Category: Stories

When was the last time you had a good laugh? I’m talking a deep belly laugh that is distracting and hard to muffle. The kind of laugh when your partner looks over at you and wonders if you are okay or has to pause the TV because you are giggling so loudly.

Over the last few weeks, I have laughed more. I just needed to. It began when our kids started watching AFV, America’s Funniest Videos together in the evening. Usually after dinner and bath there is this lull time that could really go either way. Either the kids could play and get all wound up again, or they could slow down, sit down and then comes those magic words that every parent loves to see…settle down. Our kids started watching a few of these episodes with my parents when Ryan and I were away in England and it has continued since we got back.

What I like most about it, is that for these 15 to 20 minutes, all five of us can sit together and laugh. Our kids are now old enough to comprehend, if only a little bit, what is happening on screen. Sure, there are dishes to clean and laundry to fold, but laughter and connection are happening instead and I am the first to tell you that I have to remind myself that this is good. You see, I often move toward the task, the list, the job and save the “fun” for after but lately, I have tried to change my thinking and begin to see the laughter as part of the work.

I don’t have to tell you that we are living in difficult times as we look at a nation divided in the final months of election season, a culture that has moved away from seeking out faith traditions and the busyness of all of our lives that cuts at the core of our family and relationships. And while all of that is true and I am sure you feel it too, we often can’t control what is happening around us, but we can control how we respond. And I encourage you to do two things:

1. Laugh
2. And Laugh in Community

I don’t know if Jesus laughed a lot, I picture that he did, however we don’t have a lot of Scriptural proof of that. But if the phrase “Do not fear!” is the command mentioned more than any other phrase in the Bible, I imagine that instead of fear there was laughter. Because following Jesus and being on this adventure with God is a joy, unexpected and challenging yes, but full of abundant joy. God often reminds me to take God seriously and take myself less seriously and when I do that, I laugh more. I look at life as a gift, not a do to list or a burden.

I want to leave you with a short paragraph from 1 Peter, a letter that I admit I haven’t spent much time studying. But I hope as you read it you can see how it says all that I have been feeling lately about letting Jesus bring you joy and laughing more because we are free to not take life so seriously. I hope it speaks a word to you this morning too that encourages you for the week ahead. And if I can encourage anything in your family, in your work, in your relationships…is to laugh more.

³ Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, ⁴ and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, ⁵ who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. ⁶ In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. ⁷ These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. ⁸ Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, ⁹ for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls. 1 Peter 1:3-9

AMEN

Cheerio, my friends, as they say across the pond. I am practicing my greetings so I will be ready for my pilgrimage next week and I wanted to tell you a bit about it.

Two years ago, before we were even parents to three children, Ryan and I were asked to apply for the Wesley Study Tour, a pilgrimage in England that takes us around the country to study the sights and traditions of our faith. We applied for this and got choosen last year and we have been looking forward to this adventure ever since. Many years ago, the Florida entrepreneurs and philanthropists, Bernie and LaVonn Simpkins established a trust that would bless 10 people each year with a trip to England to learn more about our Wesleyan roots. The trip was set up for United Methodist pastors and their spouses to go, in fact, LaVonn, at the time, only agreed to using the money in this way if the spouses were included and I am so glad she time. I have learned that over 13 years of ministry and almost 14 years of marriage, that Ryan and I need each other’s support and investment to have a successful and fruitful ministry. And having this experience together will be such a gift!

On Monday, July 29^th, Ryan and I will be leaving our three tiny humans in the capable hands of our loving parents and heading to England with four other couples that are all in ministry in the United Methodist Church in Florida. The men are Ryan’s covenant brothers and the wives are awesome partners in their ministry! We will be traveling all over England but focusing our time in London, Oxford, Bristol and Epworth. We will see John and Charles Wesley’s home church, Christ College where John studied and Lincoln College where he held is Holy Club meetings in the 1720’s. Then we will head to Bristol where John’s famous brother Charles lived and sing many of the hymns he wrote along the way. We will finish the day with partaking in Holy Communion in New Room, which is the oldest Methodist building in the world. On Sunday, we will worship in London at the City Road Chapel and then take in the sights of London. The following week we will visit and make connections with other denominational leaders at the Central Methodists Hall and I am particularly excited to hear how Methodists are reaching new people, in new ways in the UK. On our final day, we will worship at St. Paul’s Cathedral and walk the streets of Aldersgate, where John Wesley had his conversion experience. All in all, 8 jammed packed days full of lots of walking, learning, worshipping and discovery.

I have been to England once before when my parents brought us here in High School when we were backpacking across Europe one summer, but I have not been back since being married or becoming a pastor, so I know this will hit me differently this time. I am looking forward to spending time with my husband and our ministry friends, having adult conversations without the constant, but adorable interrupting of little, inquisitive minds and seeing all of the sights I have mentioned above. But mostly, I am looking forward to reconnecting with my Wesleyan roots. I believe that the Wesleyan way of looking at Scripture, faith and holiness is exactly what the world needs right now and I look forward to bringing those lessons, sights and transformative moments back with me.

I know you will pray for me, for Ryan and for our children while we are away and I look forward to being back with you in worship on August 11^th. Stay tuned for more, but for now, Cheerio, my friends!

I don’t know about you, but my head has been spinning these last few days. I am trying to live in the moment of what is happening in our country and to try and bring light and levity to a heavy mood. At the same time, I am preparing myself for 10 days of pilgrimage in England where Ryan and I will see and experience first-hand the rich history of the Methodist denomination that we love and are called to serve. And lastly, I am deeply invested in this Ted Lasso sermon series and trying to faithfully bring to light what the Spirit has laid on my heart.

I say this not for pity but to reassure you that if you feel like you have a lot that you are trying to mentally order and make sense of, you are in good company.

As a pastor I tend to look at what is happening in our country with a particular lens. I see the anger, the sadness, the lack of trust and the complete absence of civility not as a place to point a finger in blame, but for the church to enter in. Where can we, as the church listen more than we speak, or think before we respond on social media, or prayerfully consider what we send out over email or work through our own anger and disappointment before we take it out on someone else? Where can the church bring unity despite our differences of opinions and passions? If ever our country needed the grace of Jesus and the manifestation of that through the church, that time is now! What would it look like to be men and women ready to enter into the conflict and bring peace, rather than avoidance or ignorance?

I think that is one of the reasons I loved the Ted Lasso sermon series. I will share more on Sunday, but one thing I don’t mention in my sermons is just how vulnerable Ted was as a leader and how open he was to learning new things. The fact that he came as a professional football coach to lead a sport he really knew very little about speaks to his willingness to engage in the PROGMESS. Yes, you read that right, Prog-mess, instead of progress because we know that as Wesleyans, going onto perfection or progressing towards acting more like Jesus means that we have to deal with the mess. I have said it before and I will say it again, some days I am a hot mess, and I am going to bet that you have days like that too. There is mess in all of us, there mess in our church, there mess in our relationships and there mess in our culture. It doesn’t mean we will fix it (not that we are even the ones doing the fixing) and it doesn’t mean that it won’t be uncomfortable. But will we choose to enter into it and give it a try.

I think one of the reasons I love being a Wesleyan most of all is how John Wesley quickly realized that Jesus loved the messy people and wasn’t afraid to enter into it. John Wesley could have enjoyed a relatively comfortable life as an Anglican priest in a clean and conventional parish, but he took the message of God’s love in Jesus Christ out into the fields and the coal mines and the streets and the mess and because of that choice, we are here today. I invite you reflect this week on how you, as a representative of God’s abundant grace, are called to enter the mess and not add to it. How can we be people of Prog-MESS?

May God add God’s blessing to the hearing and consuming of these words.

AMEN

Check out today’s video from Pastor David to learn more about our Northern Ireland Pilgrimage that leaves July 21st!

Hide and Seek…this is the game we played together at home yesterday evening. It was raining outside and Ryan was cooking dinner and so we needed a fun and an all ages appropriate game to play together so for about an hour the four of us played together, even though Ellie doesn’t know how to be quiet when she is “hiding”. I love this game and swear it was invented by a parent because if you are really good at finding a suitable hiding place, you might just get a blissful 5-7 minute block of quiet while your children run around the house yelling, “Mommy, where are you?!”

It was during one of these short blissful moments of quiet that I thought about seeking and finding. When you played the game as a kid, did you enjoy hiding more or being “IT?” At this season of life, as I have already shared, I enjoy the hiding part, but there was a season I liked the seeking most of all.

As we walk through our own lives, our faith compels us not to hide in the shadows, but come out into the light. Jesus says in the Gospel of Matthew, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.” Matthew 7:7-8

For the last two months, we have been studying in worship and in community groups 10 Questions Jesus asked and how they were answered. But we, too, are encouraged to ask questions and to learn more. In other words, seek, not hide. In VBS last week, we taught the Elementary Campers about the story of young Jesus asking questions in the Temple when he was lost from his parents. Did he ask questions then because he did not know the answer, or did he already know the answers, but he was modeling the humble act of seeking? I don’t know, but from the beginning of Jesus’ life until these words are spoken in the seventh chapter of Matthew, we are encouraged by our Lord to seek, ask and learn more.

There will be seasons in my life and in my faith journey that I would really rather just hide. Hide my anger, my disappointment, my doubt and let me have my few minutes of blissful quiet to wallow in that. In fact, I think the way the modern church is structured lends to that way of being without even meaning to. We come to worship, we sit and consume and then we leave, week after week. There are not many places built into the hour on Sunday for honest dialogue, vulnerability or a place to ask questions. All of that happens when we reach out and initiate a relationship that goes beyond just consuming at church. Many of you have found what is life giving is when you are a part of a Sunday School class or Bible or Book Study, or a Connect group or a fellowship gathering. This is where we ask our questions and express our doubts, share our fears and come out of our hiding places. If you don’t below to a group like this, I want you to consider joining one this year and I would happy to help get you connected.

May you feel God’s love and grace all around you this day whether you are seeking or hiding and may we walk into the light, together.

Brothers and Sisters,

As we are nearing the end of the month of May, we have been walking through some of our favorite Psalms together. We felt that it was appropriate on this week which leads us into Memorial Day, to choose a Psalm that talks about sacrifice. On Memorial Day, we honor and remember those that sacrificed their lives for this country.

While my grandfather served in World War II and my brother-in-law and uncle both served in the armed forces, I don’t have any loved ones that gave their life in sacrifice to our country. But I know many of you know of friends, colleagues and loved ones that have and Monday, we remember them. In preparation for that holiday, I chose Psalm 4 to help us think through and prayer through this together.

While I will never know what it means to give my life away for the freedom of another, we all worship a God who saw fit to sacrifice Himself for the freedom of all. The freedom from sin and death, the freedom from a life of brokenness and despair, freedom from lost hope and freedom for new beginnings. I hope that as you read this Psalm today, you will pause and remember the many that have gone before us who used the example of Jesus’ sacrificial love to guide their decisions and convictions. May God add God’s blessing to the hearing and praying of this word.

Psalm 4

¹ Answer me when I call to you,
my righteous God.
Give me relief from my distress;
have mercy on me and hear my prayer.

² How long will you people turn my glory into shame?
How long will you love delusions and seek false gods?
³ Know that the Lord has set apart his faithful servant for himself;
the Lord hears when I call to him.

⁴ Tremble and do not sin;
when you are on your beds,
search your hearts and be silent.
⁵ Offer the sacrifices of the righteous
and trust in the Lord.

⁶ Many, Lord, are asking, “Who will bring us prosperity?”
Let the light of your face shine on us.
⁷ Fill my heart with joy
when their grain and new wine abound.

⁸ In peace I will lie down and sleep,
for you alone, Lord,
make me dwell in safety.

Psalm 23: So much more than something you stitch on a Pillow

Psalm 23, a passage that has deeply resonated with believers throughout history, offers comfort and assurance. For a long time, I ignored the words of this psalm as overplayed and something you would “stitch on a pillow”. However, it’s so much more than that. As we explore its profound words, we encounter a personal image of God as our Shepherd, guiding and protecting each of us individually. There are a few areas of this passage that I feel we should take a closer look at.

“ The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures;
he leads me beside still waters;
      he restores my soul.
He leads me in right paths
for his name’s sake.”     (Psalm 23:1-3 NRSVUE).

The Hebrew word for “paths” in Psalm 23:3 is ma’aglei, The full phrase is ma’aglei tzedek, which translates to “paths of righteousness.” These paths are understood as well-worn, circular tracks, symbolizing the guidance and direction provided by God. Another English word would be a “rut” carved into roads by carts over time. These ruts were well-defined and ensured that travelers would stay on course. Similarly, our Shepherd places us in His divine ruts, guiding us along and keeping us from going to the left or the right. Just as the sheep follow the ruts laid out by the shepherd, we, too, can trust that God is leading us in the right direction. Even when we can’t see the way forward clearly, we can be confident that God’s guidance is sure and steadfast.

” Even though I walk through the darkest valley,
I fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me.”   (Psalm 23:4 NRSVUE).

Life inevitably brings moments of darkness and despair, times when we feel like we are walking through the deepest valleys. The “valley of the shadow of death” symbolizes these periods of intense fear and uncertainty. Yet, the psalmist reminds us that we do not walk these paths alone. Our Shepherd is with us, God’s presence providing profound comfort and courage. God’s rod and staff are symbols of God’s unwavering protection and guidance, reassuring us that we are never abandoned, even in our darkest days.

God’s unwavering presence in our lives brings peace and security. When we face trials, we can take heart in knowing that God is with us, leading us through every challenge. God’s love and care are constant, providing us with the strength to keep moving forward.

” Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
my whole life long.”    (Psalm 23:6 NRSVUE).

The promise of God’s goodness and mercy following us all our days is a testament to God’s enduring faithfulness. As we navigate the journey of life, we are enveloped by God’s grace, ensuring that we are never without God’s loving and steadfast presence.

Psalm 23 powerfully reminds us of God’s commitment to us. God is our Shepherd, guiding us along the right paths and staying with us through every valley. Let us hold fast to this truth, finding comfort and encouragement in God’s unfailing love and guidance.

Like many young moms, I have been flooded this week with special experiences that fill me up and help me feel loved. My own mom and I have made plans for a Mother’s Day celebration, my kids are bringing home sweet trinkets and cards to celebrate me and I have booked myself a massage…glory, Hallelujah! This morning, I attended the Mother’s Day Tea at Trinity Christian Academy and got emotional thinking that our youngest is now old enough to “sing” on the stage. With the help of her amazing teachers, I was given a porcelain plate with her little pink handprint on it in the shape of a flower and I will treasure it always. I am so thankful for the way that our culture takes this week to elevate and honor moms as we should.  But if you are a mom, or you carry the role of a mom, you know what a mix of emotions this week can bring for us.

I am all for celebrating the work of mothers because we are often underappreciated and always underpaid, but sometimes we let it just be about the holiday and not about the holiness that is being birthed within us.

Without getting into too many details, I loved being pregnant. I loved the feeling of our babies growing steadily in my body and the power and privilege that it is to create, sustain and nourish something so precious and delicate. I love that I have had the ability to do this and never want to take that good gift for granted. I have always been drawn to creation language in the Scriptures and so it might not surprise you to hear that our devotional text is Psalm 139. I invite you to hear these words with new meaning from The Message version.

139 ^1-6 God, investigate my life;
get all the facts firsthand.
I’m an open book to you;
even from a distance, you know what I’m thinking.
You know when I leave and when I get back;
I’m never out of your sight.
You know everything I’m going to say
before I start the first sentence.
I look behind me and you’re there,
then up ahead and you’re there, too—
your reassuring presence, coming and going.
This is too much, too wonderful—
I can’t take it all in!

^7-12 Is there anyplace I can go to avoid your Spirit?
to be out of your sight?
If I climb to the sky, you’re there!
If I go underground, you’re there!
If I flew on morning’s wings
to the far western horizon,
You’d find me in a minute—
you’re already there waiting!
Then I said to myself, “Oh, he even sees me in the dark!
At night I’m immersed in the light!”
It’s a fact: darkness isn’t dark to you;
night and day, darkness and light, they’re all the same to you.

^13-16 Oh yes, you shaped me first inside, then out;
you formed me in my mother’s womb.
I thank you, High God—you’re breathtaking!
Body and soul, I am marvelously made!
I worship in adoration—what a creation!
You know me inside and out,
you know every bone in my body;
You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit,
how I was sculpted from nothing into something.
Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth;
all the stages of my life were spread out before you,
The days of my life all prepared
before I’d even lived one day.

^17-22 Your thoughts—how rare, how beautiful!
God, I’ll never comprehend them!
I couldn’t even begin to count them—
any more than I could count the sand of the sea.
Oh, let me rise in the morning and live always with you!
And please, God, do away with wickedness for good!
And you murderers—out of here!—
all the men and women who belittle you, God,
infatuated with cheap god-imitations.
See how I hate those who hate you, God,
see how I loathe all this godless arrogance;
I hate it with pure, unadulterated hatred.
Your enemies are my enemies!

^23-24 Investigate my life, O God,
find out everything about me;
Cross-examine and test me,
get a clear picture of what I’m about;
See for yourself whether I’ve done anything wrong—
then guide me on the road to eternal life.

Without getting too much into “sermon” mode, I will tell you that there are two distinct parts of this Psalm. Verses 1-18 are about Praise and the second part, verses 19-24 consists of concern over the wickedness and dangers of the world. But isn’t that so much like a Mom? Full of joy and concern; always engaged in thankfulness for the life she leads but worries about those in her life that she loves most. But both parts are held together with the statement, “Lord, you have search me and known me. Search me oh God, you know my heart.”

I am convinced the only other person that knows our hearts quite like God is our mother at least, that has been the case for me. We are thankful therefore for the mothers or those that mother in our lives. And so as you mediate on this Scripture today, may you be filled with the reality of Joy and Concern. Joy over all the good that the Kingdom of God is bringing to fruition and yet the concern over the ‘not yet’ and how things are still very broken indeed. As you let the Holy Spirit sing this over you, may you hold both in tension, the worries of life and the thankfulness for it. And know that the same God that knit you together in your mother’s womb knows you deeply and loves you intimately. What a gift it is that we are an Open Book to God, but the book is still being written; our story is still being told. May we continue to pursue the God that loves us even more than we will ever know and show others to do the same.