Here at church, almost every afternoon, we see student drivers practicing their driving skills under the watchful eye of their instructors in the church parking lot. They will practice winding through the rows, parallel parking and angle parking. It makes sense to me; It’s a big lot with plenty of room. I did the same thing when we … More The Middle Place
A big chunk of the day today was spent outside, doing a home repair project. I’ll be honest: I don’t love doing home repair projects. And I really hadn’t been looking forward to today’s project. It involved digging and pouring concrete. So there’s that. But I went out around 7:30am and got started. At one … More Soaking in Sunshine
We do it without even thinking about it. Somewhere between 12 and 16 times a minute, our chest contracts and then expands, and our lungs fill with air. The lungs extract oxygen, which our body uses to pump our blood, move our limbs, and power our thoughts. We do this over and over, from birth, … More Breath of Life
And God said, “it is good.” It is good. It is amazingly, astonishingly, good. And we are the beneficiaries of this goodness. The scripture tells us that there is an author, a creator, and that the creator is good. The creator is the source of all things good. The Hebrew word for God is Elohim…Elohim … More Created Fresh
“If we are to love our neighbors, before doing anything else we must see our neighbors. With our imagination as well as our eyes, that is to say like artists, we must see not just their faces but the life behind and within their faces. Here it is love that is the frame we see … More Seeing Each Other
I remember the stories. I heard them growing up. In Sunday School, in our home, at my grandparents’ farm, these became stories that helped shape me. The creation story The story of Moses and the burning bush Noah and the flood Jonah and the whale The Exodus Daniel and the lion’s den The story of … More A New Sermon Series: Bible Stories to Love and Remember
At our sophomore day away about a month ago, we spent time talking about our faith questions. We had great questions from our 10th graders! But we couldn’t get to them all. I promised the group that I’d answer their questions here on my blog. This is the final in a four-part series to try … More 10th Grade Faith Questions Part IV
This weekend, I attended Christmas in Christ Chapel, the annual worship service and concert at Gustavus Adolphus College. Over 350 student musicians presented performed beautiful music around the theme Ubuntu Jesu. A good friend of mine, Pastor Grady St. Dennis, is a college chaplain and Director of Church Relations at Gustavus. During the worship/concert, Grady stepped … More Christmas as Protest
One of the really cool things about an experience like Mission Jamaica is the opportunity to immerse yourself in the culture and get to know people. And with the connections of folks like Jeff Peterson, the MJ director, it makes it really fun as well. Today, after we spent some time hanging out around … More Mission Jamaica: Day 6
Test Driving Theology 