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Bad decision. . .

Bad decision. . . At 6:00 this morning, it looked to me like I needed, very reluctantly, to cancel services today. I was especially concerned about the impact anticipated falling temperatures and predicted further snow would have on people trying to get home,...

“Yes” to Love

On an otherwise unremarkable day, in the unremarkable backwoods town of Nazareth, God sent the angel Gabriel to interrupt young Mary’s life with some startling news. As far as we know, Mary had no advance warning and no special preparation for the surprise God sprung...

Prayers for Peace

This Advent season, my prayers are for peace. Peace in our world. God’s good world is divided by controversy, rent by conflict, and torn by warfare. A bittersweet memories of my teenage years is watching USO-sponsored “Bob Hope Specials” performed before American...

Time and the Advent Season

Christians have an odd way of keeping time. Most of the time most of us think of Sunday as the last day of the week and the cap of the weekend; it’s the day before the grind of work and school cranks back up on Monday morning. But, Christian faith invites us to think...

God is Great, God is Good

One day, when his daughter Karen was still a young girl, writer Chris de Vinck, popped an Enlgish muffin in the toaster and went out the kitchen to check on a couple of things. He left Karen in the kitchen. A few moments later, he heard her cry out in pain, and he...

Bring Back the Magic

I enjoy Jimmy Buffet’s music, even though I know he’s only an average musician, but one who has an above average ability to know what his audience wants and deliver it to them. I doubt there will be a symposium some day at which the works of Aaron Copland, Duke...

Joy instead of anxiety

Anxiety keeps us preoccupied with the future; it is the unsettled and unsatisfied feeling that comes from our worries and fears about tomorrow. At its root, of course, anxiety is our “dis-ease” over the fact that we will, one day, die; but most of the time it...

All Saints’ Day, Grief and Gratitude

Yesterday’s All Saints’ Day service invited us remember and give thanks for people whose deaths have brought us grief and invited us to find, in Jesus, comfort, reassurance, and love. Grief is, to say the least, complex. It keeps close company with other strong...

Better Together

Several years ago (July-August 1999), the magazine Fast Company ran a brief sidebar article that suggested people needed to create for themselves “an anti-bummer squad”–a team of friends and mentors—who would help in low times: “When you’re feeling uncreative,...

Reminding myself about politics

The air is thick with anxiety these days: many people are tense, on edge, and agitated. I am sure that the ongoing economic uncertainty is part of it. The news about the economy, especially about employment, isn’t solid and positive enough to give people durable hope...