Please take a moment to celebrate and give thanks for God’s Spirit of love and grace, alive in our faith community, by reading the Annual Report HERE.

I’m writing this on the plane home from Greece. Forty-one pilgrims followed in the footsteps of Paul’s second missionary journey through Greece and Turkey. Even though I have studied Paul for decades, this trip has transformed him from a stick figure to a living, breathing, spirit-filled leader. How can I ever forget seeing his prison cell in Phillipi?

Sixteen years ago, the farmer/poet/novelist Wendell Berry spoke from our pulpit to a jam-packed sanctuary on a Thursday night. I watched young people who had never set foot in a church arrive and enthusiastically lean in to catch his every soft-spoken word.

Some of the best nuggets for a sermon end up on the cutting room floor. During the current series “Back to the School of Discipleship,” I’ve been reading lessons from the Apostle Paul on how to follow Jesus.

The great spiritual leader of our time, Father Richard Rohr, describes how we are all called to engage in an intimate relationship with the living God. All of us are called.

The hardest part of my job is also the hardest part of my faith. I’ve been trying to master it for decades, but it still eludes me. There is plenty for me to blame it on.

I stepped out into the soft green grass on the front lawn of the church so I could see the faces of the kids as they sang.

I met Mary when I was nine years old, and she became like a second mother to me. Tennis matches every Saturday, family vacations to the Lake every summer, mother-daughter excursions, neighborhood game nights, in-home manicures, and scavenger hunts at the farm were just a smattering of the joyful chapters we shared.

Bike rides, alpine slides, train rides, mountain hikes. We tried to cram a plethora of fun into our long-awaited week with the 12 of us. The first miracle was that we all showed up!