The Wall will Happen?
Mag Richer Smith
The WALL WILL happen. The Wall won’t happen.. And the debate about a Wall on the southern border of our nation keeps us stuck behind walls of hostility & resistance. We know we need appropriate boundaries to keep us safe and none of us wants to live in a house without walls, especially in the […]
Plenty Good Room?
Mag Richer Smith
William Sloan Coffin Jr. says: “For Christians the problem is NOT how to reconcile homosexuality with Scripture passages that condemn it, but how to reconcile the rejection of homosexuals with the LOVE OF CHRIST.” YET… for many in the Church the problem HAS been how to reconcile an open door to LGBTQ folks with a […]
Breakfast is Ready
Mag Richer Smith
This past week my friend played a song for me that she and her husband would sing together, especially after his Alzheimer’s diagnoses and throughout his illness. I did not know this song, but maybe you do. Lyrics were something like this: We are going. Heaven knows where we are going. It will be hard […]
Clinging to God in the Wilderness
Ben Woodward Breckbill
The sun beats down. The fatigue sets in. The food stores are depleted, and there hasn’t been fresh water for days. The wind howls, as do the jackals that have been trailing at a distance – better them than the king’s army looking for your blood. And the doubt sets in: you know that everything […]
Learning from the Death of Jesus
Dan Schrock
In this series on death and dying, we’ve thought theologically about funerals, explored the pathway of grief, heard stories of loss and thought about responding to loss, and last Sunday, named some ways to prepare for our own dying. One important topic still remains for us, and that’s to think a little today about how […]
Loss and Redemption
Dan Schrock
The story of Ruth and Naomi is a story of profound, painful loss. In previous sermons this month, we’ve talked in some detail about the losses they experienced. Now in chapter 4, the story turns wonderfully toward redemption: Ruth and Naomi bounce back into the good life. Ruth marries a sterling man named Boaz; they […]
A Search for Security
Dan Schrock
In the story of Ruth and Naomi, the overarching concern is for economic security, and its close cousin, food security. When their husbands die in chapter 1, Naomi and Ruth lose the income their husbands had brought into the household. With fewer economic resources, Naomi and Ruth are now more vulnerable to poverty and hunger. […]
God-Smacked
Dan Schrock
During my first year at Chicago Theological Seminary, I lived in one of the seminary’s dormitories. One afternoon at 5:00 I left my dorm room and walked down to the dormitory kitchen, located in the basement. This kitchen served all the students who lived in that dorm. We each had our own cupboard and cooked […]
Friendship and Intimacy
Marilyn Rudy-Froese
In February 1944, when she was 13 years old, Anne Frank, a Jew who was in hiding in Amsterdam, wrote: Today the sun is shining, the sky is a deep blue, there is a lovely breeze and I am longing–so longing–for everything. To talk, for freedom, for friends, to be alone. And I do so […]
Mirror, Mirror on the Wall….Reflecting God’s Image
Marilyn Rudy-Froese
I love the bodies of babies and young children. It amazes me how they enter the world with everything they need in order to survive‐‐healthy lungs that breathe and support their strong voices, digestive systems that take in food and expel what is not needed. And yet, these bodies are vulnerable, weak‐‐most newborns can’t hold […]
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