living on Music

The renowned conductor Arturo Toscanini once led a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in London. His mastery and the orchestra’s precision resulted in thunderous applause from the audience. At ...

Your life is in the pulpit with you Fred Craddock said, “Not everything that’s in the Bible is in the Bible .” That’s why we have, among other things, commentaries . The most helpful ones throw o...

New Testament scholar and Anglican bishop N. T. Wright recalls being at a party once when someone decided to read a portion of the seventeenth-century Prayer Book for laughs. The Prayer Book includes ...

Your Easter morning services should do two things: put on a rip-roaring celebration for the most joyful event in history and invite newcomers and Christmas-and-Easter attenders to join in, building a ...

For those of us who live in the shadow of self-doubt, who may wonder what meaning a life of relative anonymity may have in a society filled with the cult of celebrity in which likes, reposts, and digi...

At the beginning to the musical Les Misérables , the lead character Jean Valjean is arrested by the police, with silver he has stolen from a kindly bishop who had given him shelter. Valjean is plainl...

Voice 1: Words! Voice 2: By them the universe was created: planets and moons, stars and sky, all living things, day and night. People: We come today to worship and adore the Creator of this world and...

Leader:   We’ve come to worship God who makes streams flow from rock, who turns the parched earth into springs of water, who sends the rain from heaven, who makes streams flow from rock, who turns ...

I am so thankful to be alive—breathing, moving, sensing, wide-eyed, cock-eared alive—in this mysterious instant, at this luminous time, on this nurturing earth, this blue pearl of great price whirling...

Reign and Rain down, Glorious One Salvation flows from your side Living water to our desert to our frail clay to our dust Creation flows from you New life springing up Hope and wholeness Budding and ...

Pastor: Hear what the Apostle Paul says to God’s people in Romans 12: I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and a...

Lord God, refresh us with living water, Illuminate our path with your light, Speak to us with the still small voice And calm the storms of our lives with your peace.

Pastor: Church, we are Easter people living in resurrection victory.  Along with the Psalmist, we worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness.  We declare His glory in the midst of His people. We p...

We taste Thee, O Thou Living bread, And long to feast upon Thee still: We drink of Thee, the Fountainhead And thirst our souls from Thee to fill.

Pastor: We worship today in the name of God the Father,  People: Praise to our creating God! Pastor: In the name of His Son, Jesus Christ: People: Praise to our redeeming God!...

If you see a thing whole—it seems that it’s always beautiful. Planets, lives… But up close a world’s all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life is a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. You ne...

Calm us now, O Lord, into a quietness that heals and listens. Open wounded hearts to the balm of your Word. Speak to us in clear tones so that we might feel our spirits leap for joy and skip with hope...

Cantor: Hear our prayer, O Lord; hear our prayer, O Lord. Incline Your ear to us, and grant us Your peace. People: Response   (Sung response to each petition) Pastor: ...

Pastor: Go now in confidence and joy, offering yourselves as living sacrifices of worship and praise.  People: Direct our days and our deeds as we live out our calling to look, live, and lo...

Ask me not where I live or where I like to eat . . . ask me what I am living for and what is keeping me from living fully for that.

“It always comes down to just two choices. Get busy living, or get busy dying.”

Repetition is the reality and the seriousness of life

Jesus, we receive your blessings and pray for the Holy Spirit to make them real in our lives. Renew a right spirit within us, a poor spirit, a spirit that knows our deep need of your grace and deliver...

The world has always despised people from the wrong places and with the wrong credentials. We are always trying to justify ourselves. We need desperately to feel superior to others. And everything abo...

New Testament Mountains Like the Old Testament, the New Testament has plenty of references to mountains.  There’s the Sermon on the Mount, obviously.  Jesus often went onto hills or mountains to pray...

Pastor: Brothers and sisters in Christ, as we gather on this Thursday of Holy Week, let us humbly draw near to the Lord to remember what He has done and to receive what He gives to us by His Word an...

The boundary between living and nonliving is actually removed in food. Food is natural communion – partaking of the flesh of the world. When I take food, I am eating world matter in general, and in so...

God of majesty and power, Who spoke and this world was, Who breathed and this world lived, Who counts the hairs upon our head, Who sees our thoughts and reads our hearts, Who loves us more than we des...

You, oh Christ, are the Kingdom of Heaven; You, the land promised to the gentle; You the grazing lands of paradise; You, the hall of the celestial banquet; You, the ineffable marriage chamber; You the...

To get a sense of how breathing is regarded by modern medical professionals, think back to your last check-up. Chances are your doctor took your blood pressure, pulse, and temperature, then placed a s...