Love One Another

John 15:12 – “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” I am struggling with John 15 this week.  As I ruminate on the text in preparation for preaching on Sunday, I’m struggling.  John seems to always provide me with a challenge, and in this case, the easy way […]

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BE KIND

Be Kind As I was walking through the local Botanical Garden, I ran across a stone shouting out “BE KIND.”  I looked around to see if there were other painted rocks that I had missed, but this was the only one.  Placed near a fork in the trail in a barren piece of ground, the […]

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The House of the Lord

We are planning to have “company” this weekend, which is an archaic way of saying that we’ve invited some friends over for dinner. What it really means is that we need to straighten up around this house, and hide the clutter, and clean the floors, and pick up the dog toys. We also need to […]

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Loneliness

  When you aren’t serving in a church, Holy Days and most Christian seasons can get weird. When I was working in a chapel my rhythm revolved around the seasons of the year. And, the joy of Easter after Lent and Holy Week was extraordinary. But, this year, even though I attended services on Maundy […]

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Palm Sunday, 2018

He led a protest march because the city lost what it was built to be, to call it back. They led a protest march because the city left behind its purpose, and they called it back. He poured out all he was to set right what was wrong, emptied his life so we would all […]

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Lent 5, 2018

Just because God vows “I will remember no more,” that’s not forgetting.   Just because the seed, Jesus, fall to earth and dies doesn’t mean it ends.   God never forgets, lives forever with the pain, but won’t call it back.   Christ dies to what was, dies with all the world watching, giving up […]

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Ice Cream Grace

Our hospital’s administration has occasionally rolled out an ice cream cart as a way to offer encouragement to our staff. The chaplains get to be “in” on this adventure, serving as good-will agents and wayfinding guides for the cart and others who assist with ice cream distribution. As you may know, hospitals are fairly controlled […]

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Wilderness, Deconstructed

Sometimes I wonder if we have romanticized the idea of the wilderness, as though the wilderness was a place where things were more real, truer, more natural than what we experience day-to-day. We seek out wilderness by taking camping trips, or going for a hike. We long for it as some kind of respite from […]

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Lent 4, 2018

“(J)ust as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up . . .” John 3:14   Moses lifted up the serpent so Israel could look at what was destroying them, stare it down in faith, and be saved.   The Son of Man . . . […]

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