Sermons

Back when my husband, Matt, was first starting at his previous church, he introduced a new practice in worship. At the passing of the peace, rather than launching directly into greeting one another, the worship leader would first say, “The Peace of the Lord be always with you,” and the congregation would respond, “And also […]

There are many reasons that we welcome people. Sometimes it is simply to be polite. I think that we have all done this before—we run into someone new, someone we don’t know, and we exchange pleasantries with them. “Good morning, how are you?” They respond with some variant of “I’m fine.” This exchange continues until

I had been living in Connecticut for about a year when I went out to meet some friends for dinner at a pub-like restaurant, the kind that has a sizeable and busy bar in it. Which is where we stood, next to one of the patrons of the bar, while waiting for a table to

The problem with geography is that I don’t think we humans are very good at it. It’s just that we never think big enough. Personally, I blame cars. Cars make travel too easy, they make distance trivial, they make our world feel like a small place. If you have ever tried to walk somewhere, or