(231)-889-4081 | Worship every Sunday @ 10 a.m
(231)-889-4081 | Worship every Sunday @ 10 a.m
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Mar 28, 2025
There certainly could not be a more “bi-polar” week in history than Holy Week for Christians. Kate Bowler puts it this way:
Holy Week walks us through rejection, confusion,
tears, and death to the heights of resurrection joy.
We are Easter people, called to live into hope, but
how do we do so when we live in a broken world
surrounded by so much to grieve? We must learn
to live in the already and not-yet of a world that
rejoices in Jesus’ resurrection, but waits for our lives,
families, communities, and world to be restored one
day too.
(From “Bless the Lent We Actually Have: Weekly Group Guide” Week 7)What are we to do with the ups and downs of Holy Week when the palms we wave in celebration at the beginning of the week are crushed underfoot by the crowds following the beaten and bloodied Jesus as he carries his own cross through the same streets up to Calvary? . . .
Mar 24, 2025
Mar 20, 2025
On the first Sunday of March we celebrate Transfiguration Sunday (see Luke 9:28-36). The Transfiguration is sometimes a hard concept to get our minds around. Our hearts—well that’s a little easier! Many years ago, I was resting on a beach in Rhode Island in the sun watching my two young sons, 3 years old and 8 years old, run gleefully in and out of the shallow waves at the edge of the beach. All of a sudden there was an ethereal glow around them and I felt myself being lifted up into the sun. It only lasted for about half a minute, but it was a life-changing event. In my heart, I heard the voice of Jesus saying “Turn around, you are dying, turn around.” My life at that time had come to a crossroads and this event eventually led me to go to seminary.
No manner of logic can be brought to bear on such a spiritual experience. . .
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Feb 14, 2025
The Roman month Februarius was named after the Latin term februum, which means purification, via the purification ritual Februa held on February 15 (full moon) in the old lunar Roman calendar. Historical names for February include the Old English terms Solmonath (mud month) and Kale-monath (named for cabbage). In Finnish, the month is called helmikuu, meaning “month of the pearl”; when snow melts on tree branches, it forms droplets, and as these freeze again, they are like pearls of ice. In Polish and Ukrainian, respectively, the month is calledluty or лютий, meaning the month of ice or hard frost. In Macedonian the month is sechko (сечко), meaning month of cutting [wood]. In Czech, it is called únor, meaning month of submerging [of river ice]. In Slovene, February is traditionally called svečan, related to icicles or Candlemas.[1]
It is February, by whatever name you call it! The month of purification, cabbage, mud, pearl, ice, hard frost, cutting wood, icicles . . .all of these descriptions apply! My personal favorite is the Finnish one: “month of the pearl.” What a beautiful and poetic way to describe the treachery of snow and frost and ice which we experience in this month . . .not to mention potholes and frost heaves!
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Feb 14, 2025
“For now, we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.” 1 Corinthians 13:12 NRSV
January is said to be named for the Roman god Janus. Janus was the god of beginnings and transitions, and therefore, by extension, of gates, doors, doorways, passages and endings. He is usually depicted as having two faces, since he looks to the future and to the past. In short, Janus was a two-faced god!
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