My mother recently found my first Bible packed away in her attic, a hardback, blue NRSV edition with my name, Heather Beard, engraved on the front cover. Inside the Bible, tucked safely away, we also discovered my first footprints, hospital card and baby bracelet....
This week we have collectively experienced or been mindful of Indigenous People’s Day, the lingering remnants of Columbus Day, World Mental Health Day and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that has escalated to war. Mainstream news outlets and social media influencers...
By: LeAnn Hampton. My soon-to-be 100-year-old mother loves to tell about an incident that occurred many years ago when she was teaching Sunday School to a class of third graders. She noticed that many of them arrived on Sunday morning frowning and in a bad mood. One...
By Dorrell Brown. What happens when one prepares and one forgets? I’ll tell you: the outcome changes. My sister was preparing for her bake-off and had everything all planned out. When the cookies were almost done, the sugar was still sitting on the counter, so it was...
We live in a problem-solving, information-driven kind of world. Though we’re plagued by inconvenience, solutions never seem too far away. Not sure how long to air fry that frozen chicken breast? A quick Google takes care of that. Trying to decide if it’s appendicitis...
By: R.G. Huff. “Christ will gird himself and serve us.” This phrase from our opening hymn today brings with it a “picture this” moment of Jesus throwing on a white apron and scurrying about between tables when you’d think he should be in the place of honor — or at...
It’s fascinating how the book of Romans, which is used to discriminate between groups of people, shares this Scripture with us today: “Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.” That’s surely not the...
By: Charlie Fuller. In my first life I was a music professor. I conducted choirs and taught private voice lessons. There’s something unique about teaching voice that you might not know if you’ve never taught voice, taken voice lessons or sung in a choir. That unique...
By: Scott Spreier Blame it on bad Baptist upbringing, but every time I read the story of the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt, my mind goes straight to the movie The Ten Commandments. If my memory serves me, our small rural church motored en masse 20-some miles to the...
Around here we’ve always called the start of our fall activities Promotion Sunday — that being today. It means very little, honestly, particularly for adults — because, well, we don’t actually promote. (We never stop aging, despite our best attempts.) Promotion Sunday...