Marriage is a great teacher. Sometimes the hardest. Sometimes the wisest. If you’ve been married for any length of time, you know relationships only work when you fully lean into one another with mercy. You can’t keep score. You can’t file mental receipts every time your spouse messes up. Because if you do, it becomes…
There’s something unsettling about Ash Wednesday. We walk forward. We kneel or maybe we stand. A thumb presses into our foreheads. Dust mixed with oil is smeared on us. And we hear words we spend the rest of the year trying to avoid: You are dust, and to dust you shall return. No filters. No…
This week we celebrated Ash Wednesday. A day that marks the beginning of the season of Lent, a season marked by reflection, repentance, and renewal. It is a time to acknowledge our failures, confront our brokenness, and recognize our deep need for grace. As we step into this forty-day journey toward the cross, Jesus’ words…
In the early morning hours, before the sun began to peak above the horizon, darkness covered the landscape. The air was cool. No one was around. It’s almost as if the earth stopped for a moment. There was an eerie silence that was oddly deafening. As your feet strolled slowly across the dew covered grass,…
This week we celebrate a different kind of holiday in the church. We call it Ash Wednesday. Yeah it’s the day when you see people with those funny little dirt smudges on their foreheads. Some of us pastors are not good at art it seems! But the idea behind ashes on foreheads might seem weird…
One of my biggest fears in life is being trapped and have no way out. I don’t like water because I’m a tad afraid of getting trapped below the water. I know it’s one of those irrational kind of fears, but it’s a real fear for me. I don’t care for enclosed spaces and the…
The months of February and March are typically marked in the church by a season called Lent. Lent is that 40 time period that takes us from Ash Wednesday to Easter. Lent is a time of thinking, praying, and being a little more contemplative. Churches add worship services on Wednesdays for an extra time of…
I have to tell you when I hear people that they’re in this whole living life thing to make themselves happy something inside me goes a little crazy. It’s like fingernails on a chalkboard. There are some people that want life their way. They want things handed to them on a silver platter. It just…
Tomorrow is a day in the church known as Ash Wednesday. It marks the beginning of the season of the church known as Lent. This season of Lent is about reflection and focus on getting ourselves ready for Easter. As followers of Jesus prepare for Easter they take time for a penitential (reflective) walk through…
Well that was one interesting Easter to be sure. Churches were empty. Few people wore those Easter fancy outfits. Egg hunts didn’t happen like normal. It was just a weird situation all the way around. But one thing didn’t change in that whole mixed up situation. The grave was still empty. He was still gone!
