With thanks to Anne Lamott, Broderick Greer, and a few other things I have read and prayers I have heard and spoken, here is the invocation I gave today at the General Assembly luncheon of the Covenant Network. Thank you to Jessica Vasquez Torres, Bruce Reyes-Chow, Jerrod Lowery, and Denise Anderson for the important conversation…
Here’s a longer version of an upcoming newsletter article I’ve written for the congregation I serve. Last week, a gunman opened fire in a nightclub full of members of Orlando’s gay community. As I write this, 49 people are dead, with many more in the hospital. It is the deadliest mass shooting in American…
A sermon preached at Southminster Presbyterian Church in Boise, Idaho June 11, 2016 2 Corinthians 4:16 to 5:10 I love this passage of scripture. There has been more than one time in my life when hearing these words of Paul has given me comfort. I’ve preached before about how they once gave me comfort and…
A sermon preached at Southminster Presbyterian Church in Boise, Idaho May 29, 2016 2 Corinthians 2:1-10 For all the talk about forgiveness in our culture, I don’t think we’re primarily a forgiveness culture. I think we are an “eye for an eye” culture. We may speak superficially of forgiveness. In practice, though, I see more…
A sermon preached at Southminster Presbyterian Church in Boise, Idaho May 22, 2016 2 Corinthians 1:1-11 Last week, on Pentecost, we spoke of how God empowers our gifts; of how our gifts become more than they are when the Holy Spirit moves among us and inspires us. That same “empower” word is in the Greek…
I read an interesting article in the Sunday NY Times. The Busy Person’s Lies. According to a recent Gallup poll, 61 percent of working Americans don’t feel they have enough time to do what they wanted to do. I commend the article. The author logged how she spent her time for a year, which used 18…
A Pentecost sermon preached at Southminster Presbyterian in Boise, Idaho May 14, 2016 Acts 2:1-21 1 Corinthians 12:1-13 Pentecost is the birth day of the church, the day the Holy Spirit showed up to a room full of followers and breathed God’s own breath on them, as if it were a mighty wind or a…
A sermon preached at Southminster Presbyterian in Boise May 8, 2016 1 Cor 15:1-26, 51-58 As Ruth mentioned last week, the church in Corinth had some struggles. Some different ways of interpreting things that were leading to division. Paul called them to love. Paul reminded them that nothing else mattered if they couldn’t remember to…
I’ve been doing some good and hard work in counseling ever since I got my original birth certificate and found my birth family a few years ago. One of my recent discoveries is that I have a Voice in my head that tells me things. The Voice isn’t new. It’s been with me for awhile.…
Graduation season is upon us. We’ll be recognizing graduating seniors in worship on Sunday. I don’t even have a kid graduating this year, and I’m already fretting about how in the world I will be able to pray over these kids without weeping. I have thought back to when Alden graduated. Here’s a post I…
Glass Overflowing 