the christian calendar on Wandering

For all the wandering, this is the first question of the Old Testament—God coming to ask after you, “Where are you?” Where are you in your life? Where are you—from Me? To get where you want to go, t...

Pastor: Loving God, whose glory it is always to have mercy: Be gracious to us who have gone astray from Your ways, and bring us again with penitent hearts and steadfast faith to embrace and hold fas...

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...

A Digital Silent Retreat This spiritual exercise is from Laura Murray, ordained pastor, spiritual director, and TPW contributor. Laura is sharing a "Digital Silent Retreat" with us. We en...

What was the star of Bethlehem? Maybe it was Jupiter. Celestial conjunctions were  very  important to ancient astrologers. Three significant conjunctions occurred around the time Christ was born: two...

A Valentine’s Day Tradition What better way to say, “I love you,” than passing your beloved some sugar, corn syrup, dextrose, and glycerin wrapped in a chalkly Necco wafer heart? Maybe some of you re...

The man behind the unlikely tradition of Christmas stockings is usually thought to have been Nikolaos of Myra. He was a Greek Christian who became bishop of Myra, a city of Asia Minor. Nikolaos, or Sa...

Christianity began in a culture where “desert” and “wilderness” were familiar environments, both respected and feared as the place where angels and demons might be found. In wild, desolate places God’...

The season of Advent means there is something on the horizon the likes of which we have never seen before… .What is possible is to not see it, to miss it, to turn just as it brushes past you. And you ...

God's movement is often abrupt and unsettling rather than predictable and settling.

God, we come with hesitant steps and uncertain motives to sweep out the corners where sin has accumulated, and uncover the ways we have strayed from Your truth. Expose the empty and barren places wher...

Advent: the time to listen for footsteps – you can’t hear footsteps when you’re running yourself.

Waiting is a period of learning. The longer we wait, the more we hear about him for whom we are waiting.

For outlandish creatures like us, on our way to a heart, a brain, and courage, Bethlehem is not the end of our journey but only the beginning - not home but the place through which we must pass if eve...

Before we get to Easter, we need to linger: in the vulnerability of the basin and the towel at the remembrance and promise of the table in the struggle and betrayal of the garden in the shadows and sh...

Guide me ever, great Redeemer, pilgrim through this barren land. I am weak, but you are mighty; hold me with your pow’rful hand. Bread of heaven, bread of heaven, feed me now and evermore. feed me now...

A few years ago, some friends suggested creating a wilderness rock garden as a visual reminder of the Lenten season. I loved the idea and continue to use it year after year. USING YOUR WILDERNESS ...

In this season of Lent, O God, unsettle us. Increase in us that sense of gnawing that arises from the incongruity between our lives and the life to which you call us, and transform us in newness. Amen...

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

O God, help us to use this season of Lent to examine our attachments, and to sense where You invite us to live more simply and deeply. Shine the light of Your love into the private corners of our live...

It is a sprinting, squirting, shoving age.

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John. On this day we come from many different suburbs—to remember his story, to offer our worship and to give witness to our fait...

Into this world, this demented inn in which there is absolutely no room for him at all, Christ comes uninvited.

Amazed, bewildered, they are gathered around him, whose pondered resolution comes to rest, withdrawing him from all the ties that bound him--a stranger gliding by with thoughts unguessed. He feels tha...

Strange, this familiar Father of prodigals whose love, too much for one lifetime, wills that we shall share the feast of forgiveness and joy in the epilogue of eternity. Strange, this daily advent of ...

In a letter to his son, J. R. R. Tolkien famously wrote, “We all long for [Eden], and we are constantly glimpsing it: our whole nature at its best and least corrupted, its gentlest and most humane, is...

Only the hungry search for bread. Only the thirsty look for water. This is a place for those who are hungry and thirsty in spirit. Only those who ache for meaning will pursue it. Only those who ye...

In the midst of frenzied shopping and end-of-year weariness, we spread out a purple cloth,(a purple cloth is spread over the communion table) read again the ancient stories,(a Bible is placed on th...

Leader: As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, "See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; People: the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the ...

When fishes flew and forests walked And figs grew upon thorn, Some moment when the moon was blood Then surely I was born. With monstrous head and sickening cry And ears like errant wings, The d...