God of Peace, On Veteran’s Day, we pray for all who have served our country on land or sea or air, at home or in far away lands. We pray for the safety of future veterans in active combat zones, and for those in places where violence could rear its ugly head at any time. We pray for those who made it home alive, but for whom life has never been the ...
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(as Idalia makes landfall) Creating God, It’s hard when Your good creation is trying to kill us. It’s hard to reconcile a loving creator with a creation that can, at times, be devastatingly beautiful and then be just plain devastating. We know we are complicit We know we haven’t cared for Your Earth the way You told us to But, to be fair, these natural born killers existed way before any coal engines or smoke stacks ...
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Today is National Random Acts of Kindness Day. It's as good an excuse as any to do something nice for someone...but is nice enough? Being kind is often confused with being nice. They are not the same thing at all. Niceness is pretty vanilla. It's what polite society expects of us. Kindness goes beyond smiling, perfunctory "please" and "thank yous" and trying not to ruffle any feathers. Nice is inquiring about ...
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There have been many calls (including a New York Times op-ed piece) for churches to cease offering service online because it's time for people "to come back to church." There is so much wrong with this way of thinking, I had to make a list. So here are my ten reasons churches should not give up their online presence. One The most obvious: you don't want to be ableist. In ...
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Christmas means celebrating, but also navigating difficult family relationships. Sometimes, our desire to be "good Christians" may cause us to handle these situations in less-than-healthy ways. To that end, I wanted to clarify the difference between forgiveness and reconciliation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hntFtBq3bUY If you will be navigating difficult relationships this Christmas, take radically good care of yourself. A few more things to remember: Self-care is not selfish.Other people's happiness is not your ...
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How we view God very much affects our own reading and understanding of holy scripture. https://youtu.be/p8SwQcCEBCQ Learn More About That's Not in the Bible
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We have quite a few new folks here, so I wanted to explain where this online resource of tools and encouragement for your faith journey got its name. It's rooted in my belief that a faith that wrestles with questions will always be stronger than one that never asks any. The title itself comes from the welcome I have given at every worship service I've presided over since I began ...
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Need some guidelines for the year ahead? Here's an A to Z list of things to remember as we dive into a new decade! First, a classic ABC song to get you in the right frame of mind. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFpIxHLEyh4 And now... Absolve yourself (and others) from guilt and shame. Believe in people (and let them know it). Call out racism and hate. Create beauty. Care for the least of these. Doubt--because ...
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I'm having one of those what-the-hell-God days. I like to believe that I'm pretty good at trusting God. At knowing that even in the darkest times, God is in the midst of it...somewhere. Even when I can't see it or feel it, I can trust that God is there. But then there are days that leave you asking God, "What the hell is up with this?" A bright 30-something light ...
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In beauty guru circles, there is a saying about eyebrows: they're sisters, not twins. Meaning, that your eyebrows are not going to look exactly alike and to try to make them so is futile. Perhaps we should start using that analogy when talking about faith and mental health. Sure, they are related in that one can positively (or negatively) affect the other, but they are not the same thing. Mental health ...
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