Now. Here. This.
Recent Posts
Now. Here. This.
Polychromy
When was the last time you realized you had been looking at something completely wrong? At least at the time I’m writing this (no reason to think it won’t happen again before you read this!), for me it happened earlier today when I read about a new art exhibit at the...
Time and Momentum
It’s “back to school” season, the time when all of us parents send our children out the door with fresh haircuts and new shoes and say to ourselves and anyone who will listen things like “time is moving so fast!” It turns out this is true in more than just a...
Where do you like to look?
Wendell Berry, “The Peace of Wild Things” When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the...
A People Who Dance
This past Sunday we began a worship series focusing on the four words we lift up from our church vision statement that have become something of our mantra or motto: Nurture. Love. Serve. All. In a combined Sunday School class down in the fellowship hall we enjoyed...
Different Histories, One Community
On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass delivered a speech to the Rochester Ladies Anti-Slavery Society in New York on the occasion of Independence Day. While Douglass himself was free, having escaped from slavery years before, slavery was still very much the law of the...
Scripture of Nature
A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to do one of the coolest and hardest things I’ll likely ever do. I joined three other gentlemen from our church—Shaun Kell, Doug Thompson, and Troy Tarpley—in a rim-to-rim run/hike of the Grand Canyon. It’s hard to put into words...
A Good Day for Macon
This past Thursday, members of our pastoral staff had an opportunity to join 25-30 community leaders for a meeting with Senator John Ossoff at the Tubman Museum for African American Art, History, and Culture. We gathered in the rotunda of the museum (an impressive...
Our Problem
I was a sophomore in high school when two teenage boys killed 13 students at Columbine High School. I still remember the collective shock that something like that could have happened. It seemed to expose something ugly and deeply disturbing about us as a people, and...
What Easter Looks Like
Two of the fingers on his right hand had been broken so when he poured back into that hand it surprised him—it hurt him at first. And the whole body was too small. Imagine the sky trying to fit into a tunnel carved into a hill. He came into it...
Tragedy, comedy, and fairly tale
In his beautiful book, “Telling the Truth,” Frederick Buechner writes that the gospel is “tragedy, comedy, and fairy tale,” all wrapped into one. “The gospel is bad news before it is good news,” he writes. Tragedy is that “we are sinners,” and that when we look in the...
What We Forget
It was almost exactly two years ago this past Sunday that our world shut down. At the church, we felt prepared. Weeks before, when we heard about this strange virus that may visit us, we had assembled a task force of church leaders, scientists, and public health...
Bright Sadness
Eastern Christianity speaks of the season of Lent as a time of “bright sadness.” It’s bright because we know the promise of resurrection waits for us on the other side. But there is nonetheless sadness because in order to see the light of Easter morning we must first...
Prayers in Time of War
In his introduction to the third edition of “Prayers for Private Devotions in War-Time,” a collection of prayers produced by The Memorial Church at Harvard University, Rev. Peter J. Gomes writes, “Prayer is most needed when we are most divided, and we need the...
A Question of Discipleship
I’ve heard from many of you over the last few days how much you appreciated hearing from Rev. Kasey Jones, who was invited by our Baptist Identity Committee to help us celebrate Baptist Heritage Sunday, a more focused approach to our old “Founders’ Day,” aimed at...
The Necessity of Grace
Last Sunday the New York Times published an op-ed by Rev. Tish Harrison Warren, a priest in the Anglican Church in North America entitled, “Why Churches Should Drop Their Online Services.” She writes, “Online church, while it was necessary for a season, diminishes...
Together Alone
In a recent column he shares with Gail Collins, New York Times opinion writer Bret Stephens offered the following description of the internet’s effects on our ability, or often inability, to form meaningful community and a healthy interior life—noting the connection...
Curiosity Will Save Us
In his beautiful new book, Northwind, children’s author Gary Paulsen tells the story of a boy named Leif who finds himself on a solo journey through the northcountry in a dugout canoe. Leif was born to parents “of no remembered name,” and quickly became an orphan....
With Our Hands Open
I’ve been thinking this week of an episode of StoryCorps from a few years ago. StoryCorps, you may know, is a national nonprofit that records conversations between two people and then archives them in the Library of Congress. You can go to their website and listen to...
Taking Down the Tree
"Give me some light!" cries Hamlet's uncle midway through the murder of Gonzago. "Light! Light!" cry scattering courtesans. Here, as in Denmark, it's dark at four, and even the moon shines with only half a heart. The ornaments go down into the box: the silver...
Christmas as a Child
Christmas was illegal in Massachusetts from 1659 to 1681, and anyone caught celebrating would be subject to a fine of 5 shillings. Who knew “the war on Christmas” was that old! Of course, the irony is that it was Christians who outlawed Christmas, specifically the...