Chapter 21:1, I saw heaven and earth new created. Gone the first heaven, gone the first earth, gone the sea.  The Message: God is all about patterns, symmetry and balance. We see it throughout God’s creation. We see it all around us as we also see, implicit in that creation, infinite love and a deep-seated […]

Transformation can be extremely frustrating. I suspect I’m not the only one who secretly, or not so secretly wants whatever change I want to see to happen NOW. I don’t want to do the hard work that the change calls for. Standing in front of the block of marble I don’t want to have to […]

Our Follow Me study this Eastertide is called Sing a New Song and psalms and/or singing songs is the spiritual practice.  Let’s go back to the beginning, a song is basically a poem set to music. And what is a poem? A poem is a word picture. So how do you write a poem? Well, […]

Happy Eastertide all you wonderful Easter People!! As we settle into the new rhythm of this time, and as we prepare ourselves for this time of discernment, Traci Smith thoughtfully offered a Spiritual Practices Guide for Eastertide -the 50 days between Easter and Pentecost. Ideally, we would have begun Easter Sunday, but I think when […]

Romans 12 Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. 2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s […]

As utterly central to being a Christian as Easter is, it is still a very hard concept for children and for many adults if we are honest. Below please find a user friendly guide to discussing the theology of Easter (or not doing so) with your kids. As often is the case, Traci Smith is […]

This coming Sunday’s Sunday School lesson is about courage. We don’t normally think about courage as a form of love because we get lost in the Cowardly Lion’s definition of courage, which is all about the superficial trappings of bravery, rather than the original meaning. Courage comes from the Latin word ‘cor’ and the French […]

Sometimes several different threads come together and if you give them a little tug they become macrame. All the different things I read this morning were like that, the devotion for today from “Inward Work for Outward Living”, Teri Mcdowell Ott for The Presbyterian Outlook was about the fear of loss; the Sunday School lesson […]

Sometimes, the best thing I can do is share something that has been shared with me. The following article comes from Traci Smith’s Treasure Box Tuesday: Guest post by Sarah Aadland, Director of Doing Good Together’s Big-Hearted Families™ Program Our daily routines define our lives. After all, we are what we do day after day. […]

Lent is an odd time for all of us. In the Godly Play tradition it, like Advent, is described as a time of the color purple. Godly Play continues that purple is a royal color and only kings or very wealthy people could wear purple and that it signifies a time of getting ready – […]