Last Wednesday, Hunter, Sol, Mercede and I worked on building an irrigation path to divert groundwater away from a home and towards a catch basin. There was not a nice stack of matching concrete pavers from Home Depot but instead a pile of preindustrial stones collected from nearby fields. Each rock had its own size, […]
Tag Archives: Bible
Mark tells no back stories: no theological images like John, no genealogy like Matthew, and no birth narrative like Luke. Mark begins with John the Baptist. Jesus was about 30 years old, the age when many men got married, when he decided to travel to the Judean wilderness to hear John the Baptist preach. John […]
One Saturday morning, 21 years ago, maybe in March, I was walking through the woods with my cousin, when Tom said, “I’m going to run a marathon for Nathan next January.” He waited and added “Disney is the flattest marathon in the country”. He did not ask, but I felt his invitation. When I said […]
Wednesday night, Gayle graciously allowed me to sit in on her final choir practice. She required that I actually sing and sit according to the seating chart; I did. The yellow laminated placeholder read “surprise guest”. You could feel love, community, and harmony filling the room; grace was palpable. Today, our community stands at the […]
If you had the hubris to write a book filled with everything people need to know about God, how might you organize it? Would you open such a Bible with a chapter of definitions and terms? Would you organize your chapters with titles like “how worship feeds our souls” or “dealing with oppression, evil […]
When the time had come. Elizabeth spent five months in seclusion sometimes feeling judged, she spent 9 months of pregnancy, she spent hours breathing and pushing John into the world. Zechariah spent 10 months in silence. When the time has come to raise a child, begin school, start a career, end a relationship, retire, move, […]
Why did it take our Methodist Church some 1956 years to live into Jesus’ Easter commission of women preachers? How do we square Paul’s teachings about women with the words and spirit of Jesus ? Why are we so slow to follow? Luke chapter 10 begins with Jesus sending out 72 disciples healing and proclaiming that “The kingdom of God has come near […]
The Bible and Homosexuality A Way Forward Thoughts by Pastor Paul Purdue As United Methodists, “We believe the Holy Bible, Old and New Testaments, reveals the Word of God so far as it is necessary for our salvation. It is to be received through the Holy Spirit as the true rule and guide for […]
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