Description of my Christmas tree: White lights, built into the tree. Part of a strand wasn’t working. Had to go through and replace every single light down the row to find the right one that was loose or had burned out. Scratched face and arms. A lot of work! But when it is finished and…
Lent
Do Not Conform
Weekends in the fall seem to be a portrait of contrast in my life. I experience in those two short days each weekend my best moments and my worst ones. You see in my family… Saturdays in the fall are good for only one thing: Hawkeye football games (okay… you Cyclone fans can insert yourselves…
Going All In
…many of us are like this dimmer switch up here. We waver in how much light we let out into the world. Our lights are not off completely – but neither are they shining at 100%, 100% of the time.
Feasting, not fasting…
Mark’s gospel is known for its haste. Jesus is here and then there and everything is so urgent and busy. We spent four weeks in Epiphany just in chapter one because everything happens in such a short span of time. Life is all crammed in and there is no time for details. That could also…
Come Out the Wilderness
As we started this journey of Lent yesterday with Matthew, we entered the place of wilderness and watched as Jesus wrestled verbally with the devil. It was a rich dialogue of temptation and power and scripture… with some magical teleportation thrown in there for good measure. But as Keith Mcilwain reminds us, the devil is…
fasting in secret, doing justice in the daylight
Last night in Disciple Bible Study, we very timely read the Sermon on the Mount from Matthew. As a class, we wrestled with the implications of such contradictory phrases: being salt and light, letting the whole world see the witness of our life – vs – praying and fasting and even almsgiving in secret. How…
Passion Sunday – a Reader’s Theater for Worship
<> The Lord be with you! And also with you. Let us lift up our hearts! We lift them up to the Lord! Let us give thanks to the Lord our God. It is right to give our thanks and praise! It is right, and a good and joyful thing, always and everywhere to give…
Blessed
Texts: Genesis 9, Mark 1 This week, we enter the holy and sacred time of Lent. This time of Lent is really a time of blessing – a gift from God that pulls us out of our normal, everyday lives and thrusts us into God’s life. The very idea of being blessed means being set…