Presby-Musings

I am late getting my devotion done today.   My wife and I got up early and took my youngest son and his friend to camp all the way on the north side of Austin.   Then we had a coffee meeting with some potential ministry partners, followed by an impromptu meeting to talk and dream about improvements to our church campus--improvements that would expand our ability to do ministry and help people grow in faith. It was a busy morning.   I wondered what I would write about today--considering I was feeling a bit guilty for putting all those other things ahead of my regular schedule of thinking and writing early in the morning.   And then it occurred to me...  I was beating myself up for not completing an important task.  The reason I hadn't completed it, however, was because I was doing equally, if not more important tasks instead.   But here was the problem:  I was diminishing the value and importance of those tasks because they somehow d...

Today is the first day of the second half of the Christian year--a long stretch that is referred to as Ordinary Time in the traditional Church calendar.  It starts the day after Pentecost Sunday (which was yesterday) and ends on the first Sunday of Advent, which falls in December this year.  The whole first half of the Christian year is spent telling the story of God's great saving action in Jesus Christ--beginning in Advent, through Easter and culminating on Pentecost with the "birthday" of the Church.  So why is it called "Ordinary Time?"  Does it mean that it's boring or second-rate?  Absolutely not!  It simply means that during this season of the year, Christians are called upon to absorb, assimilate and embody the incredible story of God's salvation in their daily life.   It's almost like the church mothers and fathers who came up with these kinds of rhythms knew that we needed some space to breathe and consider the implications of what...