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Devotion: Persistent in Prayer
Prayer … Have you ever felt like the man in this picture when you’ve prayed? There are times when we are desperate, when we feel that we have no options … so, we pray. These are the times that St. John of the Cross said are the “dark nights of the soul”. As people of
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Devotion: Jesus Makes A Difference
My apologies for being late with the devotion for this week. I left after worship on Sunday to head to Mar-Lu-Ridge Camp and Retreat Center with a few of our confirmation students. We joined confirmands from other congregations from the Metro DC Synod and the Delaware-Maryland Synod for a week of Confirmation Camp. For the devotions this
Tags: Christian Identity -
Devotion: And who is my neighbor?
You may know that I am working on my doctoral program through Luther Seminary in St. Paul, MN. Through much of this past week while I was in St. Paul, we used fancy terminology about what the church is and what the church does, but much of it really boiled down to this question asked
Tags: Neighbor -
Devotion: Is God Here, Too?
This week, I have been in three distinct cultures: Northern Virginia, Coastal North Carolina, and St. Paul, MN. I have talked with congregation members, people in life-and-death circumstances, a woman living in her car, and people with overwhelming utility bills. I have gone from living in our own comfortable, climate-controlled home to living out of
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Devotion: For Freedom Christ Has Set Us Free
In the sermon on Sunday (6/30), I lifted up the similarities between civic freedom and our freedom in Christ. We are citizens of the United States and live with a great deal of freedom, but there are boundaries on our freedom so that my freedom doesn’t result in injustice for you. As Christians, we are also citizens
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Devotion: Hearers & Doers
As I write this devotion, I am almost finished with preparations for the Sawdust & Sandals trip to New Jersey this week (see our blog), I finished two days with four members of our congregation at the Metropolitan Washington D.C. Synod Assembly, and I am preparing to lead worship on Sunday and meet with our Sunday
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Devotion: God’s Vision
vi·sion /ˈviZHən/Noun The faculty or state of being able to see.Verb Imagine. Vision is something we talk a lot about in churches and business. Even though this idea of “vision” is used often, I find that there ends up being a fair amount of vapor in the conversation. We say that we must follow our “vision
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Devotion: Why do we resist change?
There is a saying that “the only one who likes change is a wet baby.” We all know that change is part of life … an inevitable and necessary part of life. Children get older. Trees grow. Cars and computers eventually get outdated and need to be replaced. Science makes new discoveries. Medicine advances. Why then
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Devotion: Sharing?
We know that being a Christian is not just about winning our own salvation, and, once that’s “done” – checked off the list – then we can go on about our lives, occasionally going to church or doing something good and charitable so that, at the end of our lives, people can say that we
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