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Last week I joined more than 20 St. Paul folks on a mission trip to Chavies, Kentucky. (If you don’t know about these biannual trips to serve with Appalachia Service Project, you should check them out. Another group is going October 1-8.) The crew I…
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“Since it was the day of Preparation, the Judeans did not want the bodies left on the cross during the Sabbath, especially because that Sabbath was a day of great solemnity. So they asked Pilate to have the legs of the crucified men broken and the bo…
A three-year-old girl had a tricky walk into St. Paul Lutheran church a few Sundays ago. Earthworms had surfaced from the night’s rain. How do you navigate a sea of earthworms blanketing the sidewalk when your legs are extremely short? Well, you hop…
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There’s a strange thing that happens pretty regularly around St. Paul. But I don’t think that it’s unique to our church at 2136 Brady Street. I have a feeling the same sort of thing might happen at Christian congregations all over the place. People a…
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When I want to get my faith bearings, I try to hang around people of faith who hurt, who live with suffering loss, or who somehow manage every day against steep odds. Spending time with a guy whose kidneys aren’t working, or whose daughter keeps runn…
My friend, Elise, and I like to say that we are hooked on service. Before seminary we both did a great deal of volunteer work within our home communities and churches. When we went to India for a seminary class, we chose to stay an extra week and vol…
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These Wednesdays in Lent, we gather twice as a congregation. Coming together mid-day and again in the evening, we pray, praise, and contemplate how God may work in our world. These midweek services remind of me of the Christian tradition of praying t…
These days, a trip to the grocery store can be an exhausting experience. Nevermind having to navigate the crowded aisles with the one cart that always has a squeaky wheel or waiting in line as an employee runs to the very back of the store for a pric…
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Maybe it’s fitting that the early primary season falls during Lent. Maybe it’s exactly appropriate for so much hand-wringing over who might end up as the next president of the United States to occur at just the same time that we seek to recenter our…
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It was a pretty quiet morning at the gym today. As I laced up my tennis shoes, I found myself looking around wondering where all the people went. It seems just a month or so ago, I was scouring the room to find an open treadmill and waiting my turn t…
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My high school did not offer a class in cosmology. It’s a good thing it didn’t. I wouldn’t have survived. I barely passed math, struggled in physics, and to this day do not understand what a mole in chemistry is. The only mole I know is the one that…
It’s a big week. Yesterday was Ash Wednesday – this important day in the Christian calendar that begins the season of Lent. It’s a day we remember our mortality and the ways we continually miss the mark on living as God would have us. This week we be…