God of abiding love, you dare to call us friends. Take our fragmented hearts, hold us safely in your love, So that we too can love others as you have loved us. I’ve worn glasses – or contacts, as I do now – since I was eight years old. I’ve always had terrible vision, and if I were to lose my contacts or my glasses, I would be pretty much helpless – unable even to find my way home. Everything is incredibly blurry and reading, or watching TV, or even being able to recognize loved ones … [Read more...]
Love
Knowing as a Form of Love
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” As I speak and as my brothers and sisters listen, give us a deeper sense of reverence for you, that in so speaking and doing, we would love you more as we know you more. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen. What does it mean to know something, or someone? Our temptation is to equate familiarity with knowledge. We think that because we are familiar with something, we know it. We think that because we see someone … [Read more...]
“Lord, teach us to pray”: Learning to be happy with God and desire the Good.
“Lord, teach us to pray,” (Luke 11:1). Sermon in a Tweet: Prayer is a relationship that (re)forms our will. As religious people it is not difficult to presume that we know what prayer is all about. Even those of us who have been Christians for some time may be tempted to think that prayer is something that we have a solid grasp of—we know how to pray and we know to whom we pray and why all of this is generally a good idea. The first disciples of Jesus would have been like many of us in this … [Read more...]