Lent: Invitation to a Journey with God

Spring cleaning is a wonderful and sometimes traumatic thing. When the weather warms up, The Lovely Joanne opens the house and lets our prevailing westerly wind sweep through, duct-tapes me to the vacuum (just kidding) and we clean things I didn't even know could get

Making Your "Awesome List" of Blessings

Have you ever made a 'gratitude list'? You know, one of those exercises in which you list everything you should be grateful for? It's a good exercise, of course, to remember what's good about life. But it can go deeper. Here's how.

Psalm 136 takes it beyond a gratitude list, to a list of some times God 'showed up' in Israel's history. It starts off with praise for his many acts of creation,(verses 1-9) and moves

Praying: to Santa Claus, or the Almighty?

I admit it, I fall into a bad habit sometimes:  prayer becoming a list of people I'm asking the Lord to heal, or situations that I think he needs to resolve, and other life issues that I believe only he has the power to change. "Father, please help ____" has become a repetitive phrase.  If we are to "pray

Psst! It's a Secret!

It may not be a big surprise to any of us that Jesus of Nazareth was a little different than expected for his day. He spoke in mysterious ways -- even for a rabbi! -- and said a lot of challenging things, like "he who saves his life shall lose it." It was enough to make some wonder about his sanity (see Mark 3:20-21). So here was Jesus, preaching and healing people, doing wonderful things that made people think he might be the Messiah that the whole nation wished would show up. When he asks

(R-W)+(Pr+T)=P

Last night our weekly prayer group read together Philippians 4:4-7. I was especially struck by verses 6-7, which read "Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as

"I Didn't Vote for Him"

Today was the inauguration ceremony of our 45th President, Mr. Donald Trump, and his Vice-President, Mr. Michael Pence. Like always, there was a lot of pomp and circumstance. Like always, there were people deciding not to attend, in protest of the event, and others attending in order

He Came To Set Us Free

We just finished celebrating Advent and Christmas, a time when we look back the Son of God entering flesh. The 'incarnation' as it's called, marked the point in time when God became one of us, entering our world with all its pain and brokenness, and creating a restored