This little nugget of a prayer reminds us that the God who made us knows when we need comfort. Just like the disciples, we are often left gaping mouthed at circumstances, “How can this possibly work out, Lord? How can this be good or end well or bring you glory?” In God’s kindness, he assured the disciples that they wouldn’t be without a Helper. They would “receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you” (Acts 1:8) and be witnesses to neighbors close by and far off.   Read More

May that relational love that God first loved you with (ref. 1 John 4:19) enable you to live with your end in mind so you can do what you cannot do on your own - become a person of agape. And as the collect prayer says, may you “exceed all that we can desire” by abiding in His love.   Read More

Rest necessitates work, but it does not require exhaustion. Setting a day aside for Sabbath does not excuse six days of unhealthy working. God rested without being tired, so it’s ok for you to rest without being tired. Yes, we are to toil for six days, but that does not mean that work is our god for six days. God is Lord of the Sabbath, and Lord of the Work Week.  Read More

This week we are praying for God to grant us the knowledge that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. We worship and fellowship together so that we may believe and know together.  Read More

Jesus is not a deity who makes impossible demands of his people from on high, distant and removed from the realities of worry and hardship. He is the Good Shepherd. I don’t know a ton about shepherds, but I do know that their job requires them to be with their sheep—walking the same terrain, battling the same elements, fending off the same enemies. The day-to-day life of the shepherd is intimately tied to that of the sheep. Indeed, the sheep cannot follow the shepherd if the shepherd doesn’t go there first! To me, that is a beautiful image of guidance and leadership that we get from Jesus’s role as our Good Shepherd.   Read More

As I read the Collect this week, I noticed our petition, “give us grace thankfully to receive his inestimable benefits” and realized that in the Easter season we enjoy that His celebrating heart and enduring joy do not run out like mine. His benefits cannot be contained even inside the biggest party– even if the whole world was one resounding ALLELUIA, His benefits would surpass it! So, we ask for grace to receive the benefits– to be filled up by His glory and beauty and steadfastness and grace and joy! And for what? We are filled up with His benefits so that we can “daily follow His footsteps.”  Read More

I want to be a person who has the soul training to give thanks in the face of hardship; because giving thanks to God in this way is an act of defiance against the narrative that death wins. It is refusing to be won over by the lie that grief, pain, and wrongness get to define our story because we know that Jesus is risen. We are not “uninformed about those who sleep in death” and therefore “do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.” (1 Thessalonians 4:13-14).  Read More

As we pray the collect this week, we focus on the promises that Jesus earned for us… “opened to us the gate of everlasting life, “delivered us from sin,” and the promise to be “raised from the dead.” Hallelujah!   Read More

Now, we come to the Collect for this week and I hear us all praying “mercifully grant that we may walk in the way of his suffering” and I feel my heart ache with the dissonance of it. In order to pray honestly that God would in His mercy grant that I may walk in his suffering footsteps, I must become the type of person who seeks to love and obey God above all other things. I must be formed in the image of the Son and be re-formed out of habits and rhythms and desires that are centered on my comfort.   Read More

Anglicanism presented a paradigm that allowed me to embrace all the traditions that had shaped me. It provided a framework for building and maintaining healthy relationships with Christians who held different secondary and tertiary theological beliefs. The Anglican way allows me to live in a spirit of charitable fellowship with those who practice Christianity differently than I do. In my opinion, this is the kind of unity that Christ desires within His incredibly diverse body.  Read More

The Collect, shares a big problem: How to bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners? I cannot solve the problem of my own unruly will much less the unruly wills of my brothers and sisters. Faced with such a big problem, I feel powerless.   Read More

When Jesus speaks of Himself as the bread of life, He means that He is offering to sustain us, fill us up, support and nourish who we are and who God has made us to be.   Read More