Author: Leslie Scoopmire

“As you multiplied the loaves and fishes
to feed the multitudes,
feed us with your grace and peace,
satisfying our souls.”

“Thus, we saw three kinds of gaps: one that is the better for being joyfully and playfully filled; one that was once been filled but now testifies to and lamented an absence; and one that makes visible a gap and an opportunity for growth that might otherwise have gone unnoticed.”

“As the sun rises into the sky
on the songs of sparrows,
let me think on God, and praise God’s Name.”

Don’t we all know the weight of helplessness
when hoping in God is all there is?

“Yet our paths to God are not required to be straight. It is often the most indirect, wandering stop-and start journeys that end up being the truest, because they don’t fool us into thinking that the life of abundance can actually be acquired. The broken road is often the road that leads us to God, because it strips away all our defenses and resistance to God.”

“Peace, be still.

It is the time of year that darkness descends like a curtain on the ground only reluctantly, when the long days stretch indolently like a satisfied cat. This is the time of year when the lure of the outdoors exercises a mesmerizing hold on those of us who love summer.”

As if any day could be ordinary.

“As if time were as green and long as
the season after Pentecost,
as it glissandos like a penny whistle
   toward late November.”

“Mrs. Gibson embodied grace, generosity, and endurance. She had to. And so did so many of the people who refused to be driven out of Greenwood, either in the 1920s or the 1970s. Her faith, her grace, and her dignity helped us all to aspire for lives that would lift us up and widen her horizons.”

“How does one respond to such an awesome reminder of God’s wondrous might? The psalm reminds us that our proper response to God is ‘Wow!’ Listen, for in verse 9: ‘And in the temple of the Lord, all are crying, ‘Glory!’”

“God is still speaking new life
Into goodness and blessing
Stirring the waters of baptism …”