Blogs and Articles

Open Bible and mug with heart on it

To encourage worshipful, generous-hearted living

For the most recent blog or to see articles by dates, look down the list on the right.

Quotes about the Faith Community

Jul 13, 2020

The community is a discipline of mutual encouragement and mutual testing, keeping me both hopeful and honest about the love that seeks me, the love I seek to be. – Parker J. Palmer Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime, therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful makes complete sense…

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Live Gratefully, Live Generously

Jul 1, 2020

Generosity is grounded in a real sense of gratitude, says Rev. Scott McKenzie, Senior Vice President of Horizons Stewardship Company. He saw it firsthand on a mission service trip to Malawi, in the midst of a famine there. The villagers they had helped – themselves on the edge of starvation – danced and sang and…

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Writing in the Sand

Jun 22, 2020

“To speak of the heart is not to sentimentalize but to ensoul,” says author Thomas Moore. “There is a toughness and intelligence about living from the heart. . . .”1 Moore uses the phrase living from the heart to describe what the Gospels imply about a new sense of self: “openness to experience, to the…

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Living from the Heart

Jun 21, 2020

“To speak of the heart is not to sentimentalize but to ensoul,” says author Thomas Moore. “There is a toughness and intelligence about living from the heart. . . .”1 Moore uses the phrase living from the heart to describe what the Gospels imply about a new sense of self: “openness to experience, to the…

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A Cycle of Grace

Jun 6, 2020

Written for Voices and Silences, 2003 Grace, Giftedness, Giving and Growth – these four words, from Clif Christopher and Herb Mather’s book, Holy Smoke!, prompted me to reflect on these themes in my life. For me, they flow in a cycle, a deepening spiral, which begins and ends with God’s grace. From God’s side, it’s…

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Foundation Statement on Stewardship

Jun 5, 2020

Written for the General Board of Discipleship, The United Methodist Church, 2010 Stewardship is whatever we do with what God has entrusted to us by the way that we live. In response to God’s outpouring love and covenant faithfulness, we live out of God’s abundance instead of the illusion of scarcity thinking. We seek to…

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Clean Eating

May 24, 2020

June fifth is coming up soon – World Environment Day. And boy, do we have a lot of issues to address! But one essential dimension of our impact on the environment that calls out right now is what we choose to eat. “Clean eating” is a phrase that’s becoming popular in some circles these days.…

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Genesis and the Image of God

May 2, 2020

“Our soul is our true self, the essence of who we are, seeking to grow more and more into the image of God,” says Growing Generous Souls,1 pondering Genesis 1:26-27. But what is the image of God? Beyond that book’s couple of paragraphs, here are a few further reflections. Some renowned Bible scholars confirm the…

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Our Identity in Christ

Apr 18, 2020

What Jesus said and did in the Gospels are signs of who he is. But how do we apply that to who we are in Christ? Where else can we turn to find additional guidance about who we are because of Christ’s work in our lives? Colossians 3:8-17 can help us see the shape of…

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Our Identity in Christ

Apr 18, 2020

What Jesus said and did in the Gospels are signs of who he is. But how do we apply that to who we are in Christ? Where else can we turn to find additional guidance about who we are because of Christ’s work in our lives? Colossians 3:8-17 can help us see the shape of…

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