Good morning... Another Mary has come into my life this holiday season. A subscriber wrote: "Sue, your readers may enjoy 'Making the House Ready for the Lord' by Mary Oliver. It's a favorite of my poetry group at St. Anne's Terrace." So I took his advice and I checked out this poem, written in 2006, by this new-to-me Mary, [...]
Good morning... At church on Sunday, we sang one of my favorite Christmas songs. Pregnant. Powerful. Provocative. How could Mary know that Jesus would enter her small life and change everything for everyone? Instead of reading written words this morning, why not lean back, listen in, and let God touch you through the gift of song. Mary said: [...]
Good morning... For our opening devotional, we read out loud a picture book entitled If Jesus Came To My House. It was such a delight, sparking sweet discussion, so with you I now share as we prepare to welcome Jesus into our homes. Envisioning yourself as an excited child, enjoy these words in silence or read them aloud [...]
Good morning... Before the first Christmas morn, Jesus thrived in the wholeness of heaven. Christ is the visible image of the invisible God. He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation, for through him God created everything in the heavenly realms and on earth. He made the things we can see and the things we can’t see—such as thrones, [...]
Good morning... On this week when eleven innocent people were gunned down in a Jewish synagogue, how did God know that our class would read aloud these touching words, revealing our immense capacity to forgive? ****** Excerpt from Paula D'Arcy's Seeking With All My Heart While living in Boston, I studied the Old Testament with a gifted rabbi [...]
Good morning... "What is essential is invisible," whispered yesterday's post. We wake to a time of visible unrest. Hurricane devastation. Senseless violence. Political bullying. As the world looks out-of-sorts, God remains the same. Today and every day, how might we invest in the invisible? Love. Roots. Trust. Hope. Spirit. God's Word. Faith. Senses. The living Christ. When we [...]
Good morning... I lingered in silent solitude after a life-giving session with my spiritual director. Sitting still for as long as I needed, I soaked in the palpable presence of God. I quietly felt compelled to pull out my old IPhone 6S to take pictures of three framed sayings resting in the borrowed room. "holding onto anger is [...]
Good morning... The first Adam paved a wide path to sin and separation from God. Our human feet just naturally followed. When the moment was right, Jesus Christ, the second Adam, zipped up a suit of skin and came down from heaven to walk with us on earth, blazing a new path for us to return home to God. [...]
Good morning... "We were asked to look around the room and record in our minds everything red," she explained. (For example: red paint, red candle, red pillow, red flower.) "Next," she said, "we were told to close our eyes. After a few moments, we were instructed to remember anything in the room that was blue." Red. Red is [...]
Good morning... As I wake on this lazy Labor Day weekend, what is the strange word tickling the tip of my brain's tongue? "Hiatus." I google the meaning of "hiatus" and a plethora of possibility pours forth. A pause in a series, sequence, or process. A break. An intermission. A lull, respite, breather. I learn that in Latin [...]
