Posted by hlewis |
I have always thrived on a busy schedule. My mom loves to talk about my favorite day of the week when I was in 6th grade: she’d meet me with my violin case after school to take the streetcar by myself to my lesson in downtown Stuttgart, Germany. I’d come walking up the hill later, and she’d exchange my violin with my cleats and glove to go…
Posted by dwhetter |
Today is Trinity Sunday, which means it is the one day of the year that we celebrate a human-made doctrine. The doctrine of the Trinity is a human attempt to explain how God chose to reveal God’s self to the world. Now, throughout the scriptures God revealed God’s self in many ways — wind, fire, silence, wisdom (Sophia), a loving parent, a husband (Isaiah 54:5-6), as a human (Jesus Christ).…
I pray that you have had a blessed week.
This Sunday is Holy Trinity Sunday. The Doctrine of the Trinity is the church’s attempt to offer a description of God, but as I have said many times, the reality is, to define God is virtually impossible. The bottom line is the Doctrine of the Trinity tells us that God is a God of relationships; it’s just that simple. He is a God that reveals…
Posted by dwhetter |
Fifty days ago today we celebrated Easter Sunday, which means that today is Pentecost Sunday. This is the day we celebrate the birth of the church, or we can also think of it as the day the church was first baptized with the Holy Spirit. Now, we know this day as a Christian celebration but actually Pentecost was, and is, first a Jewish festival day. No, the Jews did not celebrate the birth of the…
Posted by hlewis |
Do you sometimes have the feeling that you are supposed to do something a certain way? Some people call it a sixth sense, listening to your inner voice, following your gut, even something mystical or psychic that is leading us in the right direction. Do you listen and follow? When you don’t, do you later wish you had?
I have a very specific memory of a time I chose not to listen.…
Posted by dwhetter |
Our Gospel story today comes at the end of Jesus’ lengthy address to the disciples that we have been reading through the past few weeks, which actually began all the way back in Chapter 14. Jesus had spent a considerable amount of time preparing his disciples for life and ministry on their own without him physically present with them, and at the end of this prayer we hear today, John immediately…
In our Gospel text for this coming Sunday (John 17:6-19), the seventh Sunday of Easter, Jesus prays for the disciples as he prepares for his own death. I am always amazed by this story, because at a time when anyone else would be praying for themselves because of what was about to happen to them, Jesus was busy praying for the people he loved and cared about.
Jesus helps to remind me…
Posted by hlewis |
When I was a kid I was a tree climber. I loved the challenge of the climb, but especially the peace and seclusion of being in the tree. When we moved away from the house with my favorite tree to an apartment in Germany, we climbed the cherry trees in the orchard next to us and gorged on the fruit. Anytime we went apple picking I never even considered any of the long poles – I was in the…