Singing Along the Journey

Advent

People, look East…the search for hope and wonder

People look East -- the first words of a familiar hymn often sung during Advent.  I'm having trouble leaving the words of this hymn confined within their traditional time frame.  The meaning of time has certainly changed for many of us these past months, and if 2020 changes anything, those changes call me to embrace the hope and preparation of Advent as a lifestyle, not a season. People look East, the time is near. Yesterday, as I rose at an hour all too early and all too cold for the end of December, again, I made my morning calculation -- which way will I walk?  Will I head to the…
Read More

Le Noël des Oiseaux: Recording by Susan Sevier & Cheryl Branham

Usually, right at this moment, I am at one of many locations in my neighborhood, outside.  Walking.  Rain or shine, cold or heat, I have been walking.  Looking at the sunrise, watching the clouds, observing the few other socially-distancing dog walkers or runners or the occasional package pirate on a scooter streaming away with their prize. There is supposed to be snow falling outside my window right now, but I live in the great DC Snow Hole, so what we have instead is freezing wind with the promise of freezing rain as the invisible sun moves on its invisible journey around the planet. But, in the expectation of snow, I…
Read More

Who are you…and why do you do it?

That question...I've written about it before.  And again, before.  And I most assuredly write about it again. Truly, it is a theme through most of what I (well, not just me) do...this idea of our identity, as people of faith, as people who live an incarnated existence, as followers of Jesus.  It is a question to which I do not expect to find an answer that endures for long; the answer has always been, for me, a moving target, often changing slightly with each breath that I take. So, obviously, when I hear the words of John 1:19-28, well, I just cannot help but consider the question again.  Where do…
Read More

An arroyo is never the trail…

Last night, I enjoyed the Arena Stage production of Rogers and Hammerstein's Carousel, you know the one that ends with that big song about faith and hope, You Never Walk Alone.  And before that, I spent most of the day in the recording studio editing the final cut of my version of Walk with Me, an arrangement of the two traditional songs, I Want Jesus to Walk With Me and We Must Walk This Lonesome Valley.  Methinks that I am thinking a lot about the road ahead, the path I walk, the path I am called to walk? A couple of weeks ago, I was in the red rocks of Sedona, Arizona, hiking.  That is not…
Read More

Remembering joy…

Monday evening, I participated in the Service of Remembrance at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in my neighborhood.  The Service of Remembrance, or, as some call it, a "blue" service, is the seasonal service for "the rest of us" -- those of us who find the required mirth of the secular season difficult.  I am always surprised that so few people attend these services, because I know that there are so many who find this season challenging.  For me, it was an important time to stop and feel, to sit and pray, and to be with others in a like-hearted space. In one brief hour, whoever planned the service managed to…
Read More

With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation…

Gaudate Sunday...today is an  important anniversary for me.  Six years ago this very morning, around 11:10 a.m., I was baptized for a second time in my adult life.  That day in December was, like today, the third Sunday of Advent, also in the Lectionary cycle Year C.  That day in December, I joined the Calvary Baptist Church and embraced a form of Christian and community identity based in the Baptist distinctives,  a group of beliefs about individual and community practice  that is best described by the charter covenant of the Alliance of Baptists.  It has been the lens through which I have understood my life in Christ for almost ten years now,…
Read More

Wait, is it already Advent?

Yes, I admit it.  I am behind.  Travelling will do that to me.  The end of the semester will do that to me.  Preparing for a concert where I am singing something totally new (like I am next week) pushes all sense of time and season out of the way.  Today, however, I decided to face the truth -- Advent has begun without me. And so, while I am busy getting my act together, I convinced myself that one good Advent devotional activity would be to go back and read some of the things that I myself wrote in years past during this season.  I hope you will not mind…
Read More

Lions, lambs, cows and bears…Advent 2013 Day 21

Lately, I've been introduced to an interpretative school known as the canonical approach to biblical interpretation.  In the canonical method of reading, the Scripture is treated not as some source document to be picked apart and dissected by scholars of all kind, but as a canon of writings that together talk of the experience of people across the ages as they try to live together in a community of faith. There is much that the scholars can say about this text, as there is most of the text in Isaiah, but sometimes you simply have to surrender to the beauty of the poetry and of the metaphors used to carry…
Read More

With what shall I come before the Lord? Advent 2013 Day 20

Little drummer boys, kings, shepherds -- on that night of nights they all ask the question that each and everyone of us asks with every moment that we draw breath as part of God's creation (whether or not we know we ask):  with what shall I come before the Lord... “With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin…
Read More

Choose this day whom you will serve…Advent 2013 Day 19

My first thought when I saw this listed as the passage of the day was -- really?  Joshua?  Advent? But it really turns out to be an inspired choice for an Advent reading: Now therefore revere the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness; put away the gods that your ancestors served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. Now if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my…
Read More

People, look East…the search for hope and wonder

People look East -- the first words of a familiar hymn often sung during Advent.  I'm having trouble leaving the words of this hymn confined within their traditional time frame.  The meaning of time has certainly changed for many of us these past months, and if 2020 changes anything, those changes call me to embrace the hope and preparation of Advent as a lifestyle, not a season. People look East, the time is near. Yesterday, as I rose at an hour all too early and all too cold for the end of December, again, I made my morning calculation -- which way will I walk?  Will I head to the…
Read More

Le Noël des Oiseaux: Recording by Susan Sevier & Cheryl Branham

Usually, right at this moment, I am at one of many locations in my neighborhood, outside.  Walking.  Rain or shine, cold or heat, I have been walking.  Looking at the sunrise, watching the clouds, observing the few other socially-distancing dog walkers or runners or the occasional package pirate on a scooter streaming away with their prize. There is supposed to be snow falling outside my window right now, but I live in the great DC Snow Hole, so what we have instead is freezing wind with the promise of freezing rain as the invisible sun moves on its invisible journey around the planet. But, in the expectation of snow, I…
Read More

Who are you…and why do you do it?

That question...I've written about it before.  And again, before.  And I most assuredly write about it again. Truly, it is a theme through most of what I (well, not just me) do...this idea of our identity, as people of faith, as people who live an incarnated existence, as followers of Jesus.  It is a question to which I do not expect to find an answer that endures for long; the answer has always been, for me, a moving target, often changing slightly with each breath that I take. So, obviously, when I hear the words of John 1:19-28, well, I just cannot help but consider the question again.  Where do…
Read More

An arroyo is never the trail…

Last night, I enjoyed the Arena Stage production of Rogers and Hammerstein's Carousel, you know the one that ends with that big song about faith and hope, You Never Walk Alone.  And before that, I spent most of the day in the recording studio editing the final cut of my version of Walk with Me, an arrangement of the two traditional songs, I Want Jesus to Walk With Me and We Must Walk This Lonesome Valley.  Methinks that I am thinking a lot about the road ahead, the path I walk, the path I am called to walk? A couple of weeks ago, I was in the red rocks of Sedona, Arizona, hiking.  That is not…
Read More

Remembering joy…

Monday evening, I participated in the Service of Remembrance at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in my neighborhood.  The Service of Remembrance, or, as some call it, a "blue" service, is the seasonal service for "the rest of us" -- those of us who find the required mirth of the secular season difficult.  I am always surprised that so few people attend these services, because I know that there are so many who find this season challenging.  For me, it was an important time to stop and feel, to sit and pray, and to be with others in a like-hearted space. In one brief hour, whoever planned the service managed to…
Read More

With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation…

Gaudate Sunday...today is an  important anniversary for me.  Six years ago this very morning, around 11:10 a.m., I was baptized for a second time in my adult life.  That day in December was, like today, the third Sunday of Advent, also in the Lectionary cycle Year C.  That day in December, I joined the Calvary Baptist Church and embraced a form of Christian and community identity based in the Baptist distinctives,  a group of beliefs about individual and community practice  that is best described by the charter covenant of the Alliance of Baptists.  It has been the lens through which I have understood my life in Christ for almost ten years now,…
Read More

Wait, is it already Advent?

Yes, I admit it.  I am behind.  Travelling will do that to me.  The end of the semester will do that to me.  Preparing for a concert where I am singing something totally new (like I am next week) pushes all sense of time and season out of the way.  Today, however, I decided to face the truth -- Advent has begun without me. And so, while I am busy getting my act together, I convinced myself that one good Advent devotional activity would be to go back and read some of the things that I myself wrote in years past during this season.  I hope you will not mind…
Read More

Lions, lambs, cows and bears…Advent 2013 Day 21

Lately, I've been introduced to an interpretative school known as the canonical approach to biblical interpretation.  In the canonical method of reading, the Scripture is treated not as some source document to be picked apart and dissected by scholars of all kind, but as a canon of writings that together talk of the experience of people across the ages as they try to live together in a community of faith. There is much that the scholars can say about this text, as there is most of the text in Isaiah, but sometimes you simply have to surrender to the beauty of the poetry and of the metaphors used to carry…
Read More

With what shall I come before the Lord? Advent 2013 Day 20

Little drummer boys, kings, shepherds -- on that night of nights they all ask the question that each and everyone of us asks with every moment that we draw breath as part of God's creation (whether or not we know we ask):  with what shall I come before the Lord... “With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin…
Read More

Choose this day whom you will serve…Advent 2013 Day 19

My first thought when I saw this listed as the passage of the day was -- really?  Joshua?  Advent? But it really turns out to be an inspired choice for an Advent reading: Now therefore revere the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness; put away the gods that your ancestors served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. Now if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my…
Read More

People, look East…the search for hope and wonder

People look East -- the first words of a familiar hymn often sung during Advent.  I'm having trouble leaving the words of this hymn confined within their traditional time frame.  The meaning of time has certainly changed for many of us these past months, and if 2020 changes anything, those changes call me to embrace the hope and preparation of Advent as a lifestyle, not a season. People look East, the time is near. Yesterday, as I rose at an hour all too early and all too cold for the end of December, again, I made my morning calculation -- which way will I walk?  Will I head to the…
Read More

Le Noël des Oiseaux: Recording by Susan Sevier & Cheryl Branham

Usually, right at this moment, I am at one of many locations in my neighborhood, outside.  Walking.  Rain or shine, cold or heat, I have been walking.  Looking at the sunrise, watching the clouds, observing the few other socially-distancing dog walkers or runners or the occasional package pirate on a scooter streaming away with their prize. There is supposed to be snow falling outside my window right now, but I live in the great DC Snow Hole, so what we have instead is freezing wind with the promise of freezing rain as the invisible sun moves on its invisible journey around the planet. But, in the expectation of snow, I…
Read More

Who are you…and why do you do it?

That question...I've written about it before.  And again, before.  And I most assuredly write about it again. Truly, it is a theme through most of what I (well, not just me) do...this idea of our identity, as people of faith, as people who live an incarnated existence, as followers of Jesus.  It is a question to which I do not expect to find an answer that endures for long; the answer has always been, for me, a moving target, often changing slightly with each breath that I take. So, obviously, when I hear the words of John 1:19-28, well, I just cannot help but consider the question again.  Where do…
Read More

An arroyo is never the trail…

Last night, I enjoyed the Arena Stage production of Rogers and Hammerstein's Carousel, you know the one that ends with that big song about faith and hope, You Never Walk Alone.  And before that, I spent most of the day in the recording studio editing the final cut of my version of Walk with Me, an arrangement of the two traditional songs, I Want Jesus to Walk With Me and We Must Walk This Lonesome Valley.  Methinks that I am thinking a lot about the road ahead, the path I walk, the path I am called to walk? A couple of weeks ago, I was in the red rocks of Sedona, Arizona, hiking.  That is not…
Read More

Remembering joy…

Monday evening, I participated in the Service of Remembrance at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in my neighborhood.  The Service of Remembrance, or, as some call it, a "blue" service, is the seasonal service for "the rest of us" -- those of us who find the required mirth of the secular season difficult.  I am always surprised that so few people attend these services, because I know that there are so many who find this season challenging.  For me, it was an important time to stop and feel, to sit and pray, and to be with others in a like-hearted space. In one brief hour, whoever planned the service managed to…
Read More

With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation…

Gaudate Sunday...today is an  important anniversary for me.  Six years ago this very morning, around 11:10 a.m., I was baptized for a second time in my adult life.  That day in December was, like today, the third Sunday of Advent, also in the Lectionary cycle Year C.  That day in December, I joined the Calvary Baptist Church and embraced a form of Christian and community identity based in the Baptist distinctives,  a group of beliefs about individual and community practice  that is best described by the charter covenant of the Alliance of Baptists.  It has been the lens through which I have understood my life in Christ for almost ten years now,…
Read More

Wait, is it already Advent?

Yes, I admit it.  I am behind.  Travelling will do that to me.  The end of the semester will do that to me.  Preparing for a concert where I am singing something totally new (like I am next week) pushes all sense of time and season out of the way.  Today, however, I decided to face the truth -- Advent has begun without me. And so, while I am busy getting my act together, I convinced myself that one good Advent devotional activity would be to go back and read some of the things that I myself wrote in years past during this season.  I hope you will not mind…
Read More

Lions, lambs, cows and bears…Advent 2013 Day 21

Lately, I've been introduced to an interpretative school known as the canonical approach to biblical interpretation.  In the canonical method of reading, the Scripture is treated not as some source document to be picked apart and dissected by scholars of all kind, but as a canon of writings that together talk of the experience of people across the ages as they try to live together in a community of faith. There is much that the scholars can say about this text, as there is most of the text in Isaiah, but sometimes you simply have to surrender to the beauty of the poetry and of the metaphors used to carry…
Read More

With what shall I come before the Lord? Advent 2013 Day 20

Little drummer boys, kings, shepherds -- on that night of nights they all ask the question that each and everyone of us asks with every moment that we draw breath as part of God's creation (whether or not we know we ask):  with what shall I come before the Lord... “With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin…
Read More

Choose this day whom you will serve…Advent 2013 Day 19

My first thought when I saw this listed as the passage of the day was -- really?  Joshua?  Advent? But it really turns out to be an inspired choice for an Advent reading: Now therefore revere the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness; put away the gods that your ancestors served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. Now if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my…
Read More

People, look East…the search for hope and wonder

People look East -- the first words of a familiar hymn often sung during Advent.  I'm having trouble leaving the words of this hymn confined within their traditional time frame.  The meaning of time has certainly changed for many of us these past months, and if 2020 changes anything, those changes call me to embrace the hope and preparation of Advent as a lifestyle, not a season. People look East, the time is near. Yesterday, as I rose at an hour all too early and all too cold for the end of December, again, I made my morning calculation -- which way will I walk?  Will I head to the…
Read More

Le Noël des Oiseaux: Recording by Susan Sevier & Cheryl Branham

Usually, right at this moment, I am at one of many locations in my neighborhood, outside.  Walking.  Rain or shine, cold or heat, I have been walking.  Looking at the sunrise, watching the clouds, observing the few other socially-distancing dog walkers or runners or the occasional package pirate on a scooter streaming away with their prize. There is supposed to be snow falling outside my window right now, but I live in the great DC Snow Hole, so what we have instead is freezing wind with the promise of freezing rain as the invisible sun moves on its invisible journey around the planet. But, in the expectation of snow, I…
Read More

Who are you…and why do you do it?

That question...I've written about it before.  And again, before.  And I most assuredly write about it again. Truly, it is a theme through most of what I (well, not just me) do...this idea of our identity, as people of faith, as people who live an incarnated existence, as followers of Jesus.  It is a question to which I do not expect to find an answer that endures for long; the answer has always been, for me, a moving target, often changing slightly with each breath that I take. So, obviously, when I hear the words of John 1:19-28, well, I just cannot help but consider the question again.  Where do…
Read More

An arroyo is never the trail…

Last night, I enjoyed the Arena Stage production of Rogers and Hammerstein's Carousel, you know the one that ends with that big song about faith and hope, You Never Walk Alone.  And before that, I spent most of the day in the recording studio editing the final cut of my version of Walk with Me, an arrangement of the two traditional songs, I Want Jesus to Walk With Me and We Must Walk This Lonesome Valley.  Methinks that I am thinking a lot about the road ahead, the path I walk, the path I am called to walk? A couple of weeks ago, I was in the red rocks of Sedona, Arizona, hiking.  That is not…
Read More

Remembering joy…

Monday evening, I participated in the Service of Remembrance at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in my neighborhood.  The Service of Remembrance, or, as some call it, a "blue" service, is the seasonal service for "the rest of us" -- those of us who find the required mirth of the secular season difficult.  I am always surprised that so few people attend these services, because I know that there are so many who find this season challenging.  For me, it was an important time to stop and feel, to sit and pray, and to be with others in a like-hearted space. In one brief hour, whoever planned the service managed to…
Read More

With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation…

Gaudate Sunday...today is an  important anniversary for me.  Six years ago this very morning, around 11:10 a.m., I was baptized for a second time in my adult life.  That day in December was, like today, the third Sunday of Advent, also in the Lectionary cycle Year C.  That day in December, I joined the Calvary Baptist Church and embraced a form of Christian and community identity based in the Baptist distinctives,  a group of beliefs about individual and community practice  that is best described by the charter covenant of the Alliance of Baptists.  It has been the lens through which I have understood my life in Christ for almost ten years now,…
Read More

Wait, is it already Advent?

Yes, I admit it.  I am behind.  Travelling will do that to me.  The end of the semester will do that to me.  Preparing for a concert where I am singing something totally new (like I am next week) pushes all sense of time and season out of the way.  Today, however, I decided to face the truth -- Advent has begun without me. And so, while I am busy getting my act together, I convinced myself that one good Advent devotional activity would be to go back and read some of the things that I myself wrote in years past during this season.  I hope you will not mind…
Read More

Lions, lambs, cows and bears…Advent 2013 Day 21

Lately, I've been introduced to an interpretative school known as the canonical approach to biblical interpretation.  In the canonical method of reading, the Scripture is treated not as some source document to be picked apart and dissected by scholars of all kind, but as a canon of writings that together talk of the experience of people across the ages as they try to live together in a community of faith. There is much that the scholars can say about this text, as there is most of the text in Isaiah, but sometimes you simply have to surrender to the beauty of the poetry and of the metaphors used to carry…
Read More

With what shall I come before the Lord? Advent 2013 Day 20

Little drummer boys, kings, shepherds -- on that night of nights they all ask the question that each and everyone of us asks with every moment that we draw breath as part of God's creation (whether or not we know we ask):  with what shall I come before the Lord... “With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin…
Read More

Choose this day whom you will serve…Advent 2013 Day 19

My first thought when I saw this listed as the passage of the day was -- really?  Joshua?  Advent? But it really turns out to be an inspired choice for an Advent reading: Now therefore revere the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness; put away the gods that your ancestors served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. Now if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my…
Read More

People, look East…the search for hope and wonder

People look East -- the first words of a familiar hymn often sung during Advent.  I'm having trouble leaving the words of this hymn confined within their traditional time frame.  The meaning of time has certainly changed for many of us these past months, and if 2020 changes anything, those changes call me to embrace the hope and preparation of Advent as a lifestyle, not a season. People look East, the time is near. Yesterday, as I rose at an hour all too early and all too cold for the end of December, again, I made my morning calculation -- which way will I walk?  Will I head to the…
Read More

Le Noël des Oiseaux: Recording by Susan Sevier & Cheryl Branham

Usually, right at this moment, I am at one of many locations in my neighborhood, outside.  Walking.  Rain or shine, cold or heat, I have been walking.  Looking at the sunrise, watching the clouds, observing the few other socially-distancing dog walkers or runners or the occasional package pirate on a scooter streaming away with their prize. There is supposed to be snow falling outside my window right now, but I live in the great DC Snow Hole, so what we have instead is freezing wind with the promise of freezing rain as the invisible sun moves on its invisible journey around the planet. But, in the expectation of snow, I…
Read More

Who are you…and why do you do it?

That question...I've written about it before.  And again, before.  And I most assuredly write about it again. Truly, it is a theme through most of what I (well, not just me) do...this idea of our identity, as people of faith, as people who live an incarnated existence, as followers of Jesus.  It is a question to which I do not expect to find an answer that endures for long; the answer has always been, for me, a moving target, often changing slightly with each breath that I take. So, obviously, when I hear the words of John 1:19-28, well, I just cannot help but consider the question again.  Where do…
Read More

An arroyo is never the trail…

Last night, I enjoyed the Arena Stage production of Rogers and Hammerstein's Carousel, you know the one that ends with that big song about faith and hope, You Never Walk Alone.  And before that, I spent most of the day in the recording studio editing the final cut of my version of Walk with Me, an arrangement of the two traditional songs, I Want Jesus to Walk With Me and We Must Walk This Lonesome Valley.  Methinks that I am thinking a lot about the road ahead, the path I walk, the path I am called to walk? A couple of weeks ago, I was in the red rocks of Sedona, Arizona, hiking.  That is not…
Read More

Remembering joy…

Monday evening, I participated in the Service of Remembrance at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in my neighborhood.  The Service of Remembrance, or, as some call it, a "blue" service, is the seasonal service for "the rest of us" -- those of us who find the required mirth of the secular season difficult.  I am always surprised that so few people attend these services, because I know that there are so many who find this season challenging.  For me, it was an important time to stop and feel, to sit and pray, and to be with others in a like-hearted space. In one brief hour, whoever planned the service managed to…
Read More

With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation…

Gaudate Sunday...today is an  important anniversary for me.  Six years ago this very morning, around 11:10 a.m., I was baptized for a second time in my adult life.  That day in December was, like today, the third Sunday of Advent, also in the Lectionary cycle Year C.  That day in December, I joined the Calvary Baptist Church and embraced a form of Christian and community identity based in the Baptist distinctives,  a group of beliefs about individual and community practice  that is best described by the charter covenant of the Alliance of Baptists.  It has been the lens through which I have understood my life in Christ for almost ten years now,…
Read More

Wait, is it already Advent?

Yes, I admit it.  I am behind.  Travelling will do that to me.  The end of the semester will do that to me.  Preparing for a concert where I am singing something totally new (like I am next week) pushes all sense of time and season out of the way.  Today, however, I decided to face the truth -- Advent has begun without me. And so, while I am busy getting my act together, I convinced myself that one good Advent devotional activity would be to go back and read some of the things that I myself wrote in years past during this season.  I hope you will not mind…
Read More

Lions, lambs, cows and bears…Advent 2013 Day 21

Lately, I've been introduced to an interpretative school known as the canonical approach to biblical interpretation.  In the canonical method of reading, the Scripture is treated not as some source document to be picked apart and dissected by scholars of all kind, but as a canon of writings that together talk of the experience of people across the ages as they try to live together in a community of faith. There is much that the scholars can say about this text, as there is most of the text in Isaiah, but sometimes you simply have to surrender to the beauty of the poetry and of the metaphors used to carry…
Read More

With what shall I come before the Lord? Advent 2013 Day 20

Little drummer boys, kings, shepherds -- on that night of nights they all ask the question that each and everyone of us asks with every moment that we draw breath as part of God's creation (whether or not we know we ask):  with what shall I come before the Lord... “With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin…
Read More

Choose this day whom you will serve…Advent 2013 Day 19

My first thought when I saw this listed as the passage of the day was -- really?  Joshua?  Advent? But it really turns out to be an inspired choice for an Advent reading: Now therefore revere the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness; put away the gods that your ancestors served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. Now if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my…
Read More

People, look East…the search for hope and wonder

People look East -- the first words of a familiar hymn often sung during Advent.  I'm having trouble leaving the words of this hymn confined within their traditional time frame.  The meaning of time has certainly changed for many of us these past months, and if 2020 changes anything, those changes call me to embrace the hope and preparation of Advent as a lifestyle, not a season. People look East, the time is near. Yesterday, as I rose at an hour all too early and all too cold for the end of December, again, I made my morning calculation -- which way will I walk?  Will I head to the…
Read More

Le Noël des Oiseaux: Recording by Susan Sevier & Cheryl Branham

Usually, right at this moment, I am at one of many locations in my neighborhood, outside.  Walking.  Rain or shine, cold or heat, I have been walking.  Looking at the sunrise, watching the clouds, observing the few other socially-distancing dog walkers or runners or the occasional package pirate on a scooter streaming away with their prize. There is supposed to be snow falling outside my window right now, but I live in the great DC Snow Hole, so what we have instead is freezing wind with the promise of freezing rain as the invisible sun moves on its invisible journey around the planet. But, in the expectation of snow, I…
Read More

Who are you…and why do you do it?

That question...I've written about it before.  And again, before.  And I most assuredly write about it again. Truly, it is a theme through most of what I (well, not just me) do...this idea of our identity, as people of faith, as people who live an incarnated existence, as followers of Jesus.  It is a question to which I do not expect to find an answer that endures for long; the answer has always been, for me, a moving target, often changing slightly with each breath that I take. So, obviously, when I hear the words of John 1:19-28, well, I just cannot help but consider the question again.  Where do…
Read More

An arroyo is never the trail…

Last night, I enjoyed the Arena Stage production of Rogers and Hammerstein's Carousel, you know the one that ends with that big song about faith and hope, You Never Walk Alone.  And before that, I spent most of the day in the recording studio editing the final cut of my version of Walk with Me, an arrangement of the two traditional songs, I Want Jesus to Walk With Me and We Must Walk This Lonesome Valley.  Methinks that I am thinking a lot about the road ahead, the path I walk, the path I am called to walk? A couple of weeks ago, I was in the red rocks of Sedona, Arizona, hiking.  That is not…
Read More

Remembering joy…

Monday evening, I participated in the Service of Remembrance at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in my neighborhood.  The Service of Remembrance, or, as some call it, a "blue" service, is the seasonal service for "the rest of us" -- those of us who find the required mirth of the secular season difficult.  I am always surprised that so few people attend these services, because I know that there are so many who find this season challenging.  For me, it was an important time to stop and feel, to sit and pray, and to be with others in a like-hearted space. In one brief hour, whoever planned the service managed to…
Read More

With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation…

Gaudate Sunday...today is an  important anniversary for me.  Six years ago this very morning, around 11:10 a.m., I was baptized for a second time in my adult life.  That day in December was, like today, the third Sunday of Advent, also in the Lectionary cycle Year C.  That day in December, I joined the Calvary Baptist Church and embraced a form of Christian and community identity based in the Baptist distinctives,  a group of beliefs about individual and community practice  that is best described by the charter covenant of the Alliance of Baptists.  It has been the lens through which I have understood my life in Christ for almost ten years now,…
Read More

Wait, is it already Advent?

Yes, I admit it.  I am behind.  Travelling will do that to me.  The end of the semester will do that to me.  Preparing for a concert where I am singing something totally new (like I am next week) pushes all sense of time and season out of the way.  Today, however, I decided to face the truth -- Advent has begun without me. And so, while I am busy getting my act together, I convinced myself that one good Advent devotional activity would be to go back and read some of the things that I myself wrote in years past during this season.  I hope you will not mind…
Read More

Lions, lambs, cows and bears…Advent 2013 Day 21

Lately, I've been introduced to an interpretative school known as the canonical approach to biblical interpretation.  In the canonical method of reading, the Scripture is treated not as some source document to be picked apart and dissected by scholars of all kind, but as a canon of writings that together talk of the experience of people across the ages as they try to live together in a community of faith. There is much that the scholars can say about this text, as there is most of the text in Isaiah, but sometimes you simply have to surrender to the beauty of the poetry and of the metaphors used to carry…
Read More

With what shall I come before the Lord? Advent 2013 Day 20

Little drummer boys, kings, shepherds -- on that night of nights they all ask the question that each and everyone of us asks with every moment that we draw breath as part of God's creation (whether or not we know we ask):  with what shall I come before the Lord... “With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin…
Read More

Choose this day whom you will serve…Advent 2013 Day 19

My first thought when I saw this listed as the passage of the day was -- really?  Joshua?  Advent? But it really turns out to be an inspired choice for an Advent reading: Now therefore revere the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness; put away the gods that your ancestors served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. Now if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my…
Read More

People, look East…the search for hope and wonder

People look East -- the first words of a familiar hymn often sung during Advent.  I'm having trouble leaving the words of this hymn confined within their traditional time frame.  The meaning of time has certainly changed for many of us these past months, and if 2020 changes anything, those changes call me to embrace the hope and preparation of Advent as a lifestyle, not a season. People look East, the time is near. Yesterday, as I rose at an hour all too early and all too cold for the end of December, again, I made my morning calculation -- which way will I walk?  Will I head to the…
Read More

Le Noël des Oiseaux: Recording by Susan Sevier & Cheryl Branham

Usually, right at this moment, I am at one of many locations in my neighborhood, outside.  Walking.  Rain or shine, cold or heat, I have been walking.  Looking at the sunrise, watching the clouds, observing the few other socially-distancing dog walkers or runners or the occasional package pirate on a scooter streaming away with their prize. There is supposed to be snow falling outside my window right now, but I live in the great DC Snow Hole, so what we have instead is freezing wind with the promise of freezing rain as the invisible sun moves on its invisible journey around the planet. But, in the expectation of snow, I…
Read More

Who are you…and why do you do it?

That question...I've written about it before.  And again, before.  And I most assuredly write about it again. Truly, it is a theme through most of what I (well, not just me) do...this idea of our identity, as people of faith, as people who live an incarnated existence, as followers of Jesus.  It is a question to which I do not expect to find an answer that endures for long; the answer has always been, for me, a moving target, often changing slightly with each breath that I take. So, obviously, when I hear the words of John 1:19-28, well, I just cannot help but consider the question again.  Where do…
Read More

An arroyo is never the trail…

Last night, I enjoyed the Arena Stage production of Rogers and Hammerstein's Carousel, you know the one that ends with that big song about faith and hope, You Never Walk Alone.  And before that, I spent most of the day in the recording studio editing the final cut of my version of Walk with Me, an arrangement of the two traditional songs, I Want Jesus to Walk With Me and We Must Walk This Lonesome Valley.  Methinks that I am thinking a lot about the road ahead, the path I walk, the path I am called to walk? A couple of weeks ago, I was in the red rocks of Sedona, Arizona, hiking.  That is not…
Read More

Remembering joy…

Monday evening, I participated in the Service of Remembrance at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in my neighborhood.  The Service of Remembrance, or, as some call it, a "blue" service, is the seasonal service for "the rest of us" -- those of us who find the required mirth of the secular season difficult.  I am always surprised that so few people attend these services, because I know that there are so many who find this season challenging.  For me, it was an important time to stop and feel, to sit and pray, and to be with others in a like-hearted space. In one brief hour, whoever planned the service managed to…
Read More

With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation…

Gaudate Sunday...today is an  important anniversary for me.  Six years ago this very morning, around 11:10 a.m., I was baptized for a second time in my adult life.  That day in December was, like today, the third Sunday of Advent, also in the Lectionary cycle Year C.  That day in December, I joined the Calvary Baptist Church and embraced a form of Christian and community identity based in the Baptist distinctives,  a group of beliefs about individual and community practice  that is best described by the charter covenant of the Alliance of Baptists.  It has been the lens through which I have understood my life in Christ for almost ten years now,…
Read More

Wait, is it already Advent?

Yes, I admit it.  I am behind.  Travelling will do that to me.  The end of the semester will do that to me.  Preparing for a concert where I am singing something totally new (like I am next week) pushes all sense of time and season out of the way.  Today, however, I decided to face the truth -- Advent has begun without me. And so, while I am busy getting my act together, I convinced myself that one good Advent devotional activity would be to go back and read some of the things that I myself wrote in years past during this season.  I hope you will not mind…
Read More

Lions, lambs, cows and bears…Advent 2013 Day 21

Lately, I've been introduced to an interpretative school known as the canonical approach to biblical interpretation.  In the canonical method of reading, the Scripture is treated not as some source document to be picked apart and dissected by scholars of all kind, but as a canon of writings that together talk of the experience of people across the ages as they try to live together in a community of faith. There is much that the scholars can say about this text, as there is most of the text in Isaiah, but sometimes you simply have to surrender to the beauty of the poetry and of the metaphors used to carry…
Read More

With what shall I come before the Lord? Advent 2013 Day 20

Little drummer boys, kings, shepherds -- on that night of nights they all ask the question that each and everyone of us asks with every moment that we draw breath as part of God's creation (whether or not we know we ask):  with what shall I come before the Lord... “With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin…
Read More

Choose this day whom you will serve…Advent 2013 Day 19

My first thought when I saw this listed as the passage of the day was -- really?  Joshua?  Advent? But it really turns out to be an inspired choice for an Advent reading: Now therefore revere the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness; put away the gods that your ancestors served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. Now if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my…
Read More

People, look East…the search for hope and wonder

People look East -- the first words of a familiar hymn often sung during Advent.  I'm having trouble leaving the words of this hymn confined within their traditional time frame.  The meaning of time has certainly changed for many of us these past months, and if 2020 changes anything, those changes call me to embrace the hope and preparation of Advent as a lifestyle, not a season. People look East, the time is near. Yesterday, as I rose at an hour all too early and all too cold for the end of December, again, I made my morning calculation -- which way will I walk?  Will I head to the…
Read More

Le Noël des Oiseaux: Recording by Susan Sevier & Cheryl Branham

Usually, right at this moment, I am at one of many locations in my neighborhood, outside.  Walking.  Rain or shine, cold or heat, I have been walking.  Looking at the sunrise, watching the clouds, observing the few other socially-distancing dog walkers or runners or the occasional package pirate on a scooter streaming away with their prize. There is supposed to be snow falling outside my window right now, but I live in the great DC Snow Hole, so what we have instead is freezing wind with the promise of freezing rain as the invisible sun moves on its invisible journey around the planet. But, in the expectation of snow, I…
Read More

Who are you…and why do you do it?

That question...I've written about it before.  And again, before.  And I most assuredly write about it again. Truly, it is a theme through most of what I (well, not just me) do...this idea of our identity, as people of faith, as people who live an incarnated existence, as followers of Jesus.  It is a question to which I do not expect to find an answer that endures for long; the answer has always been, for me, a moving target, often changing slightly with each breath that I take. So, obviously, when I hear the words of John 1:19-28, well, I just cannot help but consider the question again.  Where do…
Read More

An arroyo is never the trail…

Last night, I enjoyed the Arena Stage production of Rogers and Hammerstein's Carousel, you know the one that ends with that big song about faith and hope, You Never Walk Alone.  And before that, I spent most of the day in the recording studio editing the final cut of my version of Walk with Me, an arrangement of the two traditional songs, I Want Jesus to Walk With Me and We Must Walk This Lonesome Valley.  Methinks that I am thinking a lot about the road ahead, the path I walk, the path I am called to walk? A couple of weeks ago, I was in the red rocks of Sedona, Arizona, hiking.  That is not…
Read More

Remembering joy…

Monday evening, I participated in the Service of Remembrance at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in my neighborhood.  The Service of Remembrance, or, as some call it, a "blue" service, is the seasonal service for "the rest of us" -- those of us who find the required mirth of the secular season difficult.  I am always surprised that so few people attend these services, because I know that there are so many who find this season challenging.  For me, it was an important time to stop and feel, to sit and pray, and to be with others in a like-hearted space. In one brief hour, whoever planned the service managed to…
Read More

With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation…

Gaudate Sunday...today is an  important anniversary for me.  Six years ago this very morning, around 11:10 a.m., I was baptized for a second time in my adult life.  That day in December was, like today, the third Sunday of Advent, also in the Lectionary cycle Year C.  That day in December, I joined the Calvary Baptist Church and embraced a form of Christian and community identity based in the Baptist distinctives,  a group of beliefs about individual and community practice  that is best described by the charter covenant of the Alliance of Baptists.  It has been the lens through which I have understood my life in Christ for almost ten years now,…
Read More

Wait, is it already Advent?

Yes, I admit it.  I am behind.  Travelling will do that to me.  The end of the semester will do that to me.  Preparing for a concert where I am singing something totally new (like I am next week) pushes all sense of time and season out of the way.  Today, however, I decided to face the truth -- Advent has begun without me. And so, while I am busy getting my act together, I convinced myself that one good Advent devotional activity would be to go back and read some of the things that I myself wrote in years past during this season.  I hope you will not mind…
Read More

Lions, lambs, cows and bears…Advent 2013 Day 21

Lately, I've been introduced to an interpretative school known as the canonical approach to biblical interpretation.  In the canonical method of reading, the Scripture is treated not as some source document to be picked apart and dissected by scholars of all kind, but as a canon of writings that together talk of the experience of people across the ages as they try to live together in a community of faith. There is much that the scholars can say about this text, as there is most of the text in Isaiah, but sometimes you simply have to surrender to the beauty of the poetry and of the metaphors used to carry…
Read More

With what shall I come before the Lord? Advent 2013 Day 20

Little drummer boys, kings, shepherds -- on that night of nights they all ask the question that each and everyone of us asks with every moment that we draw breath as part of God's creation (whether or not we know we ask):  with what shall I come before the Lord... “With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin…
Read More

Choose this day whom you will serve…Advent 2013 Day 19

My first thought when I saw this listed as the passage of the day was -- really?  Joshua?  Advent? But it really turns out to be an inspired choice for an Advent reading: Now therefore revere the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness; put away the gods that your ancestors served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. Now if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my…
Read More

People, look East…the search for hope and wonder

People look East -- the first words of a familiar hymn often sung during Advent.  I'm having trouble leaving the words of this hymn confined within their traditional time frame.  The meaning of time has certainly changed for many of us these past months, and if 2020 changes anything, those changes call me to embrace the hope and preparation of Advent as a lifestyle, not a season. People look East, the time is near. Yesterday, as I rose at an hour all too early and all too cold for the end of December, again, I made my morning calculation -- which way will I walk?  Will I head to the…
Read More

Le Noël des Oiseaux: Recording by Susan Sevier & Cheryl Branham

Usually, right at this moment, I am at one of many locations in my neighborhood, outside.  Walking.  Rain or shine, cold or heat, I have been walking.  Looking at the sunrise, watching the clouds, observing the few other socially-distancing dog walkers or runners or the occasional package pirate on a scooter streaming away with their prize. There is supposed to be snow falling outside my window right now, but I live in the great DC Snow Hole, so what we have instead is freezing wind with the promise of freezing rain as the invisible sun moves on its invisible journey around the planet. But, in the expectation of snow, I…
Read More

Who are you…and why do you do it?

That question...I've written about it before.  And again, before.  And I most assuredly write about it again. Truly, it is a theme through most of what I (well, not just me) do...this idea of our identity, as people of faith, as people who live an incarnated existence, as followers of Jesus.  It is a question to which I do not expect to find an answer that endures for long; the answer has always been, for me, a moving target, often changing slightly with each breath that I take. So, obviously, when I hear the words of John 1:19-28, well, I just cannot help but consider the question again.  Where do…
Read More

An arroyo is never the trail…

Last night, I enjoyed the Arena Stage production of Rogers and Hammerstein's Carousel, you know the one that ends with that big song about faith and hope, You Never Walk Alone.  And before that, I spent most of the day in the recording studio editing the final cut of my version of Walk with Me, an arrangement of the two traditional songs, I Want Jesus to Walk With Me and We Must Walk This Lonesome Valley.  Methinks that I am thinking a lot about the road ahead, the path I walk, the path I am called to walk? A couple of weeks ago, I was in the red rocks of Sedona, Arizona, hiking.  That is not…
Read More

Remembering joy…

Monday evening, I participated in the Service of Remembrance at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in my neighborhood.  The Service of Remembrance, or, as some call it, a "blue" service, is the seasonal service for "the rest of us" -- those of us who find the required mirth of the secular season difficult.  I am always surprised that so few people attend these services, because I know that there are so many who find this season challenging.  For me, it was an important time to stop and feel, to sit and pray, and to be with others in a like-hearted space. In one brief hour, whoever planned the service managed to…
Read More

With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation…

Gaudate Sunday...today is an  important anniversary for me.  Six years ago this very morning, around 11:10 a.m., I was baptized for a second time in my adult life.  That day in December was, like today, the third Sunday of Advent, also in the Lectionary cycle Year C.  That day in December, I joined the Calvary Baptist Church and embraced a form of Christian and community identity based in the Baptist distinctives,  a group of beliefs about individual and community practice  that is best described by the charter covenant of the Alliance of Baptists.  It has been the lens through which I have understood my life in Christ for almost ten years now,…
Read More

Wait, is it already Advent?

Yes, I admit it.  I am behind.  Travelling will do that to me.  The end of the semester will do that to me.  Preparing for a concert where I am singing something totally new (like I am next week) pushes all sense of time and season out of the way.  Today, however, I decided to face the truth -- Advent has begun without me. And so, while I am busy getting my act together, I convinced myself that one good Advent devotional activity would be to go back and read some of the things that I myself wrote in years past during this season.  I hope you will not mind…
Read More

Lions, lambs, cows and bears…Advent 2013 Day 21

Lately, I've been introduced to an interpretative school known as the canonical approach to biblical interpretation.  In the canonical method of reading, the Scripture is treated not as some source document to be picked apart and dissected by scholars of all kind, but as a canon of writings that together talk of the experience of people across the ages as they try to live together in a community of faith. There is much that the scholars can say about this text, as there is most of the text in Isaiah, but sometimes you simply have to surrender to the beauty of the poetry and of the metaphors used to carry…
Read More

With what shall I come before the Lord? Advent 2013 Day 20

Little drummer boys, kings, shepherds -- on that night of nights they all ask the question that each and everyone of us asks with every moment that we draw breath as part of God's creation (whether or not we know we ask):  with what shall I come before the Lord... “With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin…
Read More

Choose this day whom you will serve…Advent 2013 Day 19

My first thought when I saw this listed as the passage of the day was -- really?  Joshua?  Advent? But it really turns out to be an inspired choice for an Advent reading: Now therefore revere the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness; put away the gods that your ancestors served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. Now if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my…
Read More

People, look East…the search for hope and wonder

People look East -- the first words of a familiar hymn often sung during Advent.  I'm having trouble leaving the words of this hymn confined within their traditional time frame.  The meaning of time has certainly changed for many of us these past months, and if 2020 changes anything, those changes call me to embrace the hope and preparation of Advent as a lifestyle, not a season. People look East, the time is near. Yesterday, as I rose at an hour all too early and all too cold for the end of December, again, I made my morning calculation -- which way will I walk?  Will I head to the…
Read More

Le Noël des Oiseaux: Recording by Susan Sevier & Cheryl Branham

Usually, right at this moment, I am at one of many locations in my neighborhood, outside.  Walking.  Rain or shine, cold or heat, I have been walking.  Looking at the sunrise, watching the clouds, observing the few other socially-distancing dog walkers or runners or the occasional package pirate on a scooter streaming away with their prize. There is supposed to be snow falling outside my window right now, but I live in the great DC Snow Hole, so what we have instead is freezing wind with the promise of freezing rain as the invisible sun moves on its invisible journey around the planet. But, in the expectation of snow, I…
Read More

Who are you…and why do you do it?

That question...I've written about it before.  And again, before.  And I most assuredly write about it again. Truly, it is a theme through most of what I (well, not just me) do...this idea of our identity, as people of faith, as people who live an incarnated existence, as followers of Jesus.  It is a question to which I do not expect to find an answer that endures for long; the answer has always been, for me, a moving target, often changing slightly with each breath that I take. So, obviously, when I hear the words of John 1:19-28, well, I just cannot help but consider the question again.  Where do…
Read More

An arroyo is never the trail…

Last night, I enjoyed the Arena Stage production of Rogers and Hammerstein's Carousel, you know the one that ends with that big song about faith and hope, You Never Walk Alone.  And before that, I spent most of the day in the recording studio editing the final cut of my version of Walk with Me, an arrangement of the two traditional songs, I Want Jesus to Walk With Me and We Must Walk This Lonesome Valley.  Methinks that I am thinking a lot about the road ahead, the path I walk, the path I am called to walk? A couple of weeks ago, I was in the red rocks of Sedona, Arizona, hiking.  That is not…
Read More

Remembering joy…

Monday evening, I participated in the Service of Remembrance at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in my neighborhood.  The Service of Remembrance, or, as some call it, a "blue" service, is the seasonal service for "the rest of us" -- those of us who find the required mirth of the secular season difficult.  I am always surprised that so few people attend these services, because I know that there are so many who find this season challenging.  For me, it was an important time to stop and feel, to sit and pray, and to be with others in a like-hearted space. In one brief hour, whoever planned the service managed to…
Read More

With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation…

Gaudate Sunday...today is an  important anniversary for me.  Six years ago this very morning, around 11:10 a.m., I was baptized for a second time in my adult life.  That day in December was, like today, the third Sunday of Advent, also in the Lectionary cycle Year C.  That day in December, I joined the Calvary Baptist Church and embraced a form of Christian and community identity based in the Baptist distinctives,  a group of beliefs about individual and community practice  that is best described by the charter covenant of the Alliance of Baptists.  It has been the lens through which I have understood my life in Christ for almost ten years now,…
Read More

Wait, is it already Advent?

Yes, I admit it.  I am behind.  Travelling will do that to me.  The end of the semester will do that to me.  Preparing for a concert where I am singing something totally new (like I am next week) pushes all sense of time and season out of the way.  Today, however, I decided to face the truth -- Advent has begun without me. And so, while I am busy getting my act together, I convinced myself that one good Advent devotional activity would be to go back and read some of the things that I myself wrote in years past during this season.  I hope you will not mind…
Read More

Lions, lambs, cows and bears…Advent 2013 Day 21

Lately, I've been introduced to an interpretative school known as the canonical approach to biblical interpretation.  In the canonical method of reading, the Scripture is treated not as some source document to be picked apart and dissected by scholars of all kind, but as a canon of writings that together talk of the experience of people across the ages as they try to live together in a community of faith. There is much that the scholars can say about this text, as there is most of the text in Isaiah, but sometimes you simply have to surrender to the beauty of the poetry and of the metaphors used to carry…
Read More

With what shall I come before the Lord? Advent 2013 Day 20

Little drummer boys, kings, shepherds -- on that night of nights they all ask the question that each and everyone of us asks with every moment that we draw breath as part of God's creation (whether or not we know we ask):  with what shall I come before the Lord... “With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin…
Read More

Choose this day whom you will serve…Advent 2013 Day 19

My first thought when I saw this listed as the passage of the day was -- really?  Joshua?  Advent? But it really turns out to be an inspired choice for an Advent reading: Now therefore revere the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness; put away the gods that your ancestors served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. Now if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my…
Read More