Karecards

 
Danny pointed me toward Karen Sudduth’s wonderful site today. If you subscribe to our church’s daily devotional, you’re familiar with some of Karen’s writing. When I read the devotional that our church emailed us today, I knew who the author was within the first few sentences. There’s not many people that I can recognize through [...]

Consarnit

I’ve added a link under the “Prayerlist” in the left hand column – “Consarnit“.  It’s Andy Nelson’s blog about dealing with this father’s fight with cancer.  Andy and his brothers, Bud and Tom, have been friends of mine for years, and I ask for your thoughts and prayers as they and their father (and their [...]

Confession and Petition to God

If today’s lesson scripture seems familiar, read it out loud.  It may seem even more familiar because we hear in these words the pattern of prayer that we sometimes hear in worship today.  Spontaneous prayer is wonderful, but there is also a place for prayers that are written out as well.  They need not be [...]

A Fervent Prayer for the People

Pretty good discussion in class today.  A few thoughts emerged.  The object of the lesson was to acknowledge that God may require us to make radical changes in our lives when we have strayed.  For Judea – the name given to Judah on the return from exile – this meant that the community had to [...]

The boldness of faith

As is often the case, the MVT Class frequently discusses the meaning of faith and offers examples. Well, we are a Sunday school class and I’ve been lead to believe that Sunday school classes do that sort of thing.
Anyway, we have also been celebrating, recently, the 40th anniversary of the first Moon landing. [...]

More Willimon Wisdom

While reading Will Willimon’s Why I Am A United Methodist, I came across these words that I found a bit provocative (Willimon, at the time, was on the faculty at Duke University; now he’s bishop of the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church):
A young man came in to see me and said that [...]

Tough Times for Siblings in Faith

Article by N. T. “Tom” Wright, Bishop of Durham, on the emerging schism in the Episcopal Church in the United States.  Every Christian has to feel empathy for our fellow believers during a time of fundamental disagreement and its resulting turmoil.  We should not only pray for our friends, but for our selves and our [...]

Society should know beliefs, their meanings

The human mind demands explanations to the ultimate questions of life, and that the simple accumulation of facts doesn’t always guarantee complete and satisfactory answers.

Magnolias and Western Heresy . . .

 
 
The crisis of this moment has several parts, and like Episcopalians, particularly the ones in Mississippi, they’re all related . . .
          — Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori
             Opening Address at General Convention 2009
I really need to let some one with better wit and means of expressing it (Danny Mac or Otis) take this one [...]

Methodist Charity in Truth

A post earlier today concerned Pope Benedict’s encyclical, “Caritas in Veritate” (Charity in Truth), which addresses social issues involved in economic development and recovery.  When I checked my mailbox (the real one – out by the road) I found that this month’s issue of The Advocate, the monthly newsletter of the Mississippi Annual Conference had arrived [...]