Blog - Church

Sometimes, you know when a serendipitous moment changes the trajectory of your life’s plans.

Hermey: Hey, what do you say we both be independent together, huh? 

On this occasion of the 70th Holocaust Remembrance Day, the following is a reworking of some thoughts I’ve offered in presentations over the last several months.

If you have never read Wendell Berry, or worse, never heard of him, stop reading this blog this very moment and go to your nearest local bookstore to buy his stuff up before your neighbor snags all the goods first.

Persistently needy, glommy people, people who must satiate their need for affirmation by demanding to be in the limelight, are children of God.

Tuesday, post Holy Week.

Daughter Else asks magnificent questions.

Wally Taylor teaches New Testament at (the truly outstanding) Trinity Lutheran Seminary, in the fair city of Columbus, Ohio.

So tomorrow, on Ash Wednesday, many–not all, but many–people in the Christian Church mark the beginning of Lent.

Dear all,

“We pray for the Holy Spirit to come, and then, when she does, we want her to go home!”

I have Reinhold Niebuhr on the mind these days.

I was listening, the other day, to a man on the radio who said that he advocated “Value Based Voting.”

“How is the Holy Spirit found in everyday life?”

This blog is a posted version of the sermon I preached this morning at Springdale Lutheran, and in light of the events in Colorado, and in light of the day-to-day lives of so many  suffering sisters and brothers in the world.

John Westerhoff wrote:
“Stewardship is what we do after we say we believe, that is, after we give our love, loyalty, and trust to God, from whom each and every aspect of our lives comes as a gift. As members of God’ s household, we are subject to God’ s economy or stewardship, that is, God’ s plan to reconcile the whole world and bring creation to its proper end.” (Grateful and Generous Hearts, Atlanta: St. Luke’s Press, 1997, p. 20.)
I know that I’ve blogged about Westerhoff’s words before.

Question: It may be semantics, but leaving church and leaving congregational religion may not be the same.  Consider–if I woman has been for whatever reasons in abusive marriage(s) and decides that marriage is not a good thing, that is not a declaration that all men are bad, but a declaration that marriage is not the way she chooses to relate to men.  It may be that people who leave congregations/church (one word for both in their mind) are seeking a different way to relate to God.

It’s 8:04 on Tuesday morning, and I’m sitting in the waiting room at the hospital after just sending my son off to yet another surgery.

Those are Holden Caulfield’s words, not mine, from J.D. Salinger’s book The Catcher in the Rye.

“It took me a long time to learn that God is not the enemy of my enemies. He is not even the enemy of His enemies.”