In fact, I was doing it all wrong–I was using it as an ego thing. I would pat myself on the back for giving up things and being as Spartan as an Airborne Ranger about it, and pride myself for being more disciplined than “church people.” It was part of the “Me and God and Jesus and I don’t need anyone else” attitude I cultivated in those years.
The more likely source of the leak was someone who believed that it was morally right to protect the church from appointing a partnered (even if celibate) gay priest. That person has to be a permanent member of the CNC and a conservative evangelical layman.
I had a chance recently to visit Central High School in Little Rock and the Lorraine Motel where Dr. King was assassinated. So much of what we do, any of us, seems inadequate in response to what he and the other martyrs of the civil rights movement did. Yet we need to do something, even if it is not enough.
It’s more important to see anemia as an invitation to spiritual self-awareness, and to consider what we need to do (or not do!) when it comes upon us. It also begs the reverse question–when we are feeling spiritually robust, how are we available when someone else feels spiritually anemic?
That day I preached that we were celebrating the name of Jesus, Yeshua, an ordinary enough Jewish name in First Century occupied Israel, but a name that carried an astonishing promise, “God saves.” “Saves from what?” I asked with probably too evident feeling.
by George Clifford During the winter of 1926, Chicagoan Thelma Goldstein treated herself to her first real vacation, taking a trip to Florida. Being unfamiliar
Merry Day After Christmas. We’d like to hear about your churchgoing experience this past weekend. Did you hear a good sermon? Did you give a good sermon? How was the music? Feel free to share links to text, podcast or videos.
Then, all of a sudden, a giant recognition slammed into my brain without warning. What I was being shown was a teeny-tiny glimpse of what Mary felt like when Gabriel told her the news that she was pregnant!
Advent is all about transition. After spending the better part of a year moving from the Nativity to the feast of Christ the King, in Advent we seem to reverse that process in four weeks. We return in our lessons to the unsettled time into which John the Baptizer strode, a time when the crowds sought hope in the midst of uncertainty.