Lord, teach me. . . .

His eye is on the sparrow, and I know he watches me. –Civilla D. Martin It is summer in Ohio, and it is (finally) hot. (How hot is it?) It’s so hot, sunshine pours down through steamy skies, turning the world into a sauna even on cloudy days. It’s so hot, exposed skin peels like Velcro from vinyl seat cushions. It’s so hot . . . even the robins are wearing tiny flip-flops so they don’t burn their feet. (Okay, maybe not!) There are seasons, less predictable, perhaps, in our spiritual lives, as well. Sometimes we burn with passion for the Lord; nothing and no one is going to quench our enthusiasm for living. (Did you know the word enthusiasm comes from two Greek words meaning filled with God ?) But then the seasons begin to change. The fire may cool a bit; we may even seek a break now and then, a chance to “cool off.” It happens in nature, and it happens in our lives. Yet even as summer gives way to fall, and fall to winter, God’s desire to be near God’s children...

The go-between wears out a thousand sandals. –Japanese proverb The Chancel Renovation Project continues. The organ has been removed; construction of the raised platform is underway. And outside the Sanctuary, a new lift is being installed, to further validate UCUMC as a place where ALL are welcome. ALL the time. What an exciting thing to be a part of! Fulfilling our pledge to create this new, accessible worship space is a Big Deal. It’s important that all God’s children have a place to gather and worship. But remember: Coming together in this place is only one small part of being faithful. Our Sunday morning service is intended to be less destination and more fueling station. Come on Sunday morning, like the woman drawn to the well (John 4). Come hungry or thirsty. Come questioning, like Nicodemus (John 3). Come, believing or unbelieving, like the father of the boy plagued by seizures (Mark 9). Come and feast on the Word, lift your voices in praise. Love and be love...

“Our life is frittered away by detail . . . simplify, simplify.” –Henry David Thoreau When was the last time you stopped and took an inventory of your “stuff”? Did you know that in 2011, American consumers spent an average of $764 on Christmas gifts, for a grand total of over $600 billion ? That the average American household credit card debt is over $15,000? All because somewhere along the way we began to believe that the more we have, the better and more worthy we are. Our value as human beings became tied to our net worth. Here is a news flash: Nowhere in Scripture does it say that he (or she) who dies with the most stuff—wins. In fact, as we have loaded our camels with more , it becomes more and more difficult for us to maneuver that camel through the eye of the needle. We cannot take it with us. Don’t get me wrong: there is nothing wrong with having a nice car and a lovely home—but none of these things adds one iota to your value as a Child of the Most High....

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul. –John Muir When I was a child, we had one doctor, a Family Doctor. All of us saw Dr. Moore, for everything from tendinitis to tummy aches, lacerations and vaccinations. Dr. Moore did it all, for a long time. But by the time my little brother came along, things were changing. He had a pediatrician, a doctor just for kids. And not only that—as he got older, there was an adolescent pediatrician, even more specialized. Today, it seems the specialists far outnumber the generalists. Sometimes our faith walk seems to be following a similar path. It’s not enough simply to be a Christ-follower. Are you a Baptist or a Methodist? A “dunker” or a “sprinkler”? Bread and juice? Or wafer and wine? We seem bent on particularizing God in our (very human) efforts to understand God more fully. (Did you know there are over 33,000 Protestant denominations in ...

We can never know about the days to come, but we think about them anyway. –Carly Simon Carly Simon had a hit song in the ‘70s that was picked up by a ketchup company and used in their television commercials. Thick, rich ketchup, brimming with tomatoey goodness, oozed from the bottle at a snail’s pace, hovering over a perfect char-grilled burger or pile of crispy, golden fries. Anticipation. . . . And meanwhile, back in the real world, we want to smack that bottle hard, shake it impatiently. We do not want to wait. Just like children in the weeks before Christmas, we want to know what’s inside, and we want to know now . We just aren’t very good at waiting, are we? And now, upstairs, our Sanctuary is cloaked in secrecy, gift-wrapped in black plastic and duct tape—and those darned signs, like the labels on those special gifts imploring, Do  not open til December 25! CAUTION. HARD HAT AREA. Suddenly there is nothing we want more than a peek inside. (Admit it. We h...

Earth knows no desolation. She smells regeneration in the moist breath of decay.  –George Meredith My husband always had a compost bin, and now my daughter has begun one in her own back yard. It’s an amazing thing, really. Into the bin go banana peels and onion skins, cores from apples and seeds from peppers—even grass clippings and old newspapers. Add a sprinkling of water, turn the bin every few days—and wait. (It always seems to come back to Tom Petty, doesn’t it?) The seasons change; days grow longer, then shorter, then longer again. And in the quiet darkness of that compost bin, transformation is happening. Those “icky parts,” the stuff we’ve deemed undesirable and unnecessary, are slowly and deliberately being transformed by a superior Gardener into rich, brown soil teeming with earthworms and releasing the earthy fragrance of life. So it is in our lives, as well. Often the junk, the stuff we’d just as soon discard and pretend never existed, becomes the ver...

Everyone says I’m too old for a security blanket. But a baby blanket tucked in my dresser drawer back home is a lot less expensive than therapy. –Sarah Tregay I took a count the other day: I own twelve Bibles. The oldest is a family Bible my mother gave me; the newest, a promotional copy of the Common English Bible, a new, “approachable” translation in which some of my professors took part. My “workhorse” Bible, the one I use for Bible study and sermon preparation, is almost seven years old. Its brown, two-tone leather cover is now held together with purple duct tape. The silhouette of an elephant remains front and center. (Me and my elephants!) Inside, favorite passages are highlighted in yellow, pink or blue. Some pages are permanently wrinkled from a spilled glass of water. My daughter looked at it the other day and said, “That is one well-loved Bible.” And she is right. When I was younger, I had a teddy bear named Lucy, who heard my cries, held my tears, carried me o...