We’re celebrating baptism today, but we’re also putting the focus on the youth of our parish. Today is Youth Sunday. The youth are so much a part of St. Paul’s: their gifts, their talents, their very presence is a gift to us. So the youth today are taking part in the liturgical ministry, the things we do here on Sunday, including preaching…
Worship. Serve. Grow.
Worship. Serve. Grow.
Sermons (Page 86)
I would like to begin by sharing just a brief thought about my experience of being a witness, as we have all been witnesses, to what has been happening to our brothers and sisters in Haiti. My wife and I were particularly struck by the stories we heard on the news. This was two days and three days respectively after the earthquake had hit. And the story we kept hearing and the frustration we kept hearing was about was this sense of mounting outreach that was growing but simply couldn’t hit it’s target. Planes were in the air but there was nowhere for them to land…
We find ourselves in the season referred to as Epiphany, that season where God’s presence is shown forth to the world. Today’s readings are about the baptism of Jesus, one of those first moments in the Gospels where Jesus’ life is beginning to expand and reach beyond just his intimate family, but into the world. And so we gather on this Feast of the Ephiphany for our annual meeting…
In this week of recalling events from the past year and the past decade I remembered a story from about two years ago. It was something that involved all of us who live in this area of the country. I was thinking about the drought of 2007, the worst drought in over a hundred years…
This past July, I had an experience I will never forget. My daughter Rebecca and I had a chance to go, just the two of us, to the Kennedy Space center in Florida. We went there for about four full days. We saw everything you could possibly see at the Kennedy Space Center; we went on every tour you could go on. There are a couple of experiences from that trip I would like to share with you tonight…
According to the parish website, our liturgy this morning is a contemplative celebration of the Holy Eucharist. Now in my experience and perhaps some of yours, a contemplative eucharist can mean several things. It can mean perhaps candles and incense; it can mean Celtic music, or music from, say, the Taize community in France, or it can mean no music at all…
I remember being in 7th or 8th grade of our public school music class learning the song “Let There Be Peace On Earth”. You may remember the second phrase of this song, “…and let it begin with me”…
Do you hate to clean house? You’re not alone. But every so often it needs to be done. Maybe something you need is buried under the morass of paper or clothes tossed carelessly aside as you run in and out, day after day, and you just have to find that thing. Or you might have received word that dear old Aunt Tillie, and her white glove is due for a visit…
“Breathe!” Did you ever have someone say that to you? “Breathe!” It usualy comes at a time when you’re not breathing too well. You’re stressed out, you’re worried about something, your anxiety level is rising, you’re actually breathless, and someone says, “breathe!” I’ve heard that said a few times to me, “breathe!”
At one point in his book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, Malcolm Gladwell describes the state of heightened awareness that police officers feel in moments when they have to burst through a door into a hallway or a building or a house where they feel like their life is going to be in danger…