Lord, teach me. . . .

Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates Love. --Lao Tzu Hey, what’d ya get? Remember the old Charlie Brown Halloween special, when all the kids went out trick or treating? When they looked in their bags, each child would announce what they got:                          I got a giant candy bar!                          I got three pencils! And some jelly beans!                          I got peanut butter kisses—my favorite! And at every single house, Charlie Brown got the same thing:                          I got—a rock . Makes you wonder how he fared at Christmas, doesn’t it? We have come off a record-breaking holiday spending season. Estimates are, we spent around one trillion dollars on gifts this year! (That's $1,000,000,000,000.) And you know what’s really sad? Of those gifts, chosen just for us , nearly $280 billion worth are returned! Wow. . . . Christma

Eyes Wide with Wonder This week, pause. Open your heart and your eyes to the wondrous beauty and mystery and magic of the Christmas miracle and the true Gift of the season. Wander and ponder through “ Sharon’s Christmas Prayer ,” by John Shea. Merry Christmas! Monday  “She was sure of the facts, and recited them with slow solemnity, convinced every word was revelation.” Isaiah 9:6-7 Tuesday    “She said they were so poor they only had peanut butter and jelly to eat, and they went a long way from home without getting lost.” Luke 2:1-4 Wednesday  “The lady rode a donkey, the man walked, and the baby was inside the lady. They had to stay in a stable with an ox and an ass ( hee hee ).” Matthew 5:3-10 Thursday  “But the Three Rich Men found them because a star lited the roof.” Matthew 2:1-12 Friday  “Shepherds came and you could pet the sheep but not feed them.” Luke 2:8-12 Saturday  “Then the baby was borned. And do you know who he was? Her quarter eyes

The highest and most beautiful things in life are not to be heard about, nor read about,  nor seen but, if one will, are to be lived. --Soren Kierkegaard Pretty ugly. Last summer, I found this amazing Christmas sweater on clearance. It was $7. It’s green and has trees and snowflakes and so much more . After I got it home, I saw a couple of places where the knitting had come unstitched, so I went to the local craft store and picked up some appliqués to hide the holes, thus making my special sweater even more special! It’s pretty ugly. It really is. When I wore it recently, someone I care deeply about told me, seriously, how much they really liked the sweater. It was so colorful, and happy—and that cat appliqué made it just perfect. They went away smiling, and so did I. Life can be like that. Someone, or some thing that looks ordinary, at best (or ugly, at worst), through a different lens takes on unexpected beauty. We laugh at warthogs and cuttlefish, sha

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness. –Maya Angelou I really enjoy music. I play no instrument except a choral voice (no solos, thanks), but I have come to deeply appreciate many different styles of music. Most of the time, it’s the music, not the lyrics, that draws me in. The gift of tying notes together to produce such wonderful rhythms and harmonies is one I do not possess. To paraphrase Will Rogers: We can’t all be musicians, for somebody needs to be in the audience to applaud and cheer them on . We marvel at the flying fingers of a jazz pianist; we clap as the trumpeter hits impossibly high notes. But what we don’t often pause to appreciate, in music or in life, is the silence. The resting points between the notes. Sometimes the rest might be only a quick gasp for air; other times, the instrumentalist might actually have several whole measures to breathe and prepare for the next entrance. As u

As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them. –John F. Kennedy We are entering an interesting, sometimes challenging season as followers of the Christ. It probably shouldn’t be as difficult as we make it every year, but the tug of the Lord and the frenzy of the world can point us in starkly different directions if we allow. On one hand, we are beginning our Advent journey, tiptoeing quietly ever closer to the cradle every Sunday, seeking God’s presence in our lives and in our hearts. We light candles. Many of us dedicate ourselves deliberately to a discipline of daily prayer or meditation. Maybe you have an Advent calendar with doors to open or treats to share. Christ our Savior is born! Let heaven and nature sing! And then there’s this other season, the one that begins on Black Friday and continues through Cyber Monday. The markets and malls try to convince us there is a more important kind

Give thanks with a grateful heart. Give thanks to the Holy One. –Henry Smith Show me. Gratitude (n): the quality of being thankful; the readiness to show appreciation for and return kindness. That’s how Webster defines it. As we celebrate Thanksgiving Day this week, how do we define gratitude? I really like the second part of this definition: the readiness to show appreciation for and return kindness . That’s what it’s really all about, isn’t it? To paraphrase Hallmark, the love in your heart wasn’t put there to stay; love isn’t love till you give it away. I think gratitude, or being grateful, works pretty much the same way. I can talk all day about how grateful I am for the roof over my head, or that I never have to worry about where my next meal is coming from, but until I step up and help someone else through a time of homelessness or food insecurity, I’m not really getting it. Paul would say, I can do great deeds all day long, and be really smart; I c

What’s so fascinating and frustrating and great about life is that you’re constantly starting over, all the time, and I love that. –Billy Crystal If your church follows the liturgical calendar to at least some degree, then you may be aware that there is only one more Sunday left on the church calendar. Next Sunday, November 24, is Christ the King Sunday. We celebrate Christ’s reign over Creation—and then we start all over again, with Mary and Joseph and the angel and a babe in a manger. Yes, it’s a little weird. After all, isn’t that what Easter is about? Celebrating Jesus’ victory over death? Then why are we back here again? I really don’t have a great answer. But here’s what I think: Summer (in the northern hemisphere) is a time of terrific growth, of creating life and bearing fruit. The liturgical color for ordinary time is green, the color a colleague once told me is the color of God . After the High Holy Days of Easter and the arrival of the Holy Spirit at

Whenever you want to achieve something, keep your eyes open, concentrate and make sure you know exactly what it is you want. No one can hit their target with their eyes closed. –Paulo Coelho Just doin’ my chores. . . . Have you ever had this experience? You start out, say, in the living room, determined to get the house cleaned up before the family gets home. Right off the bat, you come across your husband’s socks from the day before, so you head to the bathroom, to put the socks in the hamper. When you get there, you notice there’s no hand towel on the hook, so you turn to find a clean towel—and notice someone left a magazine in there, where it doesn’t belong. You hand the towel, go to put the magazine in the office where it belongs. On the desk is a bill that needs paid, and before you realize what’s happening, you’ve got four things in your hands, a dozen things on your mind—and the family will be home in a half hour. You’ve accomplished exactly nothing you set

Life is a moving, breathing thing. We have to be willing to constantly evolve.  Perfection is constant transformation.  --Nia Peeples At my church, almost every Tuesday evening means a meeting. It certainly isn’t all bad, for many reasons. We are doing the business of the church. I get to be in a more intimate setting with my church family. And my secretary Irene always makes sure every agenda laid out around the table has a piece of chocolate on it. And she knows I like dark chocolate. Last meeting, the treats were foil-wrapped Dove Promises (dark chocolate, of course). I tend to be the only one who takes the time to read the bit of pop wisdom stamped inside the wrapper; everyone else is after the chocolate. My wrapper said, You got this! Seemed to be a perfectly good reminder, and the meeting went well. But the best bit of wisdom came from the person to my right. Her wrapper bore these words: Exhale the past. Inhale the future . Let go of the stuff of ye

Obsessed by a fairy tale, we spend our lives searching for a magic door and a lost kingdom of peace. –Eugene O’Neill When you go to church on a Sunday morning, how do you decide where you’re going to attend? Do you choose the church because it’s where you have always attended? Because your whole family always goes there? Is your church of choice the biggest one in town? The one with the jazziest music? The place that makes you feel good, and has Fair Trade coffee? The one where you can “come as you are”? Are you going because the guest preacher that morning has a shiny white smile, and tells you exactly what you already knew and believed, anyway? (Isn’t it ironic? It seems often God likes and dislikes exactly the same people we do !) Where are your friends attending this week? Is that where you’ll show up, as well? What is wrong with all these snapshots? What (or who) is missing? Yep. In every one of these scenarios, Jesus is missing. The one in whom

When the seasons shift, even the subtle beginning, the scent of a promised changed, I feel something stir inside me. Hopefulness? Gratitude? Openness?  Whatever it is,  it’s welcome. –Kristin Armstrong No matter what part of the world you call home, this time of year brings big changes. While my friends Down Under are watching sings of new growth emerge from the earth as temperatures rise, here in Ohio, the leaves are turning from green to gold and orange, red and brown. The winds have taken on a chill; clouds hang heavy, like soggy cotton, reminding us that soon and very soon, we are going to see the snow . Always different, yet somehow, the same. We depend on God’s eternal ways, and trust that again this year, winter will follow autumn, just like it should. So why is it, as we anticipate and appreciate changes like these, when it comes to so many things in life we pull up short, wrinkle our noses and say No! No change! I like things just the way they are! It’s t

i thank you god for most this amazing day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes --e.e.cummings There is a story in the Bible ( Luke 17:11-19 ) about ten people with a horridly disfiguring skin disease who cried out to Jesus, begging to be healed. In essence, he tells them: Go now, straight away, and show yourselves to your priest. And on the way, as they walked or ran or galloped, their sores were healed. Can you imagine? It must have been a little like time-lapse photography, as the natural healing process was accelerated. Imagine staring at your hands and watching the sores disappear! My mouth drops open just thinking about it. The truly amazing part: only one of these folks took the time to run back to Jesus and give thanks . Oh, I know there are soccer games and church luncheons, so many things that keep us busy, busy, busy. How often are we stoppe

Everything ends; you just have to figure out a way to push the finish line. –Jesse Itzler Unfinished business Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a musical genius. He composed his first piece when he was only five years old. At an early age, he was performing confidently before royalty. A true prodigy, music seemed to pour forth from his soul like water from a well. When Mozart died, he had only completed the first movement of his now-famous Requiem . Bits and pieces of nine other movements were found, but Mozart’s final work would never have been completed if not for Franz Süssmayr, an acquaintance of Mozart. Süssmayr not only completed the nine partial movements Mozart had left behind; he added four more, all in the manner and style of Mozart. Throughout history, great works have been left unfinished. Sometimes they remain incomplete, as in the case of the watercolor portrait of Franklin Roosevelt, begun on April 12, 1945. The president collapsed and died later that day,

The name “Reflect It Back” comes from the idea of not only giving back, but also seeing yourself in someone else. –Max Carver In many churches (including mine), stewardship season is just around the corner. This is the time of year when we (often reluctantly) begin focused discussions about budgets and giving and other stuff that many people don’t think a pastor should mention in the pulpit. Never mind that the one topic Jesus addressed more than any other topic was wealth and money; we don’t want to hear about it. After all, what I give is between me and God—right? (Sound familiar?) It’s funny, isn’t it, how we seem to have convince ourselves that if we don’t tell anyone how much money we earn, if we don’t tell God, God doesn’t know? We feel obligated (I hope) to faithfully report our income to those agencies who need to have it—but somehow don’t believe God cares. We can throw God scraps, so to speak, and God will never even know. How naïve are we? Granted, the IR