Prayer

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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 Cars and computers eventually get outdated and need to be replaced.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…