Pastor’s Pen

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 1 Corinthians 13:1 Beloved of God, What a gift these days of light at the beginning of 2016 have been!  After December’s record rains and weeks on end of gray […]

“O Come, O Come, Emmanuel!” To all who await God’s visitation, We’re here once more crossing the threshold into Advent—the season of longing, waiting, and watching for signs of God’s presence among us.  It’s a favorite season in our household for a number of reasons; special sights, sounds, and smells, the candle ritual with devotions […]

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us…run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his […]

The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would spout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the […]

You are not alone…no one is alone.” – Into the Woods, Stephen Sondheim & James Lapine Beloved of God, None in our family had ever seen the musical Into the Woods,* so when I learned last spring that 12th Night Productions had chosen it for their summer theatre offering I was intrigued. My interest steadily […]

“The LORD told Abram ‘GO’… And Abram went.” – Genesis 12 Beloved of God, Summertime has always been, for me, a time when I look forward to traveling; a time for entering new spaces and rhythms in family and congregational life; a time for visiting new and familiar landscapes and coming home renewed.   Last year […]

“When you send forth your Spirit, we are renewed, we are renewed!” – Psalm 104 Beloved of God, If you were in worship on Pentecost Sunday (May 24), you participated in a conversation break during the sermon.  The theme for Pentecost Sunday was the Spirit being unleashed on Christ’s disciple community—PUSHING THEM OUT into the […]

“We love because he first loved us.  Those who say, “I love God,’ and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.” 1 John 4:19-20 Beloved of God, I can’t say when I first […]

“They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day.”  – Acts 10:39, 40 “The world breaks every one, and afterward, many are strong at the broken places.” Ernest Hemingway, Farewell to Arms     Dear Easter People! Throughout the Lenten season we have watched as the […]