The truth about our lives is so simple: we live every moment in the presence of God. God is present in every event, every plant/rock/person/animal. God is the interweaving of all life, the glue, if you will, that holds everything together, that connects all elements in the universe. God is the Creator of all and […]

Jesus was a radical teacher in 1st century Palestine. His message is just as radical for our times. First, and foremost, he brought forward the commandment from Deuteronomy 6:5 to love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength. And how are we to love God? With all of ourselves! This means that God […]

“Our God is an awesome God, there is nothing that he cannot do…” This is a song that my grandchildren learned in Vacation Bible School a few years back. It’s true, our God is an awesome God, but not just in the muscle-flexing ways of the children’s song. God is awesomely mysterious and yet knowable; […]

I have recently signed onto a couple of blogs by black women and in a recent one Ebony Johanna writes about diversity in the church and how white churches can attract people of color. The author of the blog wrote that we had a long way to go to acknowledge all that black people had […]

I have been thinking lately about not being or having an addictive personality. After all, I’ve never been addicted to drugs or alcohol. But I was brought up short recently by this thought: what do you mean you’re not addictive? You spent ¾ of your life being addicted to self-doubt and fear. You considered yourself […]

Grace. Blessings.  Prayer Have you ever driven a manual transmission? Do you remember how the gears were meant to mesh, just slide easily one from the other when you shift from second gear to third or third into fourth? There is no revving of too much gas, an ease with the clutch, just a very […]

On a recent August morning I was reading the Bible Workbench lesson on Jacob wrestling with a man(or angel as some translations say) in preparation for the meeting at my church that day; tears are flowing from my eyes. As I ponder my reaction, I realize that my life[all our lives] has been consumed with […]

I belong to the whole church of Jesus Christ, the body of Christ, as Paul put it, in which every part of the body, every organ, vessel and nerve is an essential part of the whole. In fact the whole church of Jesus Christ cannot function if each part is not cooperating with every other […]

I was filled with joy at just being alive and at the same time filled with sorrow because my husband was suffering from a recurrence of cancer –just three months after he had been declared cancer free. What was so astonishingly new to me was that the sorrow I was feeling did not diminish the […]

We have not been well-loved and valued; we have not been fully embraced as we are, even if we grew up in a loving family. It is far worse for someone who grows up with abuse in any form. Still we are a prickly people. We are self-preoccupied. We live mostly in the past or […]