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Burning in the Rain by Richard Blanco Someday compassion would demand I set myself free of my desire to recreate my father, indulge in my mother’s losses, strangle lovers with words, forcing them to confess for me and take the blame. Today was that day:  I tossed them, sheet by sheet on the patio and gathered them into a pyre.  I wanted to let them go in a blaze, tiny white dwarfs imploding beside the azaleas and ficus bushes, let…

“I have found it true in my own life that certain moments capture the feeling of other moments; they show in one instant something I would like to be true of other instants as well.”  One might well say this about the Sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion.  We pour water over the head of the one being baptized as an “outward and visible sign of the Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ…” acknowledging the free gift of God’s love…

“To speak of grace is to say that finally our lives are not our own, that we are not only recipients of a gift we did not create, the very gift of life itself, but that throughout our life we are given gifts we do not deserve – friends, experiences, joy in the midst of pain – and that at the end we will be upheld by a power we do not control, promising a fulfillment not of what we…

  Having an understanding of God’s Grace may come in stages.  Sometimes we need reference points to help us build our house of faith.  This is why we have used the words Porch for Prevenient Grace (the Grace that goes before us), Door for Justifying Grace (when we say Yes back to God’s Yes to us) and House for Sanctifying Grace (where we live out our faith).  It may seem overwhelming at times to truly grasp the depth and breadth…

 We have completed week 4 of our 5-week series called from DIY to Renovation By Grace and move into the final days of this focus on Grace.  Throughout the series we have explored what it means to recognize, name and claim God’s Grace in our daily life.  We have lived in Ephesians 2 and read verses 1-10 and will return to where we began with 2.19-22 this week.  In the coming months we hope this passage may provide a reference point for…

“…little by little – less by taking pains than by taking it easy – the forgiven person starts to become a forgiving person, the healed person to become a healing person, the loved person to become a loving person.  God does most of it.  The end of the process…is eternal life.”  (from Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking pp. 104-105) It is a goal to be sanctified.  I would like it if my sense of feeling forgiven leant an urgency to my…

“I knew from her talks with me about her faith that coming to know grace – God’s unmerited love for her – was central to Leah’s growing sense of spiritual connection with the church.  Just the week before, we had talked long into the evening about grace and God’s desire that she flourish and know the fruits of life abundant, a concept that was new to her but one to which she was rapidly warming.  This week, however, a story-ritual…

Church language about Grace inevitably comes around to a discussion of salvation.  The word alone may be responsible for the damage and rejection people feel as they attempt to navigate their lives in a religious direction.    Frederick Buechner writes about salvation likes this: “It is an experience first and a doctrine second.  Doing the work you’re best at doing and like to do best, hearing great music, having great fun, seeing something very beautiful, weeping at somebody else’s tragedy…

We are created for…. “You think that for your acts, good or bad, there is deserving. Let God show you otherwise. Be present to God in the present moment. Let God free you of the past. Learn from it, yes; receive from it, let it shape and guide you. But it does not control you, or God. You live with the consequences of what you have done, but God does not attach reward or punishment to that. God only grants…

Our worship this Sunday will be rooted in Ephesians 2.10. “For we are what God has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.”   In “A Blueprint for Discipleship” Kevin Watson writes:  “If we believe that both faith and works are important, then we might logically ask, ‘Which works?’ In other words, what should followers of Jesus Christ do to grow in faith?”  Our scripture this week lifts up both.  We know…

“Maintaining the communal practice of worshipping God..is one of the fundamental things that any local church does.  When a church ceases to maintain worship, that church is essentially dead and is no longer rightly considered a church.” ( from A Blueprint for Discipleship by Kevin Watson  p 83.) How is worship where you are?  How does the worship you attend excite you?  How does the worship of your community lead your spirit to a quiet center?  What about your worship…

“It is make-believe.  You make believe that the one who breaks the bread and blesses the wine is not the plump parson who smells of Williams’ Aqua Velva but Jesus of Nazareth.  You make believe that the tasteless wafer and cheap port are his flesh and blood.  You make believe that by swallowing them you are swallowing his life into your life and that there is nothing in earth or heaven more important for you to do than this. It…