This morning I posted on St. John's Bible Reading Challenge Facebook:
It was bound to happen. After Lent discipline moves into Easter Season, I have fallen behind on the daily ready challenge. I am catching up.
Romans 5:21 from The Message reads, "All sin can do is threaten us with death, and that's the end of it. Grace, because God is putting everything together again through the Messiah, invites us into life--a life that goes on and on and on, world without end."
So what about those do to lists, do they save us? What about the jammed packed schedules and all the good we do for others, does that bring us life? While we might find meaning there and joy and connection, life begins and continues because "...God is putting everything together again through the Messiah..."
Reflecting on the every day, practical dimensions of faith. Practices to shape our lives each day as followers of Christ. Stories to share our practical experiences of wisdom, faith, hope, and love.
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Monday, February 25, 2013
Bible Reading Challenge
Taking the challenge? Will you share your thoughts. Richard Foster in Life with God, Reading the Bible for Spiritual Formation, says that scripture is border territory, the place my life merges with yours.
We find our true selves, as wonderful and diverse and different as each of us, in the pages of scripture. Will you take the risk and share that which most deeply yours from God?
You can through the Bible Reading Challenge SJEC. This is a closed Facebook group. Let me know you want to join and I'll add you to the group. (If you don't already have a facebook page, you will need to create one.) Closed on Facebook means only those in the group can see one another's posts. Its a way we can network with one another and share among us.
Today Genesis tells the story of Jacob and Laban, an illustration of how wonderful, diverse, different in motivation and perspective we all are!
Join me!
We find our true selves, as wonderful and diverse and different as each of us, in the pages of scripture. Will you take the risk and share that which most deeply yours from God?
You can through the Bible Reading Challenge SJEC. This is a closed Facebook group. Let me know you want to join and I'll add you to the group. (If you don't already have a facebook page, you will need to create one.) Closed on Facebook means only those in the group can see one another's posts. Its a way we can network with one another and share among us.
Today Genesis tells the story of Jacob and Laban, an illustration of how wonderful, diverse, different in motivation and perspective we all are!
Join me!
Friday, February 22, 2013
Bible Reading Challenge
Today I caught up. The challenge began on Ash Wednesday and I started yesterday. So today I've read through, Genesis 22-27, Psalm 9, and, Matthew 9.
I noticed, again, how much of Matthew we hear read aloud in church yet we hear it in a completely different order. The teachings that begin with Matthew 5 continue in a sequence through Matthew 7.
Those chapters could be Lent reflection for spiritual growth in 2014!
What did you notice?
For my Bible I am using The Life with God Bible, New Revised Standard Version, published by Harper Bibles. The editor is Richard Foster, a well known writer on the Christian Spiritual Life. In addition to notes on the texts there are more extensive notes on spiritual disciples and how to use the texts for spiritual formation.
Did you go to Bible Reading Challenge or Diocese of Maryland website to download the daily reading? Are you with me and our bishop as we read through the Bible Ash Wednesday 13 to Ash Wednesday 14? Follow my blog, comment, and share.
I noticed, again, how much of Matthew we hear read aloud in church yet we hear it in a completely different order. The teachings that begin with Matthew 5 continue in a sequence through Matthew 7.
Those chapters could be Lent reflection for spiritual growth in 2014!
What did you notice?
For my Bible I am using The Life with God Bible, New Revised Standard Version, published by Harper Bibles. The editor is Richard Foster, a well known writer on the Christian Spiritual Life. In addition to notes on the texts there are more extensive notes on spiritual disciples and how to use the texts for spiritual formation.
Did you go to Bible Reading Challenge or Diocese of Maryland website to download the daily reading? Are you with me and our bishop as we read through the Bible Ash Wednesday 13 to Ash Wednesday 14? Follow my blog, comment, and share.
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Prayer, Reflection, and Study
The season of Lent invites not only the spiritual disciplines of putting oneself aside, fasting and giving to others, but also going deeper into our inner spiritual lives.
Resources abound. Two for going deeper are right, literally, at our fingertips. First, The Daily Lenten Devotions written by members of St. John's appear on our home page, www.stjohns.org. A reflection that brings one closer to members of our community and to God is there in a few key strokes.
Second, read the Bible along with others in the Diocese of Maryland. The diocese is offering the Bible Reading Challenge to read the entire Bible in one year from Lent 13 to Lent 14. Go to www.ang-md.org for the click through to the daily reading list. Don't worry it started Ash Wednesday. I am starting today too and I invite you to join me. Want to form a facebook group or email list to encourage one another? Then, email me at my st john's email address. Accountability in community supports our individual goals!
Lent is the season a spiritual disciplines. A Spiritual Discipline is an intentionally directed action by which we do what we can do in order to receive from God the ability (or power) to do what we cannot do by direct effort. Richard J. Foster Life with God. Page 16. Intentionally direct your action to Devotions with St. John's and reading the Bible in community. May this Lent draw you closer to God.
Resources abound. Two for going deeper are right, literally, at our fingertips. First, The Daily Lenten Devotions written by members of St. John's appear on our home page, www.stjohns.org. A reflection that brings one closer to members of our community and to God is there in a few key strokes.
Second, read the Bible along with others in the Diocese of Maryland. The diocese is offering the Bible Reading Challenge to read the entire Bible in one year from Lent 13 to Lent 14. Go to www.ang-md.org for the click through to the daily reading list. Don't worry it started Ash Wednesday. I am starting today too and I invite you to join me. Want to form a facebook group or email list to encourage one another? Then, email me at my st john's email address. Accountability in community supports our individual goals!
Lent is the season a spiritual disciplines. A Spiritual Discipline is an intentionally directed action by which we do what we can do in order to receive from God the ability (or power) to do what we cannot do by direct effort. Richard J. Foster Life with God. Page 16. Intentionally direct your action to Devotions with St. John's and reading the Bible in community. May this Lent draw you closer to God.
Thursday, February 7, 2013
Another reflection to share
As I read for spiritual challenge and nurture, as I read for sermon preparation, as I read to pray, I am always glad to discover reflections written by colleagues. In parish ministry while my life and times focus on the congregation I serve, often I have colleagues and friends with whom I have shared a project or season of ministry but who I do not see face to face on a regular basis. Reading a colleague's writing brings me back into that friendship.
So I share today a reflection written by a colleague found, like many others I have shared, in Daily Feast, Meditations from Feasting on the Word, Year C, by Lewis F. Galloway.
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
"Receiving the Gospel is not simply giving assent to the articles of a creed. Receiving the Gospel is not a matter of accruing one more good thing to a life that is already full of good things. Receiving the Gospel is discovering in Christ a new center of existence, a new power for living, a new perspective from which to view all things."
So I share today a reflection written by a colleague found, like many others I have shared, in Daily Feast, Meditations from Feasting on the Word, Year C, by Lewis F. Galloway.
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
"Receiving the Gospel is not simply giving assent to the articles of a creed. Receiving the Gospel is not a matter of accruing one more good thing to a life that is already full of good things. Receiving the Gospel is discovering in Christ a new center of existence, a new power for living, a new perspective from which to view all things."
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Not yet too big on themselves
Just yesterday Jenni Ovenstone Smith and I were discussing 'youth' ministry. Ministry is ministry, sharing the Good News of Christ's life, bringing people closer to Christ and one another, sharing joys and sorrows, support and challenge. The 'youth' added to ministry means more creativity, more direct comments and talk, more opportunity to deeply touch lives.
So, this morning when I read the following meditation I am again reminded that ministry is ministry is ministry and talking about God is talking about God.
From Daily Feast, Meditations for Feasting on the Word, Year C, Page 99.
"Tuesday, Jeremiah 1:4-10
Reflection
Jeremiah is ushered into something bigger and better, into God's truth and life of service to the Almighty. Perhaps this is the edge young people have: they are not too big themselves just yet, either physically or in the soul. Jeremiah's solid excuse for why he cannot speak God's word is that he is 'only a youth'- as if grownups know how to speak of God! Never do we speak of God capably. We try, we mumble impotent sounds; but does this not happen with babies who coo or with young lovers? The most eloquent words we can muster seem ridiculously inadequate, and the stammer voices the truest affection.
James C. Howell
Response
What excuses have you given to God about your call?
Prayer
God who calls me into life, help me remember that it is so much bigger and better than I can every imagine. Amen."
So, this morning when I read the following meditation I am again reminded that ministry is ministry is ministry and talking about God is talking about God.
From Daily Feast, Meditations for Feasting on the Word, Year C, Page 99.
"Tuesday, Jeremiah 1:4-10
Reflection
Jeremiah is ushered into something bigger and better, into God's truth and life of service to the Almighty. Perhaps this is the edge young people have: they are not too big themselves just yet, either physically or in the soul. Jeremiah's solid excuse for why he cannot speak God's word is that he is 'only a youth'- as if grownups know how to speak of God! Never do we speak of God capably. We try, we mumble impotent sounds; but does this not happen with babies who coo or with young lovers? The most eloquent words we can muster seem ridiculously inadequate, and the stammer voices the truest affection.
James C. Howell
Response
What excuses have you given to God about your call?
Prayer
God who calls me into life, help me remember that it is so much bigger and better than I can every imagine. Amen."
Monday, January 28, 2013
You are the Body of Christ
For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 1 Corinthians 12:12
The apostle Paul employs the analogy to human body to the church in a new way. Instead of going with the familiar approach of his time that likened the hierarchy of social status found in the human community to the hierarchy of importance in the parts of the body, Paul uses the compatible and necessary functioning of each part of the body to the compatible and necessary functioning to each part of the church. No one part can claim superiority. And, no one part can claim superiority because what holds the body together, its unity, is the same for all-The Spirit of Christ among everyone.
The unity of the church universal as well as any congregation is our organic connection to Christ. Our connectedness is a gift even when parts do not all function together. However, instead of turning our attention to how we support one another in sorrow and in joy, instead of turning our attention to how we balance our functioning together within our congregation, instead of looking at our congregation in the compassionate ways we compensate for one another, let us turn our attention how our connectedness functions to benefit all.
Connected as a body, our congregation literally spiritually supports hundreds of thousands of lives each week. We gather to worship, pray, serve and share in the spiritual nurture of the church community. That spiritual nurture feeds its members. And those members go out into the world. Our community nurtures a drug counselor in one of the worst neighborhoods in Baltimore, a social worker who finds community homes for the mentally ill, CEOs who employ thousands of people, teachers from graduate level to elementary school, teachers from the gifted to the learning disabled, carpenters, those who are oversee national security, physicists, researchers, doctors, all who use their spiritual nurture from our congregation to touch people's lives with their gifts.
In the Epiphany season when the church universal and our congregation remembers that as the Body of Christ we bring Christ's life and love to the world, we can ask what difference can any one congregation make? As the Body united to one another so that we function as a church and are thereby nurtured and sustained, we make a lot of difference through the lives we live.
The apostle Paul employs the analogy to human body to the church in a new way. Instead of going with the familiar approach of his time that likened the hierarchy of social status found in the human community to the hierarchy of importance in the parts of the body, Paul uses the compatible and necessary functioning of each part of the body to the compatible and necessary functioning to each part of the church. No one part can claim superiority. And, no one part can claim superiority because what holds the body together, its unity, is the same for all-The Spirit of Christ among everyone.
The unity of the church universal as well as any congregation is our organic connection to Christ. Our connectedness is a gift even when parts do not all function together. However, instead of turning our attention to how we support one another in sorrow and in joy, instead of turning our attention to how we balance our functioning together within our congregation, instead of looking at our congregation in the compassionate ways we compensate for one another, let us turn our attention how our connectedness functions to benefit all.
Connected as a body, our congregation literally spiritually supports hundreds of thousands of lives each week. We gather to worship, pray, serve and share in the spiritual nurture of the church community. That spiritual nurture feeds its members. And those members go out into the world. Our community nurtures a drug counselor in one of the worst neighborhoods in Baltimore, a social worker who finds community homes for the mentally ill, CEOs who employ thousands of people, teachers from graduate level to elementary school, teachers from the gifted to the learning disabled, carpenters, those who are oversee national security, physicists, researchers, doctors, all who use their spiritual nurture from our congregation to touch people's lives with their gifts.
In the Epiphany season when the church universal and our congregation remembers that as the Body of Christ we bring Christ's life and love to the world, we can ask what difference can any one congregation make? As the Body united to one another so that we function as a church and are thereby nurtured and sustained, we make a lot of difference through the lives we live.
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