Learning to live with transparency can be difficult. Because it also often means learning to live in anonymity and with being overlooked or disregarded. The more I discover, however, the joy of transparency, the less the downside bothers me. It is an exercise in...
Three months before my 65th birthday the news from the orthopedic doctor was not what I expected. Recent foot pain in my left foot took me there thinking I might have a stress fracture. Alas, no. He says I have advanced arthritis in the joint on top of my foot that...
“God doesn’t love you any less when you throw a temper tantrum. He doesn’t owe you an explanation, but he is never afraid of what you have to say. So tell him. It’ll be the beginning of healing.” — Pastor Rick Warren Yesterday in a prayer group, the...
How hospitable are the spaces and the places you inhabit and the graces you offer? How do you perceive your role there…….to force out, to keep out, to reach out, or to invite in? How did you get there? Is it a Good Place that is growing and enhancing the...
I had pondered why Jesus was born in the line of Judah instead of that of Jacob’s firstborn, Reuben, as might have been expected based on the Jews’ emphasis on the firstborn’s rights. On the surface of it I didn’t see the rationale. I knew in my spirit that the answer...
After a very full week I took a few hours late Saturday afternoon for self care and enjoying the company of my son and daughter in love as they watched football at my home. I went to bed at 9 with a feeling of contentment. I awoke refreshed and full of anticipation...
Consider this: … it was God who cast satan and the other rebellious, contending, resisting, unhappy angels to the earth among us. We may either join them in their consigned punishment, misery, jealousy, and hatefulness here or we can aspire to the transcendent...
A downtown church in our community started a ministry to the homeless and marginalized in 2014. It was forced to stop following damage from Hurricane Michael in October 2018 while repairs to the building were made. Then Covid interfered with starting back. But now...
The problem with the church, any church, is not the church. It’s the expectations that people bring to the church…. In other words , the ecclesiology of individuals, or what they believe about the church. I worked through my personal ecclesiology in the...
11/1/2020 Reminded of the true gift of hospitality….. ( and thinking of my dear hospitable friend, Pammi Jo Alsip Nevins….. “People tell me they have the gift of hospitality by which they mean that they like dinner parties. They mean that they have (or...
