Luke 3:1-6 ADVENTURE, a poem by the Reverend Timothy Haut. Sun, rise on this day like a flower unfolding to loveliness, or to surprise. Let there be a twist in the old path, where a new view may startle me with joy. Help the child in me skip with expectation, ready for an adventure of […]
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Psalm 25:1-10 “I lay open my whole life to you.” This is one translation of the beginning of today’s psalm. “I lay open my whole life to you, trusting you O Holy One.” The words struck me when I read them this week. It sounds a bit daunting, our lives are full and nuanced. How […]
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Mark 10:46-52 “in light of each day’s questions, I am never prepared. Today, again, I have nothing to offer but a handful of old prayers, worn down by relentless abrasion of doubt, and a fragment of dream that plays on in my head only half-remembered. Still, the doves coo and circle through the pines as […]
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Scripture: Mark 10:35-45 I have been pondering the poem “The Place Where We Are Right” this week by Yehuda Amichai. This is the poem: “From the place where we are right flowers will never grow in the spring. The place where we are right is hard and trampled like a yard. But doubts and loves […]
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John 6:24-36 Hungry and desperate, the people press in on Jesus from all sides. I have a bread, Jesus tells them, that will always fill you up and satisfy you. Their mind hovers on these words: I have a bread that will fill you up. After all, this is a people, who know what it […]
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Mark 6:30-34, 53-56 The Scripture today tells us: The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. They had been on the road for days. Teaching. Telling the story of Jesus. Telling how their lives had been changed. Telling how they had just been out there in the tedium […]
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James 3:17 Mark 6:1-13 It gleamed in the sunlight. Clear and radiant, the emerald was set in a simple gold ring. “That’s beautiful,” I said to my mother. “Oh, I got in the Smoky Mountains,” she replied, “There is a place where you can buy pails of dirt and sift for gems. If you find […]
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Mark 4:26-34 A riot of bittersweet. A riot of bittersweet spilled over the stone wall by our church, flinging itself on each bare patch of dirt it could find, weaving its way through the crevices in the rock wall, poking itself through the holes. On our church clean-up day, Lisa Laing and Patty Rolfe worked […]
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2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1 Paul says to us: “We do not lose hope.” I want to know: Does he know how hard the uphill climbs of life can be when he says that? This week a friend was telling the story of someone who went for a bike ride and became utterly exhausted mid-ride. They had […]
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Text: Acts 2:1-21 Before preaching, I want to share this story with you called the Cyclist by Mark Nepo: On the day of the race, he waited with the others and felt that life was waiting in the hills. He couldn’t quite say why, but a blessing was about to happen. As the gun went […]
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