It is both a joy and a humbling challenge to worship with my husband every week.
For most of our marriage and ministry, we haven’t been together on Sunday mornings, and I’ll be honest: that lets me get away with a little bit more. This is what I mean. Continue reading
I am addicted to love stories. I have been known to throw aside novels and to quit tv series if I find out that the ending does not include a happy union of the protagonists. Much to Jordan’s dismay, I will read the synopses of shows online to make sure the ending meets with my approval. Once I know the outcome, then I can fully enjoy the story. He thinks this is a betrayal of the art form, learning more than the creator intends for the audience to know. I think it’s just common sense — why waste your time on a story with a sad end? Continue reading
Whenever I start writing a sermon, I ask myself, “What is God revealing about himself in this passage? Who is God teaching us that he is?” Today, I want to ask that question of a larger section of Scripture, I want to ask, “What is God revealing about himself?” in the whole of the Gospels. In the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is this God revealing himself to be? Travel with me a moment, if you would, imagining the whole of Jesus’s life before us; we’ll start from the end and move back to the beginning. Continue reading
Y’all are lucky this Sunday. Though we celebrate the Transfiguration every year, I have never preached on this feast before. This sermon is all-new, it’s fresh. Continue reading
Last week, I saw the Kingdom of Heaven on Rosemont Avenue.
That’s the name of the street where I live up in North Oak Cliff, and I want to offer a witness here this morning. The Kingdom of Heaven broke into the 600 block of North Rosemont Avenue, for a moment I glimpsed heaven there. Sure, it gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling, I smiled, and I nodded at how light and joyful a place the world could be. But it just as easily couldn’t have happened. It was just as possible, and maybe even easier, for nothing exceptional to have happened at all, for the Kingdom of Heaven to stay hidden and quiet and unseen, but there were two things that happened to enable this witness I’m giving you this morning.
First, somebody invited the Kingdom of Heaven to be part of their own daily life, and then second, somebody else saw and talked about what happened.
I heard the story from that witness, and now I share it with you. This neighbor had just gotten home from a long trip last Sunday night, and she found a note on her front door when she arrived: Continue reading
hope of things not seen 