Kind of hurried this week. Kind of a simple reflection. But still, powerful teachings for us in this week’s readings. God’s generosity, given to people no matter how wrong it seems. How unfair! How lucky……
Intercessions for September 3, 2011
What is your authentic Gospel? This week, the lectionary lifts up readings that seem to speak about how and what we proclaim, when we claim we follow Christ. What is our responsibility? What is not our responsibility? I found quite a bit to think about this week, and perhaps you will also!
Intercessions for August 27, 2011
This week’s lectionary readings feel preoccupied with the perception of justice. What does “justice” mean? Are we to judge? Especially in the reality of living between the two kingdoms of God’s grace and judgement, neither of which we fully understand, we have to acknowledge how deeply we are manipulated by our own just world belief.
Older Intercessions
It occurred to me to post my older intercessions here, and stop hanging on to a bunch of files….. Browse these if you like, but they’re mainly here just for me for safe-keeping.
Intercessions for August 6, 2011
This is an interesting week. Isaiah doesn’t want to get killed, Jesus saves a drowning man, and Jews and Greeks are all the same. My biggest take-away from this week is that I’m glad that I’m comfortable with silence. It’s a pretty self-centered practice, in a way, to hide away from the world for some time to empty my mind and hear God. But yet it impacts my relationships to the community, so there has to be some place for talking about me in the midst of talking about us. It seems that “personal relationship with Jesus” and “communal faith” are really 2 ends of a spectrum, and neither is centered. But I digress….
Intercessions for July 30, 2011
This is the first time I’ve posted my intercessions for worship. It occurred to me that I ought to share them, and capture my thoughts and inspirations.
This week, the lectionary carries a strong message of God’s abundance in the wilderness. I’m just as bad as anyone else for forgetting, and seeing everything through the eyes of scarcity. We keep falling into the stinking thinking that we don’t have enough – that we need more and more. How can we survive this never-ending stress that can’t ever be satisfied? And if we can’t stop thinking about what we don’t have, how can we remember what we do have? I lose before I ever start, forgetting that I never needed to run in the race at all!
Using rsync for Media Backups Between Windows and Linux
Elsewhere you can find my post about using Clonezilla to do system backups. I like backing up in this way because I can restore to a new drive without actually having to install anything. I like the sense of restoring a complete snapshot in time.
Unfortunately backing up takes much longer when there’s a lot of digital media on the drive. And I don’t edit my media very often, so it seems wasteful to include it in every backup. Continue reading
Devotion for Nicolaus Copernicus
Nicolaus Copernicus waas born on February 19, 1473, in the city of Thorn, in Royal Prussia, part of the Kingdom of Poland. While he was born to a family of means, his brother Andreas became an Augustinian priest, and his sister Barbara became a Benedictine nun and prioress. His other sister, Katharina, married a prominent businessman and politician. Copernicus himself never married or had children. Both parents died when Copernicus was still young, and his uncle, Lucas Watzenrode the Younger, continued to care for him and his siblings, seeing to their educations and careers. Continue reading
Reflection on Visitation
Thinking about what to write for this paper has been particularly puzzling for me. I could easily regurgitate some of the surprising learnings from class discussion and the reading assignments. But, the root purpose of this paper is to reflect upon myself and my understanding of pastoral visitation. I found myself drawn back to a photocopied article on vocation that we were given in class. Peter Marty writes that “one’s calling is always grounded in the deep sense of knowing that our origin and destiny reside in God. We need to know where we’ve come from and where we’re going if we are to discover our vocation, relax into it, and plot meaningful moves.” Continue reading
Vision for Stewardship
What if we took our normal offering during worship, dumped it on the altar, and set it on fire? Wouldn’t that get an enthusiastic reaction?
The Israelites made burnt offerings to their God. They placed their offerings on an altar and burned them, letting the fire completely consume everything. But why? The only explanation seems to be that they felt the experience of sacrifice to be important. Sacrifice was an important part of their worship. They eventually realized the good of sharing those offerings with the needy, but this was just an added bonus of their sacrifices. Or what about Jacob pouring oil over a stone (Genesis 28:16-18)? Or the woman who covered Jesus’ feet with expensive ointment, instead of using the money to feed the poor? Continue reading
gracewerks 