Note: I was reminded of this post from over year ago after thinking about why we say the Lord’s Prayer together every week in church. We encounter people in our midst every week who feel ostracized and alone. We have the salve of grace and presence to offer in the...
Sleep Fidgets Right before my son goes to sleep, he normally goes through a phase of intense fidgeting. I’ve come to understand it is his body’s way of getting out the last little bits of energy that might keep him from having a good night’s sleep. Before I had that...
This article appeared originally at Religious Herald and my previous blog. Seemed an appropriate repost on a day when many of us have spent time in close quarters with one another waiting for the next Snowpocalypse. Some Things Are a Drag Even before my hair started to go and betray...
Note: I hope you’ll pardon the royal “we” used throughout. I know that the experiences of our lives are far less uniform than I suggest. However, I also know that there is a commonality in our experiences that binds us together. Back When We Were that Age When we were...
A few years ago, I was sitting in the car outside of Target while my son slept. My wife, daughter, and mother-in-law went in to do some shopping. On this particular day, I was reading something in the backseat when a woman walked past the car on her way to...
Yesterday, I spent most of the day in the waiting room at the hospital. As I sat and talked with the people I was with, I noticed an interesting phenomenon. I then thought back over all the times that I have been in hospital waiting rooms, trying to figure out...
While I originally wrote this story as an illustrated sermon, after the difficulty of getting my own children to listen as we were getting ready for bed tonight (sometimes, we are just too excited about the fact that raccoons are the “ninjas of the forrest”), I’d like to share with...
Note: After two conversations about why people should attend church and what makes a church welcoming, I’ve chosen to repost a post from my previous blog about a plan to help churches learn to care for people. Some congregations already care well – thanks be to God. Others need to...
Yesterday and Today Yesterday I started work on a post titled something like “Rene’ Girard and My Little Pony: Subversion of Sacrificial Mimetics”. Catchy title, I know. But between yesterday and today, something changed. This morning, I read an article about an 11 year-old boy in my former state of...
On every level of life, from housework to heights of prayer, in all judgment and efforts to get things done, hurry and impatience are sure marks of the amateur. – Evelyn Underhill Sunday Stresses On Sunday morning my daughter insisted that she wanted to walk the dogs with me as...