Reading: Psalm 139: 7-10 Verse 10: “Even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast”. Even there. Even there God is with us. In the quiet of the sanctuary on a Tuesday morning, God is there. In the excitement of worship on a Sunday morning, God is there. In the prayer on the couch and in the prayer on the walk to work, God is there. As the baby releases its first cry and as the person draws their last breath, God is there. In the spaces where we seek God

Reading: Isaiah 55: 10-13 Verse 11: “My word that goes out from my mouth: it will not return to me empty”. Isaiah was a prophet that wrote to a nation who was astray from the Lord. Chapter 55 opens with a beautiful invitation from God to his wayward children: “Come, all who are thirsty, come to the waters”. God is flinging open the doors for his people to return, to come and drink of his mercy and love. Isaiah encourages the people to “seek the Lord while he may be found”. Th

Reading: Genesis 25: 19-34 Verse 21: “Isaac prayed to the Lord on behalf of his wife, because she was barren”. Last week we looked at the miraculous story of finding a wife for Isaac. The baby born when mom and dad were 90 and 100, respectively, marries a wife that clearly God had a hand in selecting. Remember how the servant’s prayer was exactly how things unfolded in finding Rebekah? It seemed like a fairy tale beginning to a storybook marriage. But then, in today’s passage

Reading: Matthew 9: 35-38 Verse 35: “Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching… preaching… and healing”. Today’s short passage sums up Jesus’ ministry quite well. In verse 35 we read about the things that occupied most of his time: teaching, preaching, and healing. I believe that these three practices remain the core practices of ministry today. These three practices often work together to shape and form who we are as people of faith. Teaching can occur in many

Reading: Genesis 1:26 – 2:4a Verse 28: “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it”. Our passage today begins with God creating humanity in “our image, in our likeness”. This description says we are to be like God in how we look and act, in how we think and feel. God is loving and kind, merciful and forgiving, compassionate and slow to anger, creative and life giving. While this is just a partial list of God’s qualities it begins to inform how we should

Reading: John 14: 15-21 Verse 21: “Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me”. If I only had one word to describe God or Jesus it would be “love”. A one word description is woefully short, but all of God’s teachings and actions, all of Jesus’ too, can be traced back to love. Just as a one word description is left wanting, we have two earthly models that describe divine love. Marriage gives us a small glimpse into the love of Jesus for his church and p

Reading: 1 Peter 3: 13-22 Verse 14: “But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed”. I believe that each of us are created in the image of God and that all people are woven together by the Creator. Because of this, I believe we each have a spark or a piece of the divine within us. If you watch young children you can see this. There is a pure love in children that reveals the divine within. It shows in the inherent kindness that children naturally display. T