Avoidance is not The Way
May 16, 2017
Christ Church Episcopal, Norcross, GA
5th Sunday of Easter
Acts 7:55-60; John 14:1-14
Rules of the Road
February 12, 2017
Christ Church Episcopal, Norcross, GA
The 6th Sunday after Epiphany
Deuteronomy 30:15-20; 1 Corinthians 3:1-9; Matthew 5:21-37
(Gospel Text provided below)
Most summers when I was a kid my family would pack up the station wagon and head off on a road trip. Sometimes we went to the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, other times to see our cousins in Springfield, Ohio. From Houston, it usually took two days of driving to reach our destination, and with five kids and two adults, it was a very full car.
Now anyone who’s traveled in a station wagon, similar to traveling on a crowded airplane, there are “preferred seats.” As you’d expect, the window seats were first choice. And while sitting in the way-back wasn’t great, especially when the seat faced backwards (whose idea was that?) – even the way-back ranked higher than the dreaded middle seat. But the best seat was the one we called the seat-apart. It’s the one that gets pulled forward to let others into the way-back. What made it so popular was the little split that clearly designated where your seat began and where it ended. All the other seats left room for seat creep, followed by the emphatic complaint: “Mom, she’s touching me!”
Now, my mom’s a big fan of being fair – or at least trying to be fair. So, realizing she had five young children traveling in a very confined space for hour after hour, she came up with a rotation strategy. Every time we stopped for a meal or to get gas, us kids would rotate seats. This way everyone had time in the dreaded middle seat, in the way-back, and in the coveted seat-apart. She put this plan – these rules – in place, with the hope of creating harmony for our long journey together. Read the rest of this entry »
The Gift that Keeps On Giving
May 15, 2016
Christ Church Episcopal, Norcross, GA
Day of Pentecost
Genesis 11:1-9; Acts 2:1-21; John 14:8-17, 25-27
I’d like to see a show of hands… how many of you have a birthday that falls during the summer months? I have a summer birthday. It’s in late July.
Summer birthdays are different than school-year birthdays. If you were like me, your birthday parties probably had fewer school friends, who were scattered for the summer. Instead, you’d have kids from the neighborhood pool and family. When I was young, I always wanted a school-year birthday because it seemed like they got more attention. I contend this isn’t just true for our personal birthdays, but also for the birthday of the church.
That’s what today is after all – Pentecost Sunday! The Birthday of the Church.
Now, unlike our birthdays which fall on the same date each year, Pentecost falls on different days because it’s always 50 days after Easter and Easter moves around. This year Easter was pretty early, so while Pentecost is usually a summer-birthday-kind-of-day, this year it’s been upgraded to a school-year birthday! So instead of a lot of folks being scattered, we’re all here to celebrate together!
We’ve got our festive red outfits on, our flamed-ribbon-sticks in-hand, a dove flying in the procession, special music – the works! It’s quite a birthday celebration for the Church!
But why is Pentecost considered the birthday of the church?
Happy Tail-wagging Day!
November 26, 2015
Christ Church Episcopal, Norcross, GA
Thanksgiving Day; Year B
Joel 2:21-27; Psalm 126; 1 Timothy 2:1-7; Matthew 6:25-33
A few days ago I saw a post on my Facebook Page that caught my eye. This is what it said:
There is a story they tell of two dogs.
Both at separate times walk into the same room.
One comes out wagging his tail while the other comes out growling.
A woman watching this goes into the room to see what could possibly make one dog so happy and the other so mad.
To her surprise she finds a room filled with mirrors.
The happy dog found a thousand happy dogs looking back at him while the angry dog saw only angry dogs growling back at him.
What you see in the world around you is a reflection of who you are.
I think there’s a lot of truth to this.
Just yesterday, as I was trying to make my way through a grocery store parking lot, I found myself getting more and more frustrated. At 3:00 pm on the day before Thanksgiving, everyone is getting their last-minute items – including me. I was already envisioning the long check-out lines and decided I just didn’t have the patience for this right now, so I headed to another store, one closer to home.
Luckily, that extra drive gave me a chance to make an attitude adjustment. Read the rest of this entry »
