current affairs and causes on Heart Change

Our family started watching our Christmas movies early this year. We love Christmas Vacation , Charlie Brown’s Christmas, Home Alone (one and two), Rudolph, and Frosty the Snowman ...

Almighty and everlasting God, you hate nothing you have made and forgive the sins of all who are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins and ackno...

Come now, and let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be like wool. Rend your heart, and not...

Each of us, Lord, has failed to fully observe your beauty. We fall in love with our own image and are left disappointed and alone. Please be faithful to us, Jesus, even when we turn from You. We...

When we allow darkness to overcome the light, forgive us, Lord. When we reduce Christmas to plastic and tinsel, have mercy on us, Father. When hardness of heart keeps us from seeing and hearing an...

In this short excerpt, author Ashley Hales describes the disembodying reality of being glued to screens, and a few ways to become back in touch with our embodied selves: Perhaps we look to a scree...

Prayer of Adoration Joyful, joyful we adore Thee, God of glory, Lord of love – Holy and wonderful are You: Your grace is without measure, and Your purpose sure and true; Your power is unequaled and Y...

Prayer of Adoration Lord—you’re sufficient in everything. You can create without us; save without our assistance; bring good out of evil, hope from despair and restore what we mess up. You’re soverei...

Gracious God, you tend to the earth as your vineyard, longing for it to bring fruit. You want our society and our lives to look more and more like the Kingdom of Heaven. We work against your plans, so...

Because of His measureless love He became what we are in order to enable us to become what He is.

Deacon or other leader In peace, let us pray to the Lord, saying, "Lord, have mercy" ( or "Kyrie eleison"). For the holy Church of God, that it may be filled with truth and lov...

Therefore let us repent and pass from ignorance to knowledge, from foolishness to wisdom, from licentiousness to self-control, from injustice to righteousness, from godlessness to God.

Glorious One Maker of galaxies Maker of mountains Maker of me Thank you for your grace Thank you for reaching out For speaking through the majesty of your creation For speaking into the smallness of ...

Contemplation is also the response to a call: a call from Him Who has no voice, and yet Who speaks in everything that is, and Who, most of all, speaks in the depths of our own being: for we ourselves ...

Every crook will argue, “I like committing crimes. God likes forgiving them. Really the world is admirably arranged.

The Leader and People pray responsively In peace, we pray to you, Lord God. Silence For all people in their daily life and work; For our families, friends, and neighbors, and for those who are...

God, our heavenly Father and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ: We praise and thank you today and always! You are worthy of our praise simply for who You are: You are good and You are strong, ...

To frame is to put a language boundary around our experience. It is to name what happens in particular ways, to say how we see the world, and to see the world how we say it is. Framing includes tellin...

Eternal God, our judge and redeemer, we confess that we have tried to hide from You, for we have done wrong. We have lived for ourselves, and apart from You. We have turned from our neighbors and refu...

Lord of glory and honor – You are worthy of our worship and allegiance. You are Faithful and True. With authentic justice You judge the world, and each of us in it. You’re the Word of God – made fles...

Home shall men come To an older place than Eden And a taller town than Rome. To the end of the way of the wandering star; To the things that cannot be and that are, To the place where God was homeless...

They were poor. We know this because the two young turtledoves Joseph and Mary brought was the smallest offering they were allowed as devout Jews and yet the largest they likely could afford. With tw...

You came to us, Word made flesh, to show us what it means to love. You came to us, Word made flesh, to teach us how to serve. You came to us, Word made flesh, to remind us to clothe the naked and fe...

Years ago, the legendary tenor Enrico Caruso (1873-1921) was driving through New Jersey when his car unexpectedly broke down. While a mechanic worked on the repairs, Caruso struck up a conversation wi...

The Enlightenment was, among many other things, a protest against a system that, since it was itself based on a protest [the Reformation], could not see that it was itself in need of further reform. (...

Prayer of Adoration We praise you, Lord for you are all-wise and all-powerful, faithful, loving and gracious, holy, just, merciful, constant and pure, omnipresent, intimate and immortal. You are big...

Adolf Eichmann was one of the Nazi architects of the Holocaust who escaped after World War II to South America, where he was caught in 1960 and taken back to Israel for a trial. He was tried, found gu...

I like to say that generalizations are always wrong and usually helpful.

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...

The problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete.