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liturgy
Prayer for All Needs (Excerpted)
*This is the earliest known prayer of the Christian Church outside of scripture May he who created everything keep the number of his chosen people, throughout the world, up to the strength he... -
illustration
Chiaroscuro: Light and Dark Together
The very nature of light provides contrast. In juxtaposition, differing levels of light illuminate in extraordinary ways, helping us to see what we’ve been missing. In the late 1400s, the art world ma... -
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God's Image: Our True Identity
God formed us in his image — a glorious thought! — but we all participate in the abandonment of that original identity…Does that mean that your precious little child is a dirty rotten sinner, as some ... -
illustration
Baptism: Out of the Watery Chaos
At the very beginning of creation, the book of Genesis tells us, there was watery chaos. And over that watery chaos there was, depending on how you read the Hebrew, the Holy Spirit hovering or a great... -
lectionary
Fifth Sunday after Pentecost (Guide B)
A Sopping Wet Week in the Lectionary Today’s readings are thoroughly wet. In Job, God is master of the sea, Psalm 107 concerns mariners in the storm, Paul is a little drier, but still gets shipwrecke... -
lectionary
Second Sunday after Pentecost
Preaching Commentary Context Authorship of Mark Mark’s account of the story of Jesus is commonly held to be the earliest of the four canonical Gospels. Early church tradition identifies the author... -
liturgy
Gracious God, sometimes I am so caught
Gracious God, sometimes I am so caught up in my failures, in all the ways I am not like you, that I neglect the deeper truth, the earlier truth of Genesis 1. You have made me, as a human being, in you... -
liturgy
Creator Spirit, by whose aid The
Creator Spirit, by whose aid The world's foundations first were laid, Come, visit every pious mind; Come, pour thy joys on humankind; From sin and sorrow set us free, And make thy temples worthy t... -
lectionary
Trinity Sunday
Preaching Summary An Incomplete Trinity? Protestant churches who lean evangelical but not charismatic have occasionally been accused of being more “binitarian” than “trinitarian.” The suggestion i... -
scripture guide
Scripture Guide, Revelation 21:10, 22:1-5
Pulling Back the Curtain The Revelation of Jesus Christ is a “pulling back of the curtain” to reveal both the unseen realities of the present (what is really going on in the world from God’s perspect... -
lectionary
Sixth Sunday of Easter
Preaching Commentary Pulling Back the Curtain The Revelation of Jesus Christ is a “pulling back of the curtain” to reveal both the unseen realities of the present (what is really going on in the wo... -
illustration
The Covenants of Scripture
Eternal covenant, Heb 13:20—The redemptive covenant before time began, between the Father and the Son. By this covenant we have eternal redemption, an eternal peace from the ‘God of peace’, through th... -
lectionary
Baptism of the Lord
Preaching Commentary Enter John the Baptist John the Baptist enters the stage in Mark 1 as the “voice of one crying in the wilderness,” (Isaiah 40:3) whose message and ministry is to “prepare the w... -
illustration
The Three Lies
My friend Christina, a licensed therapist, tells me that Psychiatry 101 teaches therapists that when you and I choose to believe a lie about ourselves, it’s one of these three lies we believe: I’m he... -
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The Devil Buried the Bones
And I was reminded of an event from my father’s childhood: He was in a Sunday school class, listening to his teacher expound on Genesis 1 and a young earth, and asked his teacher how to make sense o... -
illustration
On Creation by Frederick Beuchner
To make suggests making something out of something else the way a carpenter makes wooden boxes out of wood. To create suggests making something out of nothing the way an artist makes paintings or poem... -
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Your Body
Think of your own experiences as a human being: your body is not just a “shell” in which you dwell. Your body is not just a body. Your body is not just any body. Your body is somebody—you! Through the... -
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Remembering We Have Bodies
Surprisingly enough, it was in the process of staying faithful to the spiritual journey that I first began to face my profound ambivalence about life in a body. At the ripe old age of thirty, I could ... -
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Two Wrong-Headed Views of the Body
Christians are often accused of two wrong-headed views of the body. One is that we ignore the body in favor of a disembodied, spirits-floating-on-clouds spirituality. The other is that we are obsessed... -
illustration
Codifying Beauty
In the thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas codified beauty as being directly connected to Jesus Christ with three characteristic features. He wrote, “Species or beauty has a likeness to the property of... -
Quote
Has God’s face ever been on a coin? We are the coin that bears the living likeness of God. Giving of ourselves with whatever that may include, is the only legal currency of the kingdom of heaven. -
Quote
I would later learn that these are two characteristics of beauty: it never stays, and it never fully satisfies. -
Quote
I did not have to ask my heart what it wanted, because of all the desires I have ever known, just one did I cling to for it was the essence of all desire: to hold beauty in my soul’s arms.
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