Good morning... The old wooden pews were nicely filled. After saying "Hello" to a handful of friendly, familiar faces, I was escorted to the front of the church, to a velvety antique chair just behind the pulpit. "Oh no," my heart sank. I thought I would be non-conspicuously sitting with the church family until it was my time [...]
Good morning... This morning, I am privileged to preach at the little Log Cabin Church up the street. For their annual homecoming service, the congregation invites a community member to speak, and this year it's me. This friendly, vibrant church has a rich, 107 year history, so this morning we will come home to these guiding questions: "Where have [...]
Good morning... Yesterday's morning message, My Change Of Heart, set off the largest avalanche of responses from one blog post, ever. Too large of a pile to sift through in one follow-up, we will examine a single pebble from our pile today. "I trust you know what God is doing," one subscriber wrote and many of you echoed. [...]
Good morning... "Sue, my dear friend," he wrote, "this weekend I hope everyone will take three minutes to remember the hundreds of thousands of Americans who died on battlefields across the globe over the years in places like Belleau Wood, the beaches of Normandy, the Battle of the Bulge, the sands of Iwo Jima, and the meat grinder [...]
Good morning... I fell in love with a song when our kids were young, a song comparing two neighboring houses "side by side on Baxter Street." Allen Levi's soothing voice tickles our heart with this chorus: "1412 is a magazine cover. 1420 is covered with kids. One's just a picture post card. The other's where real people live." [...]
Good morning... "Sue, how do we make sense of the senseless?" she emailed after yesterday's post, How Can Students Shoot Students? "We thank you for trying." "Yesterday, I felt compelled to call my sister, who lives in Highlands Ranch, Colorado," her email continued. "As we are were catching up on unimportant details of each others lives, one by [...]
Good morning... You help me to grow in God as I help others to grow in God, who help others to grow in God. Let me explain. Last month, for the first time, I filed taxes for our written word ministry. Having incubated for years in the womb of my church work, my husband and I birthed my [...]
Good morning... As I turned on the news I quickly opened my journal. From an interview with the rabbi whose California synagogue was attacked by a gunman, deep hurt and deeper hope splattered quotes on my page. There is a war out there between darkness and light. America is a nation who believes in God. Celebrating our religious [...]
Good morning... As a church staff, we sprinkled ourselves into the pews of our wide-open sanctuary to commemorate Maundy-Thursday together. Music. Prayers. Scriptures. Sermon. Communion. We experienced the memory of Jesus' final moments wrapped in the flesh of a man. With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last. The curtain of the temple was torn in two from [...]
Good morning... "It's bittersweet," my heart thinks as I quietly put away the mugs, the teas, the snack bowls that have rested regularly on our foyer table, welcoming women into our home week after week. "It is bittersweet to end another winter/spring season of learning." Yes, my schedule will breathe a little more freely and, yes, I will [...]
