Second Church Steps

Devotion for Smalls, Talls, and All on Psalm 46 (verses 1, 7, 9-11) There was a lot of violence in the news this past weekend-- from the accidental to unthinkable. I really avoided thinking about it all day. Then, my work was finished. I didn't have any other tasks to occupy my mind. Just as I was settling into a "think," I ran across this devotion from this summer. I wonder if it might help others to think about hard things. I offer it to you for you and your children. 1 God is our refuge and strength,     an ever-present help in trouble. 7  The Lord Almighty is with us;     the God of Jacob is our fortress. 9  He makes wars cease     to the ends of the earth. He breaks the bow and shatters the spear;     he burns the shields [ d ]  with fire. 10  He says, “Be still, and know that I am God;    ...

Media coverage of Hurricane Harvey has had me checking on-line to see if the people and places of my Houston days are well.  Is St. Luke’s PCUSA on the south 610 Loop dry?  Is Northwoods PCUSA, on FM1960, up and running a relief effort? (Of course it is.) Familiar street names flash across the screen, and my heart goes back to the humid years of early adulthood.   Houston is where I weathered miscarriages and disappointments.  It is where I ventured into professional church work in Bellaire.  It is where I learned to “carol dance.”  It is also where I learned what it is to rise above the self and praise God with humility.  How do we sit with pain, anguish, disbelief, and loss? Even more, how do we help our children sit with this? We do this with prayer.  Prayers that name the pain and confess our need, give voice to hope and affirm the connectivity in Christ. Then, we lift prayers of praise—not in spite of the pain, but in the midst...

I am the kind of person who really likes to hit a mark.  Whether it is checking off a list or perfectly duplicating Martha Stewart’s Peter Rabbit cake, I love replicating excellence.  I also have trouble coloring within the proverbial lines.  Yes, it is an interesting dichotomy, and my brain is a playground of diversity which is most often a ping pong match between organization and innovation.  However, if there are enough undercurrents/challenges all bets are off.  Then it becomes a bob and weave of programming.   https://goo.gl/images/hgXDu7 This summer did not really go according to "the plan,"  after all life happens.  You've heard of Plan B, right? We ended up punting the (A through) “K Plan” aka the “Kat Plan” in its many manifestations.  I had a beautiful plan for coping with absences and summer staffing realities…and then after “Plan A” comes “Plan B” and so on.   I then realized we had skipped “Plan G.” Plan G...

As parents of young children, the one thing that remains the same from day to day and year to year is CHANGE! It sometimes seems that our children grow overnight; sometimes they do! It has been 500 years since  one big change occurred in the church, The Reformation.  Okay, it was more like sowing seeds of change.  As Presbyterians we  speak about being “reformed and always reforming,” which is another way of saying “changed and always changing.”   What should this change look like?  Well, there have been committees, sessions, kings, queens, popes, and wars about that throughout Church History.  However, in Matthew 18:3 (NIV), the Bible quotes Jesus, "Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” There is a lot of change coming up for our children. There is a new school year which begins NEXT WEEK for some of us. August 6 th   will be "Promotion Sunday" at Second Church...

I am on the cusp of VBS, and my thoughts have turned to food.  Well, it is only natural since this year's Vacation Bible School  is about planting, gardening, seeds, and harvesting.    The Gravely Tractor and Wagon Have you heard of the “new” food approach called Farm to Table?  That is where the consumer/cook is mindful that the food on our plate is a product of the food grown on the farm.  When I was growing up, that was called, “Granddaddy’s Garden.”  My grandfather was an accountant, but in middle Tennessee that didn’t mean he couldn’t “hoe a row” in the backyard.  My grandfather’s garden was kind of “farm sized.”  It was a good acre or so and fed his household, his daughters’, and quite a few neighbors’ as well.  The string beans wound their way up the corn stalks, and there were some spots on those apples which would still burst with flavor.  Add into this mix that my grandfather had advanced glaucoma and could not s...

Be a FIG and DIG This is one of those days when you think you are doing one thing, and you end up doing another.  I thought I was going to be writing about “BALANCE,” you know—“to everything there is a season.”  Instead, I have spent the morning doing some study about fig trees in the Bible.  Yes,  I said “fig trees,” those things that cover Adam and Eve’s nakedness and signs of  the Hebrew People’s abundance and plenty during King Solomon’s time (Genesis 3:7 and 1 Kings 4:25).  The stories most often retold about “figs” in the Bible are the account of Jesus cursing the tree that does not bear fruit, and the parable of the gardener bartering one more year during which he will work diligently to make a fig tree produce fruit.  I looked at 44 instances of “figs” which are medicine, food, abundance, sweet, shade giving and a long lived symbol of peace,  and  I found the parable of summer.  How did I miss this figgy morsel?  It...

Figure 1 http://www.montreat.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Mountains-2-400x250-300x187.jpg We think of “Sabbath” as a time to NOT DO something.  We stop.  We wait.  We rest.  We sit.  However, that is a lot of work!  I think of Sabbath as “making a space.”  It is an active choosing, remembering, and prioritizing a holy space for God.  It is less about “letting go” and more about “leaning in” to the Breath of the Holy Spirit.  In this context Sabbath is a return to our making.  You see, in the beginning “the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being” (Genesis 2:7). It is the breath of the Lord God that stirs dust into human.  It is the breath of the Lord God that makes us living and gives us a life.  Therefore, “Sabbath” – a time for rest and renewal, is an opportunity to reach for that breath of God which gives u...