Today’s Reading: Read Esther 1-5 If you were the King or Queen for the day, what would you do? Take turns sharing with your family what your day would look like if you were chosen to be royalty! Esther was one of God’s chosen people, the Israelites, who did not
As you make plans for worship in the autumn months, consider the following ways to explore All Creation Sings. Time after Pentecost-Autumn Sing “God’s Work, Our Hands” (ACS 1000) on September 8 in worship or at other congregational service events. Set to the tune EARTH AND ALL STARS, singers
There comes a time when the Word, the Christian discourse, must be born from our own personal looking at Jesus Christ. It is, in fact, Jesus Christ the Word who is at the center of our Lenten meditation. If the theme of Advent was that of a global expectation, if
By Rob Renfroe — Over the last few months I have had the privilege of speaking to more than a dozen churches and conferences in six different states and once to brothers and sisters in Europe, the Middle East, and the Philippines via social media. What I enjoy most are
Always seeking after fulfillment, yet unable to truly reach outside of himself in any creative act, Swann in Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time is both a pathetic and a tragic character whose example leaves a deep impression on the narrator of the novel. Throughout the story of Swann’s
Setting the Scene: Plague as Context and Text Julian of Norwich (1342-1429) is one of those remarkable medieval women mystics like Hildegaard of Bingen (1095-1179), Hadewijch of Antwerp (thirteenth century), Marguerite Porete (1250-1310), Angela of Foligno (1248-1309), and Catherine of Sienna (1347-1380), all instructors in the mystical life, speaking of and
Photo courtesy of Shutterstock. By Thomas Lambrecht – In the church calendar, the Advent season – the four weeks leading up to Christmas – are set aside as a time of preparation for the celebration of Christ’s birth. The idea is taken from Isaiah 40:3, “A voice of one