Empty Isn't Always Bad

I've read a lot of blog posts and comments recently. A lot of times, either the post itself or the comments that people post following it just make me sad, for lots of reasons. So, here's (a version of) my Easter sermon from yesterday, with no claim to all the answers about any particular topic, other than that Christ is risen. That's the best news, most worth blogging about, I think. Maybe this will bring someone some hope and joy. If not, then disregard it, I guess. It's worth a try, anyway...

"Empty Isn't Always Bad"
John 20:1-18

Mary waited as long as she could, after the Sabbath was over. She just needed to go to the tomb and see if there was anything to do, if there was any way it had all just been a dream. So she went--and it was still dark--and then, what was to be done? Nothing was as it should have been--the stone had been messed with and the body was gone! What could she do next?

So she runs to tell some other disciples, and the story gets a bit confusing then, with the disciples' foot race and all the talk about cloths--and what exactly, did the disciples believe, after they had seen the tomb? And then they went home? What?!

Some--well, lots!--of this story is so mysterious. Why couldn't John (or one of the other gospel writers) just tell us what really happened when Jesus was raised from the dead? Why can't we know all the details? How can we believe it's true? Could it be true? Does an empty tomb really mean something good?

No one saw the resurrection first-hand, and after all that had happened, we can probably understand why Mary stood there weeping, even after the two disciples had gone. "What have they done with him?" she wanted to know. And what was she to do now?

You see, Mary didn't realize that empty isn't always bad. To Mary--just like to most of us, if we'd be honest enough to admit it--God just did not seem big enough, after all that had gone on, to make an empty tomb have any redeeming value. Jesus was dead, and she just wanted to make sure everything was done right with the body. He was dead. That was the truth of the matter. And what what she going to do now--now that the tomb was empty?

You know the story--maybe you're tempted to shout to get her attention: "Mary! Mary--don't you see, it's him!! He's right there in front of you!!" But Mary will not see, not until her calls her name ("My sheep hear my voice," he had said.). She will not know that an empty tomb is not a bad thing, until she can be completely shaken out of her too-small, Good Friday-filled world, where Jesus is still dead.

How often do we live in that Good Friday world? That world, where death seemed to win and sin seemed to reign. That world, where all that seems ever before us is the horror of what happened then. The hymn writer said it so well: "O Sacred Head, now wounded / with grief and shame weighed down, / now scornfully surrounded / with thorns thine only crown; / how pale thou art with anguish, / with sore abuse and scorn! / How does that visage languish / which once was bright as morn!" That world, where darkness seemed to extinguish the light...and an empty tomb could only mean someone had taken a body away...

But not today! Not this day! Not in the middle of a garden, not at a borrowed tomb...Not today! Not in a hospital room, where it appears death has the final word--not in a brothel or a crack house or a jail cell, where darkness seems to be overcoming all--not in your heart and in my heart and in all the broken and ugly and dark places in our lives--death and sin and darkness don't win--not today!!

CHRIST IS RISEN!!

And Mary, in her grief, stuck in her Good Friday world, doesn't realize that empty isn't always bad, that her Lord stands right before her!! WHAT A STORY! Could it be true? Yes, it is!! CHRIST IS RISEN!! Weep no more! Look for tombs and stones and cloths and dead bodies no more! Go and tell! CHRIST IS RISEN!

He calls your name and my name--call us out of the mire of the sin that keeps us from hearing his voice, call us away from the despair and disillusionment that make us think God isn't big enough to do something miraculous, calls us to go and tell, like Mary did. Go and tell--Christ is alive--I have seen the Lord!!

Have you been tricked? Have you been led to believe that you have no story to tell, that you have no word to speak, that empty is bad and only full is good news? Not so! Go and tell! "I have seen the Lord." That's such a simple sermon to preach: "I have seen the Lord." Christ is risen!

Sure, we don't know all the details. We can't imagine what it felt like or what it looked like, when Christ was raised from the dead. Sometimes, we will still get distracted, even from such an amazing story as this one. But with Mary we can say, "I have seen the Lord."

Now, I know you're thinking, "But seriously, Pastor, you know I have never actually seen Jesus!" And I know--we have not stood in that garden, and we have not seen Jesus face-to-face like Mary did, as he called her name. We have not heard him call our names in the same way she did. I know.

But you have seen the Lord--or you wouldn't be here today! Where have you seen him? When have you seen him? How have you seen him?
...In the hug of a child?
...In the eyes of one in need of your help?
...In the love of a neighbor?
...In the touch of a parent or loved one?
...In the unexpected care of a stranger?
...In the forgiveness offered by a friend?
...In the witness or words of a fellow believer?
...In the bread and the wine?
...In the words of life that we read?

Yes, you have seen the Lord!

So, go and tell: "I have seen the Lord!" Christ is risen! An empty grave is there to prove our Savior lives! Alleluia! Glory to God! Amen.

"Let's Get Real"

Fresh off the presses.  It's a sermon, so if it reads a little weird for you, that's because it's not entirely meant as a blog post...

Ash Wednesday 2014

Joel 2:1-2, 12-17; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

Andy Griffith.  Perry Mason.  Arthur Fonzarelli.  Marsha Brady.  Cliff and Clair Huxtable.  D.J. Tanner.  Corey Matthews.  Though no one here may be terribly familiar with all of these people, I would imagine that there is one name I just listed that each of you here knows a lot about.  You might know about that individual’s life work, struggles, triumphs, like and dislikes—all sorts of things about that person.  And they all have one thing in common: they’re not real!

Isn’t that the way we live sometimes, though: knowing more about people who aren’t real than we know about the real people sitting right around us?  Usually, this is because we don’t let too many people know the “real” us, either.  It seems like we often put a great deal of energy into ignoring our true selves—when we hurt or break or ache—and we put on a happy face and tell people we’re “fine.”  Try this sometime: when someone asks how you are, don’t say you’re “fine” or even “good” or anything so meaningless.  Tell that person how you’re really doing and see how long he or she is willing to listen.  I admit that I don’t do that well at listening, myself—I have found myself at times thinking back through people I’ve talked with over the course of a day and trying to remember if they said they were “good” or “fine” or gave me some other clue to the “real” them that day.

But this is Ash Wednesday.  And we’re in the middle of a busy, busy week in the life of our church.  And if I were the betting type (which I’m not because I’m a United Methodist), I’d bet that some of you are longing to tell someone else here how the “real” you is feeling tonight.  Are you tired?  Are you aching?  Are you out of sorts with yourself or with someone else?  The prophet Joel tells the people of Judah—and us—be real before God.  When his people experience devastation due to a locust plague, Joel tells them, All of you—little babies to old folks, no matter how busy you are—gather before God and raise your voices in lament.  Let God really know how you feel.  Come together in this time of trial and be a community that cries out to God.  Let’s be real.  And who knows…God may just turn back and help us out.  When the people let God know their distress, Joel wants them to realize, then God will listen.  We may not think we need to tell God anything, if God knows all things, but as Joel points out, part of being in relationship with God is actually speaking up and saying how we really are doing, even to the God who created the whole universe.

We read from Joel on Ash Wednesday because Joel reminds us that no matter what our parents may have taught us about crying (and if I had a dollar for every time my mom said, “Crying never solved anything!”…) or how much we would rather not own up to our own suffering and our need for God, we have to do it—we have to be real, before God.  And Joel tells us to do that together.

Be real before God and be real with each other, Joel says.  And Jesus comes along much later and tells us a similar message.  When he teaches his disciples about being faithful, he tells them that they should put their energy into practices of the faith so that they can draw closer to God, not so that other people can see what they’re doing.  Jesus wants them to know that the practices of faithfulness are important—fasting, giving, praying—but not because anyone is keeping score.  These are the ways we learn to be more “real” with God, by letting God work in our lives through disciplines and spiritual practices.  Don’t do them in order to draw attention to yourselves because that is not their purpose, Jesus says.

Maybe it seems to you like what Joel is saying—for everyone to get together and cry out to God in the assembly—and what Jesus is saying—don’t do your fasting, giving, and praying in public so others can see it—sound like they conflict.  What they are really telling us, though, is that if we believe in the God who made all things and is able to make all things right, then we must practice coming before that same God just as we are, our real selves, even the parts of us we’re not proud of, the parts that feel broken and ugly.  Come before God and get real, both Jesus and Joel tell us, in very different situations—in everyday practices of the faith and in the midst of devastation and hardship.

And when we hear the call to “get real,” it doesn’t just mean that we finally are able to come to God and confess, repent, and ask for grace, but also that we learn to become more real with others.  Joel tells the people to cry together—don’t just sit in your own houses and mourn the ways we’ve all experienced loss through this locust plague.  Come together and weep as a community.  Be with one another in this misery.  Share with each other in the pain that we are experiencing, Joel tells them.  That’s what getting real means—knowing that we are all broken, and being in this, together.  There is an Irish proverb that says, “It is in the shelter of each other that the people live.”  Though we practice different disciplines or ways of growing closer to God during Lent, the call to self-examination and repentance comes to all of us, and we need the help of each other to “get real” this Lent.

The reason we do something different at Lent is not because it makes us better than people who don’t observe the season.  That’s exactly what Jesus was warning the people against!  No, during Lent we take time to offer ourselves to God in a new way, to let God work on us in different ways from the “norm,” so we can become more the people God is calling us to be.  It is a time of self-examination—we may find stuff we don’t like about ourselves, and that “stuff” may be exactly what God is working on changing at this time.  We need to take time to pray, fast, study scripture, give, and get into the disciplines of our faith, during Lent, if during no other time in the year.  We may give up bad habits (last year, I gave up bitterness for Lent—that was a lot tougher than giving up chocolate ever was!), and we may give up things that we eat or drink or otherwise take into our bodies that don’t make us the best we can be, or things that we say or do that don’t show love for God, ourselves, or our neighbors.  These are not easy things to do—and we will need God’s grace to work in us to follow through on the commitments we make to become more “real” through Lent.

So we come to church on Ash Wednesday to worship together.  We sit together, while we hear the call to observe a Holy Lent.  We covenant together to embark on this journey toward Easter—toward the celebration of our own redemption, our hope, once again. We are truly always on a journey, but during Lent, perhaps, we realize it more than at any other time of the year.  And it’s gonna take all of us to get through it, as we live in the shelter of each other and find strength through our community and in our God.

None of us will do a perfect job with our Lenten disciplines this year, most likely.  We may find ourselves complaining about whatever we’ve decided to do or not do.  We may completely forget about it, some day.  But we have come together tonight to commit to trying to be different people, at the end of these 40 days (plus Sundays), and it will take all of us together—and God—to make that happen.  When you receive ashes tonight, know that you are human and sinful, made from dust, as the ashes remind us—but also know that you are God’s—marked by God’s own sign, the cross of Christ.  And we are in this together, all of us who have that same mark from God, all of us called to be in community together.  Let’s get real through this Lenten journey, and let’s do it together, with God at our side the whole way.  Amen.

Backing the [Theological] Truck Up

Every now and then, something happens that makes me realize that sometimes, I need to back the theological truck up.  Recently, a friend of mine asked me a question that reminded me that going back to the "basics" is sometimes a good thing to do, so I'm doing that instead of posting more Christmas messages from years past.

This friend wrote me a message asking me what I mean by "grace."  Despite growing up in church, this friend never really got the concept of grace and other religious talk and ended up leaving the church before really learning what these theological concepts mean.  So, without further ado, let me give you a stab at what "grace" means, especially since the title of my blog would infer that it's kind of important to me...here's some of what I wrote to my friend (I've done a little revising):

The watered-down definition of grace that a lot of people use is "God's unmerited favor." There's a lot more to say about it than that, though. Grace is the way we refer to God's work in the world that is making all things new and all things right and all things whole again, from the brokenness the world exists in.

Now, I can only write to you from a perspective on grace that is related to John Wesley's theology, as his is foundational for United Methodists, and I'm United Methodist by choice, not really by chance, at this point.  John Wesley said we experience God's grace in three different ways or kinds or movements. There's prevenient grace, which is God's grace at work before we even realize it. Often, when we look back and see where God was working in us or around us and we didn't even know it, that is prevenient grace--grace that goes before. We believe that God is always wooing us back to God, no matter what. God wants to be in relationship with us and will stop at nothing to try to help us see that, though, with free will, we are always able to say "No" to God and refuse the grace that is offered to us.

So, then, once we begin to understand how God is at work and realize that God wants us to know God (seriously, I know it sounds awkward not to use "him," but gender-specific pronouns for God get on my nerves...), we may realize that we need God, that God's grace is more than we can find from worldly pursuits, etc., etc. When we accept God's grace and decide to seek after God and not anything else, when we realize our need to be forgiven and redeemed, we experience justifying grace. Some folks call this "getting saved." It's often referred to as "conversion." For a lot of people, this seems to be the only kind of grace that matters, but not for those of us who see grace from a Wesleyan perspective...

Once we experience being justified by responding to God's offer of forgiveness and redemption (being made more valuable through the saving grace of Christ and the righteousness offered through it), we experience God's grace, still, as we are being made perfected in Christian love. This is sanctifying grace--that grace that makes us more holy, more like Jesus, more like God created us and called us to be.

At this point, I stop to ask my friend if this is all making sense, and the reply is that sanctifying grace seems tough to grasp.  Let me explain a little more, then:

Sanctifying grace is kind of more like what helps us become more faithful Christians. I guess we'd say it's the way the Holy Spirit lends a hand, while we are trying to walk the walk of being Christian.

Oh, and "Christan perfection" is a tricky term. What John Wesley said was that we are being changed into people who love with the selfless love of God, so reaching "perfection" means that all we do is motivated by that kind of love, not something else. It doesn't mean we wouldn't make mistakes, but that our motives would be pure. He also didn't believe that most people reach Christian perfection in this life--it's something that is completed when we are made whole again in heaven with God (that is probably not at all the right wording.)

Now, you theology mavens out there can comment here and tell me what I'm missing or where I've gone wrong.  I don't claim to be an expert, but I think this explanation was helpful to my friend, so maybe there's someone else out there who would find it useful...and maybe I need to check myself before Sunday morning's sermon and remember that some things about faith aren't supposed to be so much mystery!!  Tell me what you think, friends!

Some Christmas Thoughts

Here's my message from Christmas Eve.  I had meant to post it before now, but you know how things go this time of year...with any luck, I'll share some other Christmas Eve and Longest Night thoughts from years past (though because of the demise of my flash drive, I will be retyping each one of them, not just copying and pasting), before Christmas is over next Monday!  And then, who knows what I'll write about...

“For Me?!”

Christmas Eve Homily 2013

When we got ready to go to the first party of the season this year, we tried to explain to our two-year-old that we were going to a Christmas party…and his response was, “A birthday party?  For ME?!”  Needless to say, as you might expect with a two-year-old, we have a little ways to go before we completely understand the concept of Christmas parties, or the “real” meaning of Christmas, at all!

But as we read the Christmas story, we see a whole host of people asking that same question, “For ME?!”  In part of the story that we didn’t read tonight, Zechariah asked the angel, “For ME?!” when the angel told him he would have a son, who would become John the Baptist.  Unfortunately for Zechariah, asking that question got him 9 months of no speaking!  When the angel came to Mary she asked, “For ME?!” and then proclaimed her obedience to God, in the face of certain scandal and questioning by the people around her, when she was found to be with child.

When the angel showed up in the middle of a dark and quiet night, to some dirty shepherds out in a field, that angel didn’t wait for the shepherds to ask, “For ME?!”  The angel said, “I am bringing you news of great joy for all people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.  This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” (Luke 2:11-12)  And then all the angels showed up in full force, to make sure the shepherds got the point—something BIG had happened—for them, and for all people!

We should know that this news is for all of us, and makes a difference in our lives.  We should know that God has given a sign to us, that the world would never be the same after the birth of that one baby boy.  But sometimes, instead of knowing that the news and the gift are for all of us, even us sinners, we ask, “For ME?!” because we don’t think we could accept such a gift.  We don’t think we are worth such an offer as a Savior, as God-with-us, just like sometimes we don’t accept someone else’s Christmas gift because it seems too much for us.  But the good news of Christ is for us, for all of us, and there is nothing God wants more than for us to accept that good news and the gift of grace.

Now, sometimes when we ask, “For ME?!” we think it’s something we don’t need.  We forget that we need to accept the gift of Christ’s grace, that God isn’t offering us a bonus of some sort, but something our very souls have been longing for—the opportunity to be made right with God, the grace that is greater than all our sins.  The good news of Christmas isn’t just a nice message or a frivolous “extra” offered to us by God, but the one and only thing we’ve been needing for longer than we even knew.

Other times, we forget that Christmas isn’t actually about us, but it is for us.  Though the story of Christmas, as scripture tells it, includes a large cast of characters and we learn some very intriguing things about many of them, it is really about God’s work in their lives and in the world through their lives.  When we lose perspective and forget about that, we can also forget that Christ came for all people, not as a gift some deserved for being extra good.  The most important person in the story is the one who comes without words, without being able to do anything for himself, the child who was promised, the child who is announced by angels, who comes for us all.

His birth was announced first to those who were outcasts and commoners—shepherds—and not to powerful rulers.  So they went to check the facts, Luke tells us, and then they went to tell others: “When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them.” (Luke 2:17-18)  It was a grass roots effort, the night that Christ was born—some old dirty shepherds had the news to share, and the people wouldn’t have known if the shepherds hadn’t told it.  And then, Luke says, “The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.” (Luke 2:20)

So yes, Christmas is for me and for you!  We don’t have to ask and wonder.  We don’t have to feel like we’re not good enough for Christ to come for us.  We don’t have to think we’re not ready enough for Christ to come for us.  When we hear the story again, the amazing, incredible, crazy story about a baby who comes to save us all, who is God right here with us, we don’t have to ask, “For ME?!”  Like the shepherds, we can know that it’s true and praise God for the wonder of it all.

But there’s one other thing I should tell you about what my son has been up to recently.  He has also taken to taking things out of the shopping cart when we’re in a store somewhere, and handing them to people who walk by, saying, “For YOU!”  And once we know the story, and remember again that it is the story of God at work, come to save all of us, we are sent out to do like those shepherds did, to tell others and let them know the story is, “For YOU!”

Will you come and receive the Christ tonight, born in a manger, God-with-us, come to save us all?  Will you come and believe the story again, no matter how many times you have heard it before?  And then, will you go and share it with others, praising God for God’s mighty and wondrous deeds, at Christmas and always?

Looking for Light

This was my meditation for my Longest Night of the Year Service on the 21st.  I always really appreciate having that service and doing some writing for it.  I'll probably post last year's meditation, whenever I get a chance to type it up--I lost a lot of my files from the past several years when my flash drive died recently... 

“Looking for Light” 

Longest Night Meditation 2013

Matthew 2:9-10

 Brock, Benjamin, and I were returning home one evening recently, and as we rounded a curve in the subdivision, the lights at one house clicked off.  We realized as we drove down the street that the power was out all the way down the street, but just on one side of it.  We were thankful to arrive at home and find that our power was on, though I know our neighbors were not nearly as pleased, as they sat in the dark across the street.  It was comforting to see the lights of home.

We’ve heard some of the story of the wise men tonight.  They were people looking for light and longing for home, like us in some ways, though they followed a star in the sky, which I doubt many of us have done.  Yes, perhaps the wise men weren't unlike us. Sure, they had purpose and they were excited about the mission they were on. They looked forward to seeing this king that they had been searching for, for so long. But they were probably also weary, tired of wandering and tired of wondering when they would get to where they were going. They had spent so long looking at a light up in the heavens; perhaps they were more than ready to find a welcoming light on earth below. Their journey had involved untold peril. They could not have known when they started out just what they were in for. Maybe it was a surprise to them to run across Herod, this nutty king who seemed, at best, a little bi-polar in his response to their request for help finding this new king. It had been a long, strange trip, indeed.

            And yet, Matthew tells us that when they arrived at the house--possibly after two or three years of travel, two or three years of wondering if this was all worth it—and they saw that the star had stopped, they were overjoyed. They were overjoyed! What else could they be? They could be disappointed because they had found some plain old little Jewish boy and his mom, but they weren’t. They could be confused, thinking this was surely not the right place, but they didn't stop and just ask for directions. The light they had been looking at for so long finally came to rest somewhere. They were overjoyed!

            We have nearly come to Christmas. We may have been chasing after joy in parties and presents, this whole time. We may have been on the outside, looking in, thinking everyone else knew the joy of the season and we were left out. Tonight, with the wise men (though they won't show up for quite some time, really!), let us rejoice to see that the journey we have been on, the journey we will continue to travel on, has been worth it. The darkness has not won. Just like for the wise men, the distractions and the dangers along the way have not overpowered us.  We have come this far, and we are still standing. And lest we be tempted to lose hope, even now, even as we have nearly made it through the longest night of the year, yet again, we hear again the words from the first chapter of John.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ²He was in the beginning with God. ³All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being ⁴in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.⁵The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

⁹The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world."

~John 1:1-5, 9 (NRSV)

I guess it’s not surprising that we would talk about light and darkness a lot at this time of year, when we experience so much literal darkness.  And the Christmas story reminds us all about the difference between light and darkness.  We may just find ourselves in spiritual darkness, as well as physical darkness, this time of year.  And the promise is that no matter how much darkness we may feel like we’re sitting in, it cannot overcome the light that is Christ, shining into all the darkness.

The light that we have been looking for has arrived. There is no darkness in our lives great enough to put it out. There has never been, nor will there ever be. When we think we are in the midst of the pit, the light shall still be shining. When we think we are lost along the way, the light does not leave us to grope blindly in the dark. No, despite all our cares and the darkness that seems to set in, the light has, in fact dawned. We don't always recognize him. We don't always hear his voice. But he remains: God with us. Emmanuel. The very king the wise men traveled so far to see: God with us. The light of the world.

Let us, too, be overjoyed this Christmas, not because we have no sorrow, not because we feel no heartache, and not because we experience no pain. Let us, too, be overjoyed with the wise men because, at last, the one who came as just a baby is, indeed, the light we have been looking for. There is light in the darkness. New day will dawn again. And the light we have been looking for will be light to all people, that no darkness will ever extinguish.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

"You're Doing It Wrong"

My husband has recently taken to using the comment, "You're doing it wrong," when something becomes more difficult than it should be or doesn't turn out right, etc.  Sometimes, it's funny.  Sometimes, it's true.  As I've considered the last week in my life, I've needed this phrase at times.

The last week has brought considerable rejection and disappointment for me.  On Friday evening, I found myself in such a funk that I had let that rejection and disappointment get to me, and I was upset with my husband, frustrated about our pets' behavior, tired, not feeling well, and at a loss for what to do next, in the face of what I'd been trying to deal with for the two days beforehand.  As I sat in bed, ruminating, I thought to myself, "Betzy, you're doing it wrong."  I mean, really, look at the title of this blog--"The Ubiquity of Grace."  I didn't just choose that name because I wanted to give the word "ubiquity" more play time in my everyday vocabulary.  I really believe that God's grace is showing up all the time, even when we don't notice it.  Now, I'm still not quite over grieving the loss of some opportunities I was really, really hoping for, but at least on Friday night, when I finally admitted to myself, "Betzy, you're doing it wrong," I realized that God is walking with me through this, and there's grace enough...even when the baby has bronchitis again and the dog pees on the carpet and I don't get to be involved in the ministry I wanted to do.

But that's not all that I thought about.  In the midst of this disappointment, several well-meaning folks have said things to me like, "God has something better in store for you."  Now, I don't claim to know the mind of God, that's for sure.  I have spent the last 10 or so years of my life doing a lot of discerning of where I think God is calling me to be, though.  So I've realized after hearing people's responses to my loss that I need to be more careful about how I respond to other people's disappointment and loss, myself.  I think we all say things sometimes that make us feel better, but we don't realize how much they don't make the person hearing them feel better.  If I find myself going to the default of, "God has something better planned," I hope I'll remember to tell myself, "Betzy, you're doing it wrong."  When we hurt, sometimes we need the caring people in our lives to give us space to grieve for a bit, let us walk through the pain and find God's grace in it...

There is certainly a time for anticipating and expecting how God will bring us to something new and wonderful, but man, I really, really thought maybe that's what God was doing just then...and I'll get to the anticipation.  I know I will.  And I hope that when I'm dealing with someone else who's hurting, I won't have to tell myself, "You're doing it wrong," because I will have learned a lesson in all this, by the grace of God.

Welcome Back (to me!)!

It's been a while since I posted on this blog.  You might notice the new name and URL.  The French Broad Circuit, which I served when I began this blog, no longer exists.  Bethel UMC and French Broad UMC are both on their own now, and I pastor elsewhere.  I look forward to sharing some thoughts on this blog on a more regular basis, not as a website for a church, but just as a blog for those who have the time to read.  I hope I'll have the time to write something worth reading!  Thanks for stopping by.  I'll be posting again soon!