Pentecost +3: In a Drowning World

In a drowning world, God calls someone to build an ark.
Who will it be?
Lives ravaged by storms all around.
 Myanmar.  China.  Managua.
The children in every place.
HIV-AIDS, malaria, addiction
Where will the safe place be?
In a drowning world, God calls someone to build an ark.
Who will it be?
 
 

Do Not Worry II

Did Jesus worry?   He was the fully human God.
Jesus yearned for wayward ones, comparing himself to an old mother hen.  Looking over the Holy City, he grieved, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers [...]

Live the Questions

Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is [...]

Do Not Worry! LOL

Do not worry!   This is the lectionary word for this week from Matthew 6:24-34.
You have to be kidding, Lord!   My mother is having an MRI this morning.   My husband is chronically ill. A colleague’s wife was killed in a car accident yesterday.   My youngest child is traveling from coast to coast this week.   
Do not worry.
My [...]

Ordinary Time: What Do We Count?

    HOW DO I LOVE THEE? LET ME COUNT THE WAYS!
This season of 27 numbered Sundays post-Pentecost reminds me that we count what is most important to us.
Money in the bank.     Stars on a General’s chest.
Candles on a cake.   Victories in the Triple Crown.
Children and grandchildren.  Days until vacation.
Elizabeth Barrett rhapsodized about her love for Robert:  “How [...]

Ordinary Time

Welcome to Ordinary Time!  
 There is nothing usual or mundane about it.  Ordinary Time is literally “time that we count.”   Remember the term ordinal  numbers?   1-2-3-4….You get the idea!   This long season post-Pentecost is referred to as Ordinary Time, today being Trinity Sunday and the 1st Sunday after Pentecost.   Next week is the 2nd Sunday after Pentecost [...]

Lectionary back track

Remember how Epiphany was cut short by the early date of the first Sunday after the first full moon of the vernal equinox, i.e. Easter?   Lectionarily speaking, we were shortchanged in terms of our time with the Gospel stories of Jesus’ earthly life and teachings.  
The compilers of the lectionary have taken this unusual situation into account.  For [...]

TRINITY SUNDAY: THE CHOSEN

The 2008 General Conference acted to change the UMC’s membership vows.   For decades, we have promised “prayers, presence, gifts, and service.”    Now we will add another promise!    Prayers, presence, gifts, service, and witness!    This may be the one commitment that stretches the congregation beyond the walls, beyond institutional maintenance to making disciples AND the transformation [...]

Great Statement on General Conference

The best statement I have seen regarding General Conference is by Jim Winkler, General Secretary of the UM Board of Church and Society.   Check it out!

Seeds: Abundance

How consistently we, as individuals and as the church, act out of a paradigm of scarcity!    It sounds like this:  There is not enough money.   We do not have enough time.   People will not volunteer. 
As we heard the stories of delegates to General Conference who came from Africa, our whining about thermostat issues in the [...]