It’s as simple as one prayer and as powerful as a thousand prayers. It’s our whole hearts and minds and bodies given to these children. Surrounding them and holding them close.
In the early days of the American Episcopal Church, there weren’t a lot of bishops, so confirmation was a dead issue. It wobbled along both here and in England until the mid nineteenth century when a number of bishops picked it up enthusiastically.
In the meantime, you and I will encounter a lot of things we don’t understand. There will be miracles which challenge our scientific world views, and statements that leave us aghast that Jesus would say such a thing.
After years of my childhood church teaching me that I was a miserable sinner and that God hated sinners, I suddenly believed God still loved me, a concept I found extremely hard to understand, but in that one instant I knew and believed it.
After seeing the ‘Dunkirk’, I stumbled upon the saying: Failure isn’t fatal and success isn’t final. Which seemed to encapsulate the feeling that the movie had evoked.
Not only did she vow to embrace us as people who had done our work to determine God’s will for us, but she accepted our leadership in the matter. Where we went, our faith community would go
In the bleak, cold mornings of a northern winter, we pray for glimmers of light, shiny, to catch the eye and the spirit.
The internet is so loud. So full of stuff. So angry. So confusing. So controversial. But there is goodness to be found. There is hope in this piece of the world that connects us.
Christmastide is never over. We carry the Light of Christ in our incarnate and complex lives, lives of betrayal, flight, fear, but also of faith that the Light will overcome the dark, always.
The Magi were seekers – we don’t know too much about them, not how many nor if they were all men nor their religion, except they came from the east and brought three gifts.