Wordless Wednesday #1

February 13, 2007

Tech­no­rati Tags: Word­less Wednesday

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Blog Your Blessings Sunday

February 11, 2007

I am very late get­ting this posted! That doesn’t mean I’m not grate­ful and don’t have bless­ings to enu­mer­ate here. Oh, I do! That’s part of why I’m so late.

I am grate­ful that the Divine Cre­ator has been work­ing on my heart. You see, I have a lot of friends and even some rel­a­tives who still belong to the church I left. And that can make things kind of awkward.

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Detoxing from Church

February 5, 2007

That’s the title of a really inter­est­ing arti­cle I stum­bled upon tonight. Click here to read it in its entirety.

The author, a pas­tor who left tra­di­tional orga­nized reli­gion to form a new kind of com­mu­nity of believ­ers, makes the point that we get addicted to the for­mal struc­tures of the church. We get used to hav­ing wor­ship planned for and deliv­ered to us, serv­ing and using church to pro­vide us with a rea­son to exist. “I need dis­ci­ple­ship and Chris­t­ian growth. So I go to my local church to attend Sun­day ser­vices, Bible stud­ies and small groups where some­one opens the Bible and tells me what it says and how it should apply to my life.” In other words, we become incred­i­bly lazy, fail­ing to fully explore our faith because we rely upon some­one else to spoon-feed it to us.

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Blog Your Blessings Sunday: Thankfulness — A Way of Life

February 4, 2007

Last Sun­day I posted about giv­ing thanks in all things, and I had a week that included some inter­est­ing moments, as you can read about below. But I am thank­ful even for those times because I learn so much from them.

I am doing fairly well in my efforts to be thank­ful. I have remem­bered to be thank­ful each day, although I don’t always remem­ber as soon as I would like to. Some­times I have “oh, yeah …” moments when I find myself real­iz­ing that my thank­ful atti­tude in kick­ing in later than it should be. I think I am going to post a lit­tle reminder in my office. I just have to fig­ure out where to put it so that it is notice­able to me, but not nec­es­sar­ily every­one else who enters that space. That will help me remem­ber to stop and say a prayer of thanks when I am frus­trated with or aggra­vated by some­thing hap­pen­ing in the workplace.

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Sticks and Stones

February 2, 2007
Thumbnail image for Sticks and Stones

Sticks and stones may break my bones,
But words will never hurt me.”

Not so.

… neg­a­tive and dis­rup­tive spirit …”

That’s some heavy label to attempt to hang on another human being.

Whew.

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In everything … give thanks

January 21, 2007

More often than not, I am guilty of not lis­ten­ing to the Holy Spirit. It sits on my shoul­der and whis­pers in my ear, but I am fre­quently so dis­tracted by the fre­netic pace at which we live in this 21st cen­tury that I don’t hear what it is say­ing. The whis­pers get louder and louder … some­times I hear some­thing and swat at my ear as though a fly is buzzing near me. Some­times I catch a word or two which causes me to stop and strain to make out the rest of the sen­tence, but then I get dis­tracted or give up and never hear the entire message.

Too fre­quently, it requires the spir­i­tual equiv­a­lent of some­one drop­ping a house on me for the Holy Spirit to get my atten­tion! On those occa­sions, hind­sight reveals the clues I missed along the way, of course.

This is indeed one of those occasions.

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Church Council Meetings at My Former Congregation

January 19, 2007

Car­toon by Dave Walker. Find more car­toons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Car­toons. Tech­no­rati Tags: Orga­nized Religion

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On Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.‘s Birthday: The Letter from the Birmingham Jail Revisited

January 15, 2007

On this day, the birth­day of Dr. Mar­tin Luther King, Jr., I’ve been spend­ing some time read­ing about his life and teach­ings, and lis­ten­ing to excerpts from his most notable speeches and sermons.

While again read­ing his April 16, 1963, let­ter from the Birm­ing­ham jail, I was struck by the time­less­ness of his words and found myself won­der­ing what he would think of the churches of 2007.

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