Lent

Put Is On a List

Year B Genesis 9:8-17 Psalm 25:1-9 1 Peter 3:18-22 Mark 1:9-15 May the words of my mouth O God…  speak your truth… I make “to do” lists…  lots of them…  some of them I write out…  some of them I type out…  the hand-written ones are usually what I have to do on any particular day…  at least...

Five Times Each Day

Year B Joel 2:1-2,12-17 Psalm 103:8-14 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10 Matthew 6:1-6,16-21 May the words of my mouth O God…  speak your truth… Our cat Simon…  a Siamese Tabby mix…  turns sixteen in little more than three months…  we got him in 2008…  during my second year of seminary…  I thought he’d be the cat who would sit on...

Ashen Love

There’ll be no reference to Valentine’s Day during our joint Ash Wednesday service this year, even though they both fall on the same day. They shared the calendar in 1923, 1934, 1945, and more recently in 2018; and will again in 2029. But that will be the last time they’ll “kiss” during this century. Valentine’s...

Before We Know It

Easter will soon be upon us. We have about another week to think about the ways we can continue to turn our few good deeds into mountains of them, and turn our many sins into just some small pebbles. This is challenging work. It’s challenging for us to own up to our faults when...

Seeing and Belonging

Year A 1 Samuel 16:1-13 Psalm 23 Ephesians 5:8-14 John 9:1-41 May the words of my mouth…  O God…  speak your truth… The human eye is a marvelous thing…  according to the Southwestern Eye Center…  our eyes blink an average of 4,200,000 times a year…  and so if you were paid a nickel every time you blinked…  you...