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Love as hospitality

The church building is full with activity during the evenings this week with Vacation Bible School. The theme, “Give and receive God’s great love,” is a nice continuation of our worship focus for the last three weeks during this portion of the Twelve Scriptures Project. As has been alluded to in worship, love can be an incredibly broad, general, even generic, idea. During VBS love has been talked about specifically as extending hospitality.

The primary symbol of this hospitality is a canvas tent on the platform in the sanctuary. Each evening the tent is a scene of...

After Skyping, a poem

Thoughts after a phone call and Skype session with my daughters and wife who have been in Kansas for nearly three weeks and are returning tomorrow.

“I forgot what you looked like,”

laughed the six year old,

coming into view,

smiling with two less teeth than before,

and gazing intently at the screen ,

at me.

I had forgotten too.

Not what she looks like,

but what effect

that gaze has on me.

Reminded,

she reminds me she will soon be seven,

and arrangements must be made:

to...

A morning in court

One of the privileges of being a pastor is having a window into the many ways people in this congregation serve the community in their professional lives. I spent my morning with Joe Mas, a CMCer who is a criminal defense attorney downtown working especially with the Spanish speaking population. Joe was part of a panel at a BREAD Welcome Columbus! event on immigration back in March. His presentation caught my attention and afterwards we agreed that he would show me around his work someday. That day was today.

The court system is mostly a foreign world to me, so a good part of...

A weekend in Madison with CDC

Last weekend I was one of four Columbus Mennonite delegates to the Central District Conference annual gathering, hosted by Madison Mennonite Church in Wisconsin. Yep, Wisconsin. And we didn’t have near as far to drive as folks coming from Harrisonburg, Virginia or Pittsburgh, PA. Atlanta and Sarasota, Florida folks flew. There is some business that happens at these gatherings, but the main focus is fellowship, worship, and story-telling about what is happening in our congregations. The two year theme for our Conference is “Transformed Through Text and Table.”

On Thursday...

Crooked timber marriages

I’ve been noticing a lot of wedding anniversaries within CMC recently. June is a good time to get married, and Abbie and I have been a part of that club for 13 years now. On Tuesday David Brooks wrote a lovely Op-Ed in the NY Times called “Rhapsody in Realism, ” a reflection on the beauty of flawed people making marriage work. He cites an article on marriage he has appreciated whose first piece of advice was “Go to bed mad.” Don’t stay up too late until everything’s...

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