Hand-In-Hand In Life’s Hallway
Good morning... Life phases joined hands in the church hallway. A few weeks back, we hosted our United Methodist Women's Baby Celebration, a touching event honoring the babies born annually into our faith community. This was a particularly special celebration as five or six of the very active UMW members were new grandmothers at the gathering. These faithful friends had diligently raised their children in the church, and now their grown children were [...]
Savor Sabbath: Right Here And Now
Good morning... Right here. Right now. There is always something to savor. As I wake this Sabbath, I gush a quick list. sunny, blue winter sky (a welcome change from days of grey drizzle) the joyful love of our quirky dogs surprise overnight visit from our youngest daughter and friends (homemade Stromboli is a magnet) surprise overnight visit from our oldest son (our coffee is brewed for a good heart-to-heart) constant love lingers [...]
We Celebrate Our Aging Soul
Good morning... After journaling with God for a few early morning hours, I got up from our cozy couch to craft a new insight for our blog. Before writing to you, I opened the Henri Nouwen Society devotional thought for this day. What I planned to write was trumped by fresh wisdom being born. ****** DAILY MEDITATION | FEBRUARY 23, 2019 - Birthdays by Henri Nouwen Birthdays need to be celebrated. I think [...]
One Simple “Stick-Um”
Good morning... "Sue, this is great!" she wrote after yesterday's post. "It surely speaks of me and to me. I've written the opening paragraph on a 'stick-um' and put it on the mirror on my dresser as a simple reminder each day." BE HERE - BE NOW - BE PRESENT NOT IN PAST NOT IN FUTURE As a grieving widow who recently lost her son, her feet are now planted on painful [...]
Be Where Your Feet Are
Good morning... "Be where your feet are," our pastor said in his sermon on Sunday. Be not in the past. Be not in the future. Be here. Be now. Be present. He admits, "This is really hard for me, to be where my feet are." I suspect we all battle the same human tendency, to obsess about the past, to worry about the future, to run from this moment, rush, busy, avoid. Sue [...]
How Do We Stand In Our Divided World?
Good morning... I was there when my husband faced a dilemma. He, the Upper School Chaplain, wrote about the incident in this week's devotional email sent to subscribers in The Lovett School community. ***** Act 6 Devotional by Rev. Steve Allen I was in a discussion recently with a group of friends. Things got pretty heated between some in the group. I sat quietly, listening, observing, not really wanting to dip my toe [...]
Toes Up
Good morning... The annual tradition of our Women's Lenten Communion Service began in 2007. Working as Discipleship Coordinator in the Children's Ministry at the time, I was invited to be the inaugural speaker of this new Lenten event. None of us knew that by January 2008 God would equip me to become the second full-time Women's Ministry Director at Northside Church. I do not remember the title of my talk or the details of [...]
The Benefits Of Our Breakdown
Good morning... Our Saturday breakdown in communication really had no rhyme and no reason. I checked everything I knew to check and found no sign of why we got "Oops. This Page Could Not Be Found!" instead of our post "So It Was With Marian." In my life "no rhyme or reason" usually has God's fingerprints all over it, so I slow down at this speed bump to examine more closely the benefits of [...]
Savor Sabbath: Breaking Down To Wake Up
Good morning... Yesterday's mysterious breakdown in connection with our morning message, "So It Was With Marian," occurred when I was nestled in the Macon Centreplex, in Macon, Georgia. We were watching our youngest son compete to a third place finish in the 132 lb. weight class in the Georgia High School Association wrestling tournament and cheering on other talented Lovett teammates along with their awesome parents. Earlier in the week I had scheduled [...]
So It Was With Marian
Good morning... "The Inner Meaning of Jesus' Parables," reads the subtitle of a Christian classic published in 1970 by John A. Sanford, who was an American Jungian analyst and Episcopal priest. I am an "inner meaning" girl. I love Jesus. I find his parables fascinatingly fun to ponder, so I am intrigued by Sanford's work exploring "the inner meaning of Jesus' sayings; that is, their relevance to the unfolding of the whole personality [...]
When Our Bough Breaks
Good morning... I am drawn back between the covers of an inspiring book I taught in our living room a few years back. ****** Excerpt from Brene Brown's The Gifts Of Imperfection People call what happens at midlife "a crisis," but it's not. It's an unraveling - a time when you feel a desperate pull to live the life you want to live, not the one you're "supposed" to live. The unraveling is [...]
Our “I” Is Found Before Lost In “We”
Good morning... On this Valentines Day 2019, I will tell you an endless love story evolving in my life. One year at our church there was glitch in our ordering of the annual devotional books I wrote from 2006 to 2016. Our Women's Ministry would self published these babies, after hours and hours of hard, loving labor, then we would hand them out to the women attending worship on Mother's Day morn. The [...]