Our blog today comes courtesy of Kristyn Kidney, a lover of words and of Jesus! COME Come. You are invited out of your hurry, out of your content-saturated day, out of your to-do-list that never runs out of urgency. Ready yourself to slow down. Come. Recline comfortably as one who belongs here. I mean get really  comfortable. Set down your awkwardness, your uncertainty, and all the noisy expectations for you. Come in and rest assured you belong here at this table and in this

My view from The Mt. of Beatitudes It was eight days into my trip.  A trip that had been cancelled two years prior due to Covid.  As the travel restrictions had been lifted, we were among the first groups allowed into Israel. I was awestruck as we traveled from city to city and through the countryside.  These were places I had only read about in Bible Stories.  Joppa, Caesarea, Capernaum, Mt. Carmel, a Nazareth village.  The list goes on and on.  Ahh! But to sit on what’s now

The physical sensation is always grittier than I expect. Every year on Ash Wednesday, I walk toward the front of the sanctuary and join the line of the faithful. I stand before a minister and close my eyes. I feel a thumb dip into a bowl of burnt palm branches mixed with oil. Then I feel the pressure of the cross being traced onto my forehead. It is not a polite smudge. It is a dark and jarring mark. I hear the words that our modern culture is terrified to whisper to one anot

This weeks blog was written by Laurence Dunn Over the past  3 weeks, I have been reading through the Psalms sequentially with my wife, starting with Psalm 1. I invite you to take this reading journey with me. Having reached probably the best-known Psalm, #23, I am having a Selah(pause) moment to reflect on what we have been reading and observing about the life of David and his relationship with God. One of the challenges we have faced is putting each Psalm into a time framewo

Several years ago, I spent a day on a prayer retreat at a home in the West Hills of Portland. The owners had created a labyrinth on their property, using small evergreen bushes to provide the walls of the pathway. Walking labyrinths has always been a delight to me—the invitation to walk slowly with God—there is a destination at the center, but the path winds back and forth—and reaching the center becomes less important than the chance to be present to God and listen to him. T

The dark of night seems to linger so long these mornings as January unfolds day by day and the times for sunrise and sunset seems to remain constant, while I long for more light. But then it begins-- black gives way to grey shadows; even the bare trees take on their own beauty as they stand out naked against the brightening sky; and then almost imperceptibly, color begins to show-- pale yellow that slowly turns to orange and then to red, more and more brilliant as it fills th

{Our post today was written by an amazing high school Junior, Maia Miller.} As the spring of 2020 hit the world, I was beginning the transformation out of elementary school. Through that next year of 6th grade I really truly felt the isolation and the confusion of change but without any connection besides my family and a few friends. Though that year was really hard for me and many others, I was really blessed to still have community and a hobby through ballet. I have been da

{Today, my dear friend Jenell Kemhus is sharing with you her experience of God's provision for her} I often look for markers in my life. Places where I can see when something shifted or changed or took root. Places of growth. Places of learning. Sometimes these markers are positive like when a belief system takes root and I see my life marked by that for the better. Other times these markers are negative like when fears take root and I have to fight them from that point on. M

{A guest post written by my dear friend Teresa Vice} It was a month and two days after my surgery when the pain struck in the dark early hours of the morning.  My body immediately stiffened as if it were fighting against an enemy attack.  Crying out, as I turned and twisted back and forth to find some kind of relief, only created more pain.  Then a phrase kept repeating – “Relax, relax into the pain”.  WHAT? RELAX?  Out of desperation I slowed down my breathing and with each

From the stillness of this place of waiting, of pondering, of allowing the year ahead to unfold... not with my list of things I want to accomplish this year (although there are plenty of those!) but to wait, to respond to Dom’s invitation to listen for God’s direction. Our church has this rhythm of making the month of January a time of rest, a time for a different focus. This has seemed odd to me, as here in the States we're in the middle of the year (not like in New Zealand

We are still in the feast. While the rest of the culture has dragged the tree to the curb and returned the unwanted sweaters, we know that the Twelve Days are not a countdown to Christmas, but a lingering within it. We are still in Christmastide. The light has come, but it has not yet fully dispensed the shadows. We are moving toward Epiphany, toward the revelation, but we are not there yet. And yet, I feel it. You likely feel it, too. The phantom pressure of January 1st. It

I was daydreaming—I admit it. I had a few moments to myself and I'd slipped away to be alone. It still seemed so amazing... I'd watched Joseph for years over on the men's side in the synagogue. He always looks so absorbed, so present to God, and of course he's so handsome! So when my parents told me they had arranged a marriage for us… my dreams had come true! We had talked briefly, both of us delighted to plan to raise a family who would love and serve God.   Suddenly I was

(This post comes from the talented, Pastor Michael Smith... known to us as MDubs) This child isn’t mine. I remember the feeling, the fear, the reeling, Scandal, embarrassment, no hope of concealing that my love, My wife-to-be, had conceived.  And deceived?  How could this be? This child isn’t mine. Head spinning, knees weak, that thought on repeat, She’d just come home - it was barely a week since she’d arrived From three months at her cousin’s and, unpleasant surprise, Visib

(A guest post written by my dear friend, the esteemed Laurie Kemhus) Magi from the east, pagan astrologers, sorcerers and wizards. But kings? No. They did appear to be wise, though, because they actually stopped and asked for directions: “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews?” A Star is Born A brand new star appeared in the sky, and God told them why it was there. These foreign magicians remembered the Hebrew prophecies they had studied. Numbers 24:17 “ I see him, b

I remember that night so vividly.                    Of course, with what happened later, it would never have been forgotten, but it was… it was so many things that happened. It was the first night that my father had allowed me to come with him to watch the sheep. I'd watched him go out day after day after day and wanted all my life so much to be with him, to go with that group of shepherds. I figured that they must have all sorts of fun up there  even though it's nighttime  

The Lamp in the Window: Vigilance at Year's End On New Year's Eve 1999, millions of people around the world stayed awake watching computer screens. Y2K had created an unprecedented moment of global vigilance. Engineers who had spent months updating code sat ready at command centers. Families stockpiled water and batteries. The world held its breath, watching. When midnight struck in New Zealand, then Australia, then Asia, and nothing catastrophic happened, the vigil continued

On a recent road trip to visit our youngest daughter who is facing some major challenges, my husband Laurence asked me, “What are some of the highlights of this year?” “Highlights! This gray, ugly, challenging year?” I flung back at him. Wisely he said nothing. After a pause, I decided to give him back his question. He shared a few of the highlights he saw. And gradually, as we drove on, I began to remember some of the amazing, wonderful things that happened this year. As I s

"What do you think? A man had two sons..." (Matthew 21:28) Jesus had a gift for exposing the human heart with breathtaking economy. In just five verses, the parable of the two sons cuts through our religious pretense and forces us to confront an uncomfortable question: Does our obedience to God match our words about God? The Story That Won't Let Us Off Easy The parable is deceptively simple. A father asks his two sons to work in the vineyard. The first son refuses outright w

T he Challenge of Being Ordinary “It’s so hard to be ordinary,“ I say to God as I wander down Addison’s Walk at Magdalen College in Oxford, retracing the steps of my beloved C S Lewis.   He walked this way often, “pondering”, the girl at the gate told me.   What words swirled in his mind as he walked, I wondered, words that graced his many insightful books  and the letters he wrote to friends and strangers alike sharing himself so freely?   So, I walk quietly in awe of the aw

When I first came to the States with my family, we were strangers in a strange land. We soon made friends with other immigrant couples and had lots of fun times together as families from foreign shores. Later I found out that the husband of one couple was an alcoholic and would go on drinking binges for up to a month. He managed to keep his job because he was a highly skilled pattern maker and much in demand. However he would often leave work and go straight to the local tave