Presby-Musings

We often imagine spiritual transformation happening in dramatic moments—a life-changing encounter with God, a courageous decision, a prayer suddenly answered, a calling that redirects our lives. Sometimes it does. But most of the time, holiness happens much more quietly. Our lives are shaped by thousands of small choices: whether we listen or interrupt, forgive or hold a grudge, hurry past someone or stop, begin the morning in prayer or immediately reach for our phones. Individually, these choices may seem insignificant. Repeated over time, however, they become habits—and our habits gradually shape the people we become. Jesus once said, “Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much” (Luke 16:10). Perhaps holiness is less about accomplishing extraordinary things and more about becoming faithful in ordinary ones. This week we'll explore how small choices shape holy lives. We'll consider our habits, interruptions, daily rhythms, and quiet acts of faithfulness. Al...

  “If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed one. We are not called to solve every problem in the world. We are called to faithfully offer what God has placed in our hands, trusting that love multiplies every gift given in faith.”— Mother Teresa Our journey this week has led us to some surprising destinations. We've discovered enough for today. We've remembered that we are enough because we are loved. We've learned that contentment is richer than accumulation. We've trusted that God's grace is sufficient. Now comes one final lesson. Enough is never meant to stop with us. In John's Gospel, a crowd of thousands gathers around Jesus with nothing to eat. The disciples immediately focus on what they lack. There isn't enough money. There isn't enough food. There isn't enough time. Then a child quietly offers five loaves and two fish. By every human calculation, it isn't enough. But in the hands of Jesus, it becomes more than enough. After every...

  “Grace is not the absence of struggle. It is the presence of God in the midst of struggle. We often ask God to remove the burden, while God quietly offers the strength to carry it. Sometimes the miracle is not that our circumstances change, but that we are changed within them.”— Madeleine L'Engle Most of us have prayed some version of the same prayer: "Lord, please take this away." Take away the illness. Take away the uncertainty. Take away the grief. Take away the difficult relationship. Take away the fear. Author Anne Lamott classifies these kinds of prayer in a single word: "Help!" I've learned something important from the years of asking God for help: more often than not, God's help doesn't show up in the ways I want it to, if at all.   I know that might sound like an awful thing for a pastor to say, but it's the unvarnished truth.  There may be times when your cry for help is responded to in a miraculous way, but most often you feel like y...

"Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is an illusion. We spend much of our lives trying to earn what has already been freely given. The deepest conversion of the heart is awakening to the truth that we are already loved."— Brennan Manning Many of us spend our lives chasing a finish line that doesn't exist. We quietly believe that if we become a little more successful, a little more attractive, a little more accomplished, or a little more admired, then we'll finally feel like enough. We compare ourselves to others and conclude that everyone else seems to have life figured out while we are still trying to prove our worth. The tragedy is that this endless striving often follows us into our spiritual lives as well. We begin to believe that God must surely love those who pray more faithfully, serve more tirelessly, or live more perfectly than we do. God knows that for much of my life, I lived this way despite knowing ...

This week in the Daily Devos, we are exploring the topic of "enough," as in knowing what it means to live in ways where we acknowledge what it means to have enough and to be enough, even when we feel the sharp pangs of scarcity.   In a culture where it seems that enough isn't part of our collective vocabulary, we need to understand more clearly what that word means for us as beloved children of God.   Today we're going to be exploring how one of the greatest thieves of joy is living tomorrow before we've finished living today. Far too often, our minds race ahead to next week's responsibilities, next month's uncertainties, or next year's possibilities. We worry about conversations that haven't happened, problems that haven't arrived, and outcomes we cannot predict. Before long, today's blessings disappear beneath tomorrow's fears. I can't say enough about how this has been a part of my own journey over the years.  It takes intentiona...

  “The greatest enemy of contentment is not that we have too little, but that we are constantly persuaded we need more. The soul was never created to be satisfied by accumulation. It was created to find its rest in God.” — John Ortberg I went through a period of my life a couple of years ago where I became fairly addicted to online shopping.  I was going through a very difficult time, and instead of doing the good work of spiritual and emotional healing, I decided to numb myself through consumption.   I was driven by the notion that I didn't have enough things to make me happy, so the only solution was to buy more things.  And there were plenty of ways to do that without leaving the comfort of my home.  Thankfully, I woke up from that destructive behavior, and then became addicted to selling or donating as much as I could of the things I'd accumulated.   If you've got to be addicted to something, getting rid of material possessions to simplify you...

  The Season of Pentecost & Summer Sermon Series These stories aren’t about perfect people. They teach us to trust God even when we cannot see the path ahead.   Today we are going to study a story filled with jealousy, betrayal, suffering, and Providence.   And a technicolor dream coat.     The story of the coat of many colors and the fall and rise of Joseph has been part of our cultural imagination for some decades because of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical.   The theme of the musical is to never stop dreaming, no matter what happens in your life, whether it be betrayal, abandonment, hardship, terrible circumstances, unjust accusations, and more.  It's a story of rising and falling... rising and falling again... and rising finally to be who you were meant to be.   But for the part of the story we will be studying today, there is no certainty of rising again after a traumatic fall.   GOD REMAINS PRESENT EVEN IN THE SEASONS ...