Several years ago, the Holy Spirit sent me, via the internet of course, a simple activity to ease dinner table tension by building relationship through storytelling. A mason jar, minimally decorated and containing slips of paper in three colors.
In the retelling of this story in Acts chapter one, after Jesus ascends, the disciples are staring up towards the heavens and two men in white robes appear. They ask the disciples:“Why do you stand looking up towards heaven?”
Welp, I turned into a priest-mom-Easter-morning-psycho.I mean, Christ is Risen, right? Might as well go crazy on your family.
Lent is upon us, the forty days set aside to prepare to celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus.
Every year my sermon for Ash Wednesday comes down to one thing: this business of smearing ashes on our faces? It’s for us, not for God.
Please church, welcome, encourage and support the faith, prophetic voices, and ministries of our young people. We need them now more than ever.
Tonight one of my boys burst into tears just as I grabbed the bible to start our reading of Romans. He had just remembered that he lost his homework that is due tomorrow and half-way finished.* I took a deep breath. “We’ll find it buddy, it is time to read Romans now.”
We were at Chik-Fil-A with my younger child for dinner. Earlier that day I had listened to a podcast that mentioned the Big Bang and I asked the kids if they knew about it. They both said no. So I explained the Big Bang and this is how the conversation went.
The name Lucy means light. She is a light, but more importantly she points us to the light of Christ. In the literal darkness we face every year at this time and in the greater darkness we face in our lives and in the world, Lucy reminds us that the light of Christ shines in the midst of it all, and the darkness does not overcome it.
The church celebrates St. Martin of Tours today, November 11th. Martin is best known for cutting his cloak in half with his sword to share with a beggar. Afterward, he had a vision of Christ, wrapped in the half cloak. It’s a pretty simple story, which is one of the reasons it works so well for young children. My children attend a Waldorf school, and celebrating St. Martin has been a beloved tradition for us since the oldest was in preschool.