Wondering Presbyterian

            A few weeks ago, I came in to work and it was raining in my office. Well, not raining exactly. Rain wasn’t coming down from the ceiling. It was actually coming up from my office air/heat unit. Like the geyser Old Faithful, water spouted out of the unit and created a lake on the floor. Water soaked the red armchair, whose dye seeped into not just my carpet, but the carpet going into the main office. My curtains were stained, the closet door was soaked (thank God the closet door was closed!), and everything that was in the office was suddenly not in my office. I am so thankful all my books stayed dry, as well as my clergy clothing (robes, stoles, etc.).             But as much as it is frustrating to have my office in complete disarray, I am not writing for sympathy. I’m writing because I am so thankful for people in my church who stepped up to help deal with the problem. From the ...

  So, through worship in August, we're reading Ephesians and just by virtue of the nature of time, it means we can’t read every single word in Ephesians together. I hope people have carved out some space to read from Ephesians on their own, but the way I planned the sermon series this summer and fall, this was just how the chips fell. Since we aren’t reading every word, I wanted to do an extra little message just about Ephesians 3, because we’re skipping Ephesians 3 altogether. The reason I skipped it wasn’t because I hate Ephesians 3, but it’s because some of it gets a little redundant. It’s also a little bit of an example of Paul interrupting himself. At least, that’s what it seemed like to me at first. Paul talks in Ephesians 2 about grace and reconciliation and then in Ephesians 4 goes into the importance of unity which is related to grace and reconciliation. But, in Ephesians 3, Paul takes a pause to get personal. Ephesians 3 is basically Paul saying, “Look, I get it. Here’s...

  I’m sure you’ve done this, too: Something is going on in your life. Whether it’s a big something or a little something, you know for a fact you don’t want to talk about it. You don’t want to answer more questions and you don’t want to deal with looks that could be perceived as worried or judgmental (depending on how you’re feeling, one look can come with one thousand interpretations). So, when someone asks you if you’re okay you simply say, “I’m tired.”               It’s a lot easier to blame the quality of our night’s rest than it is to try and find the right word for how we’re really feeling, especially when saying how we’re really feeling comes with all sorts of baggage. If we say we’re angry, this usually opens us up to more questions. What are you angry about? With whom are you angry? Maybe you need some anger management therapy or at least some deep breathing exercises. If we say we’re depressed, we will poss...