When Amy asked me to write a reflection about Lent, I wasn't sure if I would do it. To be honest I wasn't sure if I was qualified to do this as my first “real” introduction to Lent was from people around the New Leaf table and my mother-in-law. Because in my tradition, we don't really observe Lent. Growing up in Texas, I thought it was only for Catholic people to do…
Read MoreMost years I have come to long for Lent, and this year perhaps more than most. I’m not sure how I was first initiated into practicing this season but it likely began with noticing the change in liturgical colours decorating my rural Protestant church. Purple must have captured my imagination…
Read MoreAs the scene opens, in Luke 2, there are no indications that tonight would be unlike any other night. The ones keeping watch are not an elite military unit or a secretive spy agency. Just an ordinary group of shepherds pulling another night shift.
Read MoreI cannot remember a time in my life where I have heard the word peace more often than I have in the last few years. It seems everyone everywhere is longing and calling for peace.
Maybe you've heard it in the cries of Canadian protestors who took to the streets over police brutality, racism, and the uncovering of the unmarked graves of Indigenous children. "No justice, no peace"…
Read MoreAs I write this Advent devotional, my heart is heavy. Heavy with the weight and tension of 2021. Heavy with pandemic tensions, the tensions of racial unrest, family tensions, health concerns. This year, my roads have been barricaded, my finances eroded, my relationships damaged, and my children hurt…
Read MoreChristmas 1914—it was only five months into the First World War. Cultural memory remembers this war as senseless and wasteful, ending an era of stability for the West. I was taught in school that this was the war that disabused the West of their own civility in war—with the introduction of chemical warfare, machine guns, and far more powerful artillery than the world had seen up to this point…
Read MoreI am not sure when I first became aware of the way my subconscious converses with my conscious self through song. But in the same way you begin to see the same car you just purchased, around every corner, I notice it happening all the time now…
Read MoreWe live in a world that can easily consume us with its catastrophes, commercials and cacophonies. These come at us from our larger world, or our smaller worlds; there is noise from every side vying for our attention, trying to prop up some image of what an ideal world or life should be…
Read More“Mary was a total bada**!” she blurted out, and then almost immediately covered her mouth. This spontaneous (and hilarious) outburst happened one Sunday morning while our community was walking through Mary’s Song, the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-53)…
Read MoreGrowing up, Christmas was a relatively quiet experience. My mom often worked through the holidays, and living on a hobby farm meant we weren’t going far if we were to go anyway. The one day I’d look forward to was the one day my aunt, uncle and cousin would come to visit…
Read MoreThe past few months have been a particular season of stillness and readiness in Advent for my wife Bonnie and I. This has been one of the hardest years I can remember, encompassing family losses, pandemic social collapse and isolation, health failures, and surgery…
Read MoreI have found that seasons of waiting tend to come and go in intensity and I’m coming out of one of the tougher ones for me right now. During this past June and July, the time from Monday to Friday seemed to take extra long…
Read MoreA little over a year ago, I sat in a park, bundled up with a small group of people trying to safely do church in the midst of a global pandemic. Beside me sat a man about my age, whom I hadn’t seen since well before the start of the pandemic…
Read MoreToday’s text from Isaiah brings to mind the many tree stumps dotting the perimeter of our home. When we moved here our single acre of land was ringed with overgrown box elder, or Manitoba maple. These trees grow like weeds but have a short lifespan. Wind storms have felled a number of them; the stumps are what remain after we clean up the fallen trees…
Read MoreI’m gonna just say this flat out: I felt a leetle bit of excitement when I read the first reading from Numbers today.
I know that doesn’t make me look good. I know that this is one of those stories that we are supposed to struggle with in Scripture, and I promise that I do…
Read MoreI grew up singing and have always loved to sing. We sang together as a family during evening devotions. My first memories of singing are from when I was 4 years old and my sister was 3….
“If you aren’t angry, you aren’t paying attention.” That’s been my favorite bumper sticker, and I just found it on a t-shirt for sale this Christmas.There’s a lot in this world and in myself to be outraged about this year; anger has been a great fuel to get out there, right some wrongs and feel a little more self-righteous along the way…
Read MoreI went to bible school way back in the 1990s. This was before the fancy technology of today. My computer was a word processer with a 4-inch screen. We made calls on the communal dorm payphone shared by thirty students. Cellphones were not around quite yet, so people communicated by writing notes to each other instead of texting…
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