday Scripture
According to the Apostle Paul, gratitude is more than a pumpkin-spice-feeling. It is a matter of obedience to the will of God. Author and poet Wendell Berry put words into the mouth of a fictional, elderly widow named Hannah Coulter who, in addition to being a crackerjack farmhand when needed and probably making a great… Continue reading Sunday Scripture ~ 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18
I love a decisive verb, especially when it appears in the setting of a solid, declarative sentence. Isaiah 12 is just right for this season of gratitude, falling leaves, and stiff breezes. The prophet’s bracing words stand up to the fading light here on the far edge of the Eastern Time Zone with a pronouncement… Continue reading Sunday Scripture ~ Isaiah 12:1
Living Our Days 