Now the Lord came and stood there, calling as before, ‘Samuel! Samuel!’ And Samuel said, ‘Speak, for your servant is listening. 1 Samuel 3. 19 - 20 The story of Samuel and Eli at the beginning of 1 Samuel has always interested me, particularly when I am pondering the Trinity, God three in one, Creator,Redeemer, Sustainer. What or who was it that called Samuel? Not the incarnate God - Jesus Redeemer and probably not God Creator, but I do believe it was the Holy Spirit, God

"This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased." Matthew 3. 13 - 17 On this Feast of the Baptism of our Lord, we hear words come down from heaven which we all long to hear..."my son, my daughter the beloved." I believe that hearing these words, knowing this truth could make a tremendous difference in the course of the world. Some of the most egregious acts by men and women in the history have been done by people who did not know their belovedness. I also believe

A friend commented about the egregious nature of our world right now and how difficult it is to find hope in the horror of the actions of people and presidents... "There is a gaping hole in me, and the light, wonder and revelation of Epiphany are hard to feel right now, she said." Sigh...so sadly true. And yet, Paul's letter to the people of Colossae this morning gives us hope in the face of these difficult times. We hear the reassurance that God chose to make known the rich

but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence . 1 Kings 19. 9 - 18 In his search for the Lord, Elijah heard God say go stand on the mountain and wait for the Lord to pass by...and so he did. But he didn't find God in the wind or the earthquake or the fire...only in the "sheer silence" which translates in Hebrew as a deep, profound, or absolute quiet. A wise woman once said that eloquent was a good translation for sheer, and ever since I hear

This poem by Thomas Hardy is the perfect one for New Year's Eve. I usually offer it every year as a reminder that there is always hope. Written on New Year's Eve 1899, as the world faced impending wars and a century of tumult and catastrophe, Hardy, like many other poets and philosophers, feared what lay ahead. But in this bleak poem, Hardy allows a glimmer of hope to which we too can hold. Listen this day for the voice of the darkling thrush in your part of the world and sha

"...an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, ‘Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.’" Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23 In eight short verses in the gospel of Matthew, Joseph has three dreams which guide him to make major changes for him and his family. First the angel of the Lord tells him to leave Bethlehem and go to Egypt, then from Egypt to Israel,

And so he was born, this gloriously impossible baby, in a stable in Bethlehem...God come to be one of us. from The Glorious Impossible by Madeleine L'Engle. In a cave or a stable, the Son of Man was born to a poor young girl and her beloved husband with whom she had never had marital relations. All of us who have given birth know what this means...what it looks like and how it feels. The risk of sanitizing this birth is great, because it was hardly a decent place or way f

Much of the birth narrative of Jesus is overly sanitized, in my humble opinion, and we gloss over the essence of the moments and of the language used to describe them. For example, the term virgin in description of Mary which is incomprehensible. I dare not presume to understand the miracle of the virgin birth, but I have found enlightenment in descriptions of the conditions of a virgin soul, particularly in Thomas Merton's poignant explanation of le point vierge, the virgin

In this Year A of the Revised Common Lectionary, we are reading the gospel of Matthew, but rarely will you hear the reading below from the first chapter of the genealogy of Jesus. It is full of unpronounceable and obscure names which do not make for good sermon material. * see below In the wonderful old Advent book Watch for the Light which I have been reading since 2001 the year it was published by the Plough Publishing House, Gail Godwin's entry for December 16 reminds u

Zechariah 1:7. On the twenty-fourth day of the eleventh month, the month of Shebat, in the second year of Darius, the word of the LORD came to the prophet Zechariah son of Berechiah son of Iddo. On the tenth day of the twelfth month of the year 1966 of the Gregorian calendar in Truro Cathedral, Cornwall England, the bishop of Truro, the Rt Rev. Maurice Key, laid his hands on my head, confirming me and empowering me for service to God*, praying that God would sustain me all