It’s New Year’s Eve day. A day of goal-setting, resolutions, and One Word 365. This is the third year I have decided to choose one word to focus on. Call it “aspirational” or “anticipatory”. If you’re considering this practice for 2015 here are some questions to ask as you pray about it:
If anyone anywhere is going to go to church, Christmas is the most likely season that they will feel compelled to go. I’d be surprised if anyone reading this hasn’t been in a church service in the past week.
After all, it’s family, and candle light and sweet baby Jesus. All the warm fuzzy feels. And most churches put on a pretty good show. There’s special music and sometimes cookies.
But the Christmas season is the exception. Less than 20% of Americans regularly attend church, and church attendance is declining. 
In the past few months, these are actual reasons people have told me that they weren’t in church:
Merry Christmas Eve Morning! I’m guessing if you’re reading this either you’re ahead of the game with ALL OF THE THINGS done and the Hallelujah Chorus playing on Spotify, candles lit, and presents perfect, or you’re hiding in the bathroom binging on Christmas cookies, reading this and pretending you don’t hear your kids fighting outside the door.
For us it has been a delightful week of having both our daughters in town with lots of hugs, and catching up, laughter, and a Christmas before Christmas brunch with Maggie who headed to Texas yesterday to be with her husband and in-laws.
But lest you picture our lives as a Norman Rockwell painting, let me just share a few other snapshots. Continue reading
I’ve been thinking a lot this Advent season about the word “blessed”.
It all started with a post I read by Jamie Wright about the word “blessed” that quoted Inigo Montoyo from the Princess Bride: “You keep using this word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
She wrote:
We’ve created a culture in which we measure God’s “blessings” in terms of dollars and cents, comfort and pleasure, wealth and well-being. So, if we’re happy and healthy and have everything we need, then we’re blessed, and we should thank God on social media. We tend to ignore the secondary message this sends to those who are unhappy or unhealthy, or for whom things are just generally crappy. Too bad, so sad, if your life sucks, you’re #NotBlessed.
The second thing that led me to focus on this word, “blessed” was that John and I were preparing to preach together on Mary, the mother of Jesus and there was that word again! In Luke 1 it refers to Mary twice as “highly favored” and then Mary herself says: Continue reading
About ten years ago I fell and I couldn’t get up.
Unlike like our friend from the video Monday who eventually managed, I was helpless on my own. Upside down.
I was “turtled” (see video below). Exposed. Vulnerable. Not a pretty sight, and certainly not in line with the “always pulled-together on top of things” image management that I strove for.
I thrashed against the pain and injustice. I frantically flailed my legs and arms. I cried a lot in frustration and anger. I was getting nowhere.
But I had a team of “push-overs” and “under-duckers”. Continue reading
So you’ve done the running around and the shopping and cleaning and baking and now we’re getting close to the time when family will be arriving at your house, or you’ll be traveling to theirs.
Our daughter Maggie arrived this morning at 3:30 a.m. to spend a few days before she heads to Texas to be with her in-laws, and Katy arrives Saturday.
Sometimes we’re so stressed and busy during the holidays that we don’t really reflect on what we want to have happen while we’re together – you know, how to be truly present to each other. Then before we know it Christmas is over, family is gone and we’re left thinking “woulda-coulda-shoulda”.
So I got to thinking about questions I want to make sure to ask when we’re around the dinner table, or at the coffee shop. Continue reading
Have you ever felt like you’ve fallen and you can’t get up? Maybe recently? At the mall? At work? In a family drama? Flailing on the sidewalk trying to get back on your feet?
Who are you missing seeing that’s a “man down”?
Ok, John and I are not into slapstick, and we don’t want to see anyone suffer (note the wave at the end of this video), but we laughed so hard at this I just had to share it.
Let’s keep our eyes open for fallen brothers and sisters out there today and lend a hand!
Chances are you’ve already been to a holiday party and you may have others looming. The office party. The family party. The cookie exchange. The neighborhood open house.
Me too.
I was out at a party the other night and I had a great time – gorgeous decorations, unbelievable food, fun people, and twinkle lights (how can you not be jolly when there are lots of twinkle lights??!!)
But I reflected later that night, looking for times in my day when I sensed the pleasure of Jesus and other times when…welllllll…not so much… (You know, the Examen that I’ve written about before). I was a bit dismayed. The party had been a time when I had acted like a self-centered toddler, putting my fingers in my ears so I could ignore the whispers of the Holy Spirit.
And you know what the Holy Spirit kept trying to whisper to me that I didn’t want to hear? Continue reading
Sunday John and I preached together. And then I served communion. We were supposed to serve it together, but he was sick, and in addition to squirting Purell on his (and my) hands every other minute, I told him it would not be an example of God’s grace for him to infect a thousand people by doling out germy communion bread.
We love serving communion. And communion is only possible because we have Christmas and the cross first.
Serving communion is a remarkable, visual experience, made more powerful because we know the stories of so many of the people in our faith community who approach us, starving for grace, thirsty for assurance of forgiveness.
Sunday was no different. All generations, every manner of humanity, walked forward to the front of the sanctuary to take bread and dip it in the cup.
I looked deep into the eyes of husbands and wives we know are struggling to love each other, Continue reading
I’ve never heard either of my parents swear, but I have many memories of my mom, frustrated with a task, saying “I’m gonna swear. I’m gonna swear! Close your ears kids!” She never did, but she threatened to. A lot.
There are some things that tempt a person to swear more than others. For me, the job of untangling Christmas lights brings out the worst in me. I spent hours doing it this weekend, growling under my breath:
“I’m sure this must be a job people have to do in Hell.”
“If God really loved me I’d be rich enough to buy new lights every year.”
I was muttering, and resenting my husband who was off doing “spiritual” things, having “spiritual” conversations with colleagues, while I was relegated to “unspiritual” homey decorating chores.
As I glared and growled, and pulled and unknotted, and muttered some more I got to thinking about Mary (who had no lights to untangle btw) and how spiritual she felt during the 9 months that Jesus was being formed in her. Continue reading
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