A Visit from our Regional Canon
This Sunday, we had a guest preacher: our new Regional Canon, the Rev. Marissa Rohrbach. As Regional Canon, Marissa is our primary contact with the Bishop’s Office and the wider life of the Church. In her sermon, she spends a little while introducing herself and her role, before turning to the Gospel reading for the day.
God’s Love Has Been Poured Into Our Hearts
Our world is not at all a perfect place. Our lives are full of broken habits and mistakes. But God’s love has been poured into our hearts, again and again and again. And so we have peace in our hearts, when we know that we are loved by God. We have the strength to carry on, because God has not left us comfortless. We have the power to love, because it is God’s love that works in us and through us in the world.
Expecting the Unexpected
I’ve always found the titles of the What to Expect When You’re Expecting series to be so funny. Sometimes it feels like the only useful advice I’ve ever gotten in life, let alone as a parent, is to expect the unexpected. It certainly would have been good advice for the disciples, as they gathered on Pentecost Day.
Set Free
Each one of us holds great power in our hands, to keep other people wrapped in the chains of our resentment or to release those bonds and set them free. And most of us, I suspect, are also wrapped in chains: held by some sense of shame or fear or guilt, afraid to be seen for who we truly are, lest someone else slam the jail door shut. But God sees us. And God loves us. And there is no shame that is too great for God to want to set you free, no chains of guilt too strong for God to break, because God’s deepest desire is to set you free from judgment and condemnation
