One of our most important tasks coming out of the last 30 months is to be listening to children. In the recently released #PandemicPastoring Report, I wrote, “teenagers, children and adults everywhere suffered social isolation and profound stress.” The multiple…
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This is a mother’s day prayer, but not the ones I grew up hearing. This one is more of a psalm and a lament. It lifts up to God the painful and unspeakable facets of mothering and mother’s day. It…
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Are you a minister or chaplain, an activist or congregational pastor? Whatever your role in ministry, you are now living and working in an unprecedented worldwide season of the coronavirus pandemic. And we want to support you as you bring…
Read MorePrayers for #Ferguson – Tuesday Yesterday I posted a sweet message about my child’s back-to-school day. Today I’m posting a prayer for the children of #Ferguson who were scheduled to begin classes today, August 19, 2014. Schools will remain closed this…
Read MorePsalm 139 on a Wednesday night When I speak to children I speak in a voice that gathers them in Even while they tumble across the carpet Like puppies with clothes They whine and yip and yelp occasionally But when…
Read MoreTomorrow is the Sunday of Advent in which we invite and celebrate joy and a good Sunday for a baptism. I will attend a baptism for a baby I know tomorrow. He and eight other little ones will be blessed and welcomed into the church. I assisted at the wedding of his parents a couple of years ago. It will be a joyful time for many reasons. Yet, it is not a joyful time for all children.
Read MoreFrom the Back Seat
Recently we were out riding on a Saturday afternoon. We had two three-year-old girls strapped securely in the back seat. We stopped at a neighbor’s farm and got a good look at some chickens.
We asked the first little girl, “Do you know what chickens give us?”
“Honey.”
Lent should not ever really begin the way it did. But then tragedy does not seem to have a timetable. At least not one I like. My feelings are still too raw to blog about this now. And some of you who read this are raw as well. So I’ll stick with one of the prayers I prayed in the funeral today. It’s a prayer for children, and it followed a reading of Luke 18:15-17. Jesus Christ, we love our children. You love our children. You love us as your children. And so we bring you our children now . . .
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