We stood at the front of the church, mom’s photo resting on an easel next to the small cedar box our friend Ross had made to hold her cremains. The line of people stretched out the back of the sanctuary into the vestibule. As I surveyed the line, two women in white sweatshirts stood out. […]
Tag Archives: christianity
Every year, early in January we celebrate the Baptism of Our Lord Sunday. We dip our fingers in baptismal font and pick up a shell, river stone, or a little blue glass bead as we pledge to remember our baptism. A church member shared with me how they had kept a blue bead in their […]
Perhaps prompted by our Lenten devotional guide, I spent this week wondering about what it means to be lost or found, so on Tuesday, I asked Emma and Matt about lostness? Emma shared how during her elementary school years, her family went to Italy. While walking with her family around the streets of Rome, Emma […]
Maybe five times in my life I’ve cooked for more than 20 people. But, during seminary, I decided to take our youth group to a Christian Rock music festival, where we camped and cooked in a barely improved farm field with 18,000 other young people and their dedicated adult leaders. After a day of music […]
Would you join me in some holy daydreaming this morning? Would you prayerfully imagine yourself as some of the characters in Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan? In the summertime Jerusalem experiences temperatures from 84 to a low of 67. If it was winter the average high is 53 with a low of 44. […]
Remarks at Run Walk Nashville Pedestrian Memorial Service 2/22/25 Hello, I’m Paul Purdue. I’m the Pastor at Belmont United Methodist Church in Hillsborough Village. When Wesley asked me if I could speak at the memorial. I was happy to do so because on July 1 of this year my brother was involved in a bicycle […]
First Corinthians 13 may be my favorite passage in the whole Bible. By Monday I had the beginnings of three good sermons that stretched out 12 pages, one had a great funny opening story. None of them seemed adequate for our national moment that Bishop Tracy S. Malone, President – Council of Bishops of The […]
The Bible begins with a beautiful creation liturgy, followed by a creation story, a flood story and a tower story. Genesis 2-11 just reads differently than the rest of the Bible. Scholars say that the historical portion of the Bible begins in Genesis 12 where God calls Abraham and Sarah. Jesus spoke of “the God […]
It would be a truly terrible idea, to open up the Biblical canon for another book or two, but if we did, I would nominate Martin Luther King’s 1963 Epistle written inside a Birmingham jail. It is widely quoted, about the length of First and Second Corinthians, and deeply Christian. Dr King like Paul was […]
I read a story about a Detroit Lions fan who got invited onto the field to help stretch out a massive American flag before the game. On the very field where his beloved Lions played, the fan began to taunt Matt LaFleur, Green Bay Packers’ coach. When LaFleur spoke to the fan, the fan grew […]
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