Second Church Steps

Spelling is not my strong suit.   In college I had to convince my Russian Language professor that yes, I studied for my weekly vocabulary quiz.   It wasn’t that I didn’t try to learn the words.   I can’t spell in four languages! Two sets of words I can spell, in English, are “desert/dessert” and “angel/angle.” I learned them with the help of very good teachers in elementary school.   An “angel” is Ever Lasting versus an “angle” that is LEft or right.   A “dessert” is something of which you would like SecondS; a “desert” you only want one.   That teaching tool only works so far.   I have found myself in more than one desert; so whether I like it or not, deserts seems to come in seconds (and thirds). Luckily, however, there are angels—messengers of God. God sent a tree in the desert to shelter Jonah.  From "An Invitation to the Desert."   Some of the families at Second Church are wandering in the desert with a family spiritual pra...

Our heroes always, almost always, turn out to have feet of clay.   They are not impervious titans of moral, ethical, and philosophical perfection.   Our heroes are always, almost always, men and women who are human and flawed and frail.   The Genesis story tells us that God formed the first man and the first woman out of the “dust of the ground” (Genesis 2:7, NRSV). We are dust, and the Ash Wednesday liturgy reminds us that we shall return to dust (based on Genesis 3:19). What stands between dust and dust?   There is the breath of God, breathed into molded ground to give it life.   There is the water of baptism, poured onto this molded ground to form it into a life of service.   This watered ground becomes moldable mud; a clay for the Potter’s hand to fit us to our ministry and mission in the world. At no point, do we become other than what we are made of and made by.   We are clay footed servants of the living God. Lent is a time when the ...