The Parish

What do we do when a "Herod" seems to threaten the very fabric of our lives? We may find it helpful to remember how the story will end!

Slim pickings. Two Psalms, three poems and one sermon.

We often live our lives vicariously in a different tense, our bodies are in the present, but our minds are rehearsing a future or replaying a past, rarely staying in the moment where is within reach.

In some ways, putting Christmas away is more difficult that getting it out.

Mary believed what the angel had told her but no one else seemed to. She felt terribly alone until Elizabeth made room for her and created a space that was healing for both of them. 

When your desire to run is outmatched by your desire to stay, a beautiful kind of peace begins to appear. A peace that doesn't need outcomes to exist, it just needs the presence of God.

When Zechariah confronted a mystery that didn't fit into the tight and tidy quarters of his faith, he become overwhelmed with fear.  Mary’s more flexible faith allowed her to sit with the mystery and to ponder it rather than run away from it.

We cannot begin Advent with angels and wise men and choirs. We cannot start where the tinsel and glitter is. We have to begin small, quiet, and unnoticed. We have to begin the way the story grew in Mary. The way it still grows in us.

Set prayers and liturgy can feel stiff and impersonal if they are not part of our tradition but they may hold unexpected riches.

A new life iwth an old mindset isn't freedom-it's a more comfortable prison.

Jesus stirs the troubled waters of our lives with a question that heals more deeply than any answer ever could.

 When we are stressed, being told "don't worry!" can feel at best insensitive. But what if we see it as an invitation rather than a critique?

It’s strange how God meets us in the moments we often think are proof of His absence.

If what mattered to God mattered to us, we might just realize what matters.

The stories that we water, and the moments that we nurture are the ones that grow and shape the garden of our lives.

The world around us is eager to tell us what to value but Jesus has a different agenda for us.

What if the some of the conflict in our lives isn't about right or wrong, but simply about different ways of showing up in the same moment.

Leave your TV dinners in the living room, we have been invited into God's kitchen to learn how to make something beautiful together.

As we come to understand Jesus' ethic of love, adopting loving behaviours is important  - but it's not enough. We are called to genuine love.

The thoughts we choose to rehearse will shape the people we become.  And over time, those choices become the fabric of our attitudes, and the outfit of our lives.

When we repent, we need to radically change the way we think, not just our outward etiquette. The goal isn’t to become like Emily Post, it’s to become like Jesus!

Some ideas are so big that that they need to be demonstrated instead of talked about.

The fallout of reckless decisions we make early in life can leave us feeling that it's all over. But it isn't - because God loves a rematch.  

Some are more paralyzed by their beliefs than they are freed by them.

Freedom is not something we wait for, it is something we risk for.