Luke 24:13-35 I took a walk this afternoon. A long one, like I used to take before the world turned upside down. I yearned for exactly what I found. The bracing wind, the sun on my face, the bright colors of spring flowers. I wanted so to be distracted from the heavy thoughts which mark …
Tag: Luke
The Pilgrims’ Way…
Psalm 84 Luke 2:22-40 “Happy are the people whose strength is in you, whose hearts are set on the pilgrims’ way…” Psalm 84:5 I forgot my prop for my children’s lesson last Sunday. I got to church and could still picture it sitting on the kitchen counter where it would be when I arrived …
Listening for the Rustle of Angels’ Wings…
Dear Friends, Following is my ‘first run’ at a Christmas sermon. May you also hear the ‘rustle of angels’ wings’ this year. And may you never be the same. Blessed Christmas to you and those you love and those you serve, Janet Luke 2:1-20 Have you heard the rustle of angels’ wings this night? …
“There Was No Place For Them…”
Luke 2:1-20 I heard it differently this year, this string of words which tell the whole story of the what and why and how of Jesus’ coming. We were with our confirmation youth. We have been teaching worship this year and part of the experience has included having them actually lead worship with and for …
Christ Meets Us in the Darkness…
Colossians 1:11-20 Luke 23:33-43 I experienced it just this week, you see. I saw with my own eyes what it looks like when God’s Own step into the darkness of their own hard earned struggle and pain and fear and meet Jesus there. I saw grace over a funeral lunch where individuals who once considered …
What God Has In Store: Expanding Our Imaginations
Luke 20:27-38 We had come together then to scatter the remains of a beloved mother and grandmother and great grandmother. The late October snow that had fallen a few days before had mostly melted and the ground was simply glistening in the sunshine under the willow tree her family had chosen as her final resting …
All Saints Sunday: Standing Still in the Mystery
Daniel 7:1-3, 15-18 Ephesians 1:11-23 Luke 6:20-31 For me at least, All Saints Sunday has always been more about mystery than dogma. More about the familiar strains of poetry and the strident, or haunting, or jaunty melodies than about any well reasoned theological statement or argument. “Behold a host arrayed in white…” “For all the …
On Gratitude and Wholeness
Luke 17:11-19 One’s attention is naturally drawn to the Samaritan in the story before us now. At first the ten are all of a group: All stricken by the same deadly disease. All drawn together by a fate that erased the differences which had separated them before this awful diagnosis. All desperate enough to call …
All That You Need: On Faith and Mustard Seeds
Luke 17:5-10 It has been blooming from a crack in my driveway all summer long. I did not plant it there, of course, but I have often planted petunias along the driveway side of my house just a few feet away. Even so, it is not the sort of plant which survives the winter — …
“Lazarus” at My Front Door…
Luke 16:19-31 I can still picture my dad leaning back in his chair with his hands tented together in that philosophical pose he took from time to time. I smiled then and still do to remember him so, knowing that whenever those fingers came together in that way he was about to say something he …