Month: December 2014
Maxie Dunnam ~ Leave Your Stuff Behind
December 31, 2014
By the time most of us get to be adults, we have accumulated a great deal of stuff. We’ve learned so many wrong things, stored up so much misinformation, learned to respond in so many destructive ways, adopted all the biting, snarling, snippy styles of relating, become secretive and cynical. We carry a lot of stuff around, and it burdens us down. We get all glued up in our limited world of habit. So this word of Pharaoh to Joseph’s brothers is a good word for us, particularly as we begin this new year: leave your stuff behind.
Carrie Carter ~ When You Feel Like You’re Drowning
December 29, 2014
Have you ever had a near-drowning experience?
I have. I’d guess I was between the ages of seven and nine. I don’t remember the circumstances, except that I was in over my head. Literally. What I can remember is the feeling of not being able to breathe and the panic that completely took over any ability for reasoning. I mean, everyone was told (way back in my childhood days) that once you go under for the third time, you die…
Elizabeth Glass Turner ~ Receiving Christmas
December 24, 2014
Jesus’ Incarnation was not initiated by humans: that is one of the most important implications of the Virgin Birth. Jesus came, unexpected, uninvited, uncreated. Receive Christ, then, this season, as you do in Holy Communion. You can put up a tree: you cannot create Christmas. You can get a great deal on The Toy for your kid: you cannot create Christmas. We receive Christmas…
Elizabeth Glass Turner ~ Holy Focus: Distraction
December 22, 2014
In the middle of life – car repairs and cancelled trips, cancer test results and job changes, crises and half-finished projects – what is truly urgent, and what is only a red herring? Holy focus slowly grows out of maneuvering from one situation to a next, feeling out the tempo of the Holy Spirit and recognizing the holy even when a child is vomiting on the floor, someone is screeching their brakes before rear-ending you, and your daughter is beginning a conversation with, “um, Mom?…can I talk to you about something?”
Mark Trotter ~ Get Up and Go
December 20, 2014
“Do it even if you don’t feel like it, even if you don’t believe, or can’t imagine, that the promise that is offered can come to you. Get up and follow it anyway, because you are a person of faith, and you believe that what is real is not only the way you feel now, but the promise offered to you in Jesus Christ. Arise, and shine.”
Jack Jackson ~ Reflections on Dean’s “Almost Christian”
December 18, 2014
” In essence our children aren’t disciples because we aren’t disciples. We’re more focused on our kids’ happiness and success than we are on their discipleship.”
Scott Pattison ~ The Gift of Time
December 17, 2014
“Regardless of how I have spent, squandered, or invested my time, I still have the wonderful gift of this set of 24 hours. Regardless of how I spent “yesterday,” I still have today. I can waste today, by regretting yesterday, or yearning for tomorrow. I can spend the day selfishly on myself, or investing in others.”
Ken Loyer ~ Remembering Christ’s Presence with Us
December 15, 2014
“How is memory significant for us as God’s people? Why is it important for us to remember, and what specifically should we remember most?”
Maxie Dunnam ~ Disciplines for Spiritual Formation: Study
December 11, 2014
“We are what we think. We are transformed by the renewal of our minds. So study is a necessary discipline for spiritual growth.”
Elizabeth Glass Turner ~ Reveal
December 10, 2014
“Who is God? Emmanuel, Word-Made-Flesh, Jesus Christ the fully divine, fully mortal. And the Book of Revelation is understood through Emmanuel, God with us, who makes all things new – new, say, as a newborn, fists tight, eyes blinking, with that delicious newborn smell and tiny tufts of hair. Our world needs to be new again: reborn, pressed against the chest of its Creator.”