the christian calendar on Ability

Lord Jesus–You’ve come, are coming and will come again. Whether we know it or not, we live on the edge of Your advent every moment of every day either with anticipation or with anxiety. As if stumblin...

There was a woman who was baking her Christmas cookies and she heard a knock at the door. She opened the door to find a man who was dressed in pretty tattered clothes, and he was obviously poor. And h...

When every option is available to us, we don’t actually have freedom; we tend to shut down. I experienced what sociologists call choice overload (or paralysis) and decision fatigue. If you’ve ever tri...

It's been a few decades since Diana, Princess of Wales passed away in that tragic car accident. At the time, I was a teenager, and really didn’t understand what the massive outpouring of grief sho...

When we turn toward Advent, the name on our lips is Emmanuel, God with us . So much in Christian faith relies on what the faithful actually mean when we say that name. Western Christianity has fo...

Easter after Resurrection Sunday One of the challenges of the Christian calendar for pastors is that we often put so much energy into Holy Week, that by the time we reach Easter Sunday , and parti...

The Necessity of Memory Memory—or, more actively,  remembering , plays an all-important role in our lives. Our culture likes us to focus on  the now, "looking forward rather than looking back&q...

Lord—we’re so anxious we can’t wait! Some of us can’t wait for Christmas to come, while (honestly) some others of us can’t wait for it to be over. We’re not proud of it—but that’s just the way it is ...

Imagine for a moment becoming a baby again. Imagine giving up language and muscle coordination. Imagine losing the ability to eat solid food and control your bladder. God as a fetus! Or imagine yourse...

Anxiety is the handmaiden of contemporary ambition.

Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending. You plan a tower that will pierce the clouds? Lay first the foundation of humility.

It is a sprinting, squirting, shoving age.

Faith is a voluntary anticipation.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the ar...

None climbs so high as he who knows not whither he is going.

Most of us are under pressure, external and internal, to do everything, be good at everything, be accountable to everyone for everything! It is not so. In the divine economy each of us has a particula...

In his book, Scary Close , Donald Miller acknowledges that over time he developed a mask, or a persona that kept even those closest to him from experiencing with him. As he began to peel back layers ...

Jesus said, "you will receive power, when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Holy S...

In his book of sermons titled The Magnificent Defeat, Frederick Buechner mentions two qualities of childlikeness. First, children have no fixed preconceptions of reality. If someone tells them that ...

Since failure is our unforgivable sin, we are willing to ignore all forms of deviance in people if they just achieve the success symbols which we worship.

We suffer these things and they fade from memory. But daily, hourly, to give up our own possessions and especially to subordinate our own impulses and wishes to others—these are hard, hard things; and...

Wise and all-knowing God, we confess our knowledge is limited. We don’t know what’s best. We don’t know how to control ourselves. We don’t know how to forgive. We don’t know how to love. And we don’t ...

We want everyone around us to believe we have it all together—and we don’t. We fear everyone else is living the lives they post and we are the only imposters. And so, the race is on. The race to perfe...

ONE: Jesus said, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you;  ALL: Come, Holy Spirit, Come ONE: Jesus said, “and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria...

God’s gifts put man’s best dreams to shame.

Do we measure up to the standard of Pentecost? The gift of the Spirit is the gift of power, and the lack of power is due to the absence of His indwelling fullness.

There are two things to be aware of if the fight against evil inclinations is to have any chance of success. First, our efforts will never be sufficient on their own. Only the grace of Christ can win ...

Judgment is at hand, promise of judgment and threat of judgment.... It is the same sort of ambivalence which Christians have been taught to recognize in the season of Advent.

The celebration of Advent is possible only to those who are troubled in soul, who know themselves to be poor and imperfect, and who look forward to something greater to come.

Pastor: O Spirit of God, help my infirmities. When I am pressed down because of my sin, perplexed and not knowing what to do, help me. All: When you see that I desire evil things, delighting in sinf...