Go & Tell the Story

By Deacon Connie R. Stover Director, Seeking the Spirit Within Today as I write this blog article, I cannot see the sun, and it is bitterly cold outside.   It looks like the sun has disappeared and abandoned me, as the sky is a dulling, gray slate of sameness.   I want to wrap myself in a warm, soft blanket and hibernate.   But alas, today is the deadline for this article to be written.   People are reaching out to me with their questions through phone calls, text messages and emails.   As I sit at my computer, I realize that I am hungry.   It is as if God is saying to me, “Arise!   Wake up!   Look around!” For me, God’s call to arise, wake up, and look around, comes each morning as I sit myself down in my sacred space to spend time with God.   This is a daily intention to first look to God for the gifts of light and warmth in all days – the gray days of routine sameness and the bright days of exciting newness.   If I ...

By Rev. Rebecca Sheridan           Christmas is over, and our attention in most congregations has turned to annual meetings.   Budgets, elections, and resolutions are foremost topics of conversation in most church councils.   The hymn for reflection this month calls us back to remembering why we’re in the “business” of church in the first place.   Budgets, council members, buildings, committees, and all other organizational structures of the church are meant to support ministry so that we can share the life-giving good news that God offers all of us in Jesus Christ.   In baptism, we give the newly baptized (or his or her sponsor if an infant) a candle saying, “Let your light so shine before others so that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven,” from Matthew 5:16.   From the beginning of our life in Christ, we are called to let God’s light shine in and through us.   The hymn as well as coun...

By Rev. Juliet Hampton, Assistant to the Bishop My parents were married in the late 1960’s, and early in their marriage they purchased an item that would unknowingly change my perception of how a Christmas tree had to look to feel complete to me.   Their purchase was a golden star, with a rotating plastic tube that would heat up from a lightbulb and shine hundreds of little beams of colored light from the all over the room.   My earliest childhood memory is having some aliment that kept me up all night during the harsh winter, and being rocked in my mother’s arms watching this light. I was fascinated by the reflection of the light onto the walls.   Little beams of color dancing all around the room would lull me to sleep.   I knew this was good, but I didn’t have an understanding of why it was good.   I didn’t understand until the first Christmas when my own child was ill, and I rocked him in front of a similar star of light on my own tree. E...