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Char Cox 5/2/24 Char Cox 5/2/24

Ascension Ponderings

Rev. Dr. Char Cox fondly reflects on her Sunday School exprience in this poem.

***Photo by*** ***Jeremy Perkins*** on ***Unsplash***

I have never really thought about the Ascension,
the Ascension of our Lord,
I mean.
In 33 years of ordained ministry,
I can count
on one hand
the number of times
that I have presided at an Ascension Day liturgy,
or preached on the Ascension texts,
or led a Bible study on the Ascension story.
Perhaps,
it is because Ascension falls on a Thursday,
and, well –
Thursday liturgies are hard.
Thursdays just aren’t days
that we typically gather,
or worship in community,
or think about “church things” –
And who wants to celebrate
an exit
when entrances
are so much more captivating,
and haven’t we already celebrated
the only exit that matters –
the earth-shattering exit,
from the tomb,
I mean,
and wasn’t/isn’t
that the point –
the Resurrection –
the culmination
of the Incarnation,
so who really needs Ascension,
anyway?

Perhaps,
it is because I have served much of my life
in academic contexts,
and Ascension Day always seems to fall
in the midst of
end-of-the-school-year-type-things –
banquets,
and parties,
and Commencements –
and who has time or interest
in celebrating
the leave-taking of Jesus
when there are so many other important
milestones,
and so many more
present-tense leave-takings to acknowledge?

Perhaps,
my lack of attention
and contemplation
on the Ascension
has something to do with
my own
incomprehension
of the significance
of the apprehension
of the enfleshment
of the Holy
into the Trinity
that is the Divine –
and if I don’t really get it,
or think it is noteworthy,
or even mystically grasp
its contribution
to the thinning of the veil
between what is
and what will be,
then, well –
how would I ever
accompany my people
in a liturgical immersion
in the
day,
and the time,
and the experience
when the One
who came
to dwell among us
takes a holy leave?

But this year,
my Holy Week discipline
was not focused
on the footwashing,
or the meal,
or the torture at the hands of the state,
or even on
that holy waiting
between Friday and Sunday
when the whole world
holds its breath,
even if it doesn’t know that it is –
waiting to see
if the belly of whale,
or in this case,
the earth,
emblematically stylized as a tomb,
would expel its holy inhabitant
so that
that which once was,
would be again,
and that which is
would be made new.

No –
this year,
while the Church
in all of her perfect imperfection
was drawn into the
holy upside-down-ness
of the logical consequence of
Incarnation,
And the death-interrupted
of Resurrection –
I was deep in the throes
of wonderment
and prayer –
about the Ascension.

This contemplation grew,
not so much
out of holy curiosity
as it did out of
practical necessity.
You see,
as a part of my call
to steward a project
that leans into how we
Nurture Children through Worship and Prayer,
I have committed to crafting
child-attentive,
arts-enriched,
liturgies for every Festival.
Every includes Ascension.
Every includes
this least celebrated,
most forgotten feast day
(thank you for those words, Barbara Brown Taylor)
That always comes
40 days after
the great exit from the tomb
and 10 days before
the holy winds
and tongue-loosing fire
that made the Word that became flesh
become words once again.

This odd juxtaposition
of the Great and Holy Week
and the lifting up
of the raised-up One
opened up the mystery
of the Ascension
for me
in ways that have felt akin
to the tomb bursting open anew.

Here is where my Holy Week-Ascension-ponderings
have led.

First,
It is the Enfleshed Word that ascends.
That may seem obvious,
but bear with me.
The Word –
enfleshed in the earthly stuff
of blood and bones,
Risen –
still wounded and scarred –
that same, yet made-new-yet-same body
is
who and what that ascends.
The stuff of earth becomes
a part of not just heaven,
but of the Divine.
It is the Ascension,
therefore,
not the Resurrection,
that completes
the Incarnation.
The Word becomes flesh
and the enfleshed-One –
takes the stuff of earth,
our own flesh,
into the unity that is the Trinity.
That has to say
something
about the goodness
of BODIES.

For me –
mind blown.

Second,
and for this, I have the artist Albrecht Durer
to thank.
In his depiction of the Ascension,
most eyes are looking upward
at the disappearing Christ,
yet one figure
is clearly looking
at the ground that had been under Jesus’ feet –
where it is marked
by the footprints of Jesus.
The Enfleshed Word has left –
AND his footprints are left behind –
Footprints, it seems
that are not
simply scars in the sand
to dissipate on the winds
of that holy hilltop,
but FOOTPRINTS
that we
who are called to be witnesses,
we who are now the Body of Christ on earth -
                not metaphorically,
                but literally –
                as in, we really are Christ’s body,
                Enfleshing Jesus -
                Enfleshing
                Love Divine
                In the world today –
we are called to continue to make
the footprints –
                and dare I say
                hand prints
                and heart prints
of Christ on earth.
Begging the question,
of course,
what kind of footprints
                and hand prints
                and heart prints

are we leaving?
Are we –
Are you –
imprinting the world
With DIVINE LOVE?

Mind blown again.

And finally,
Luke tells us
that Jesus led them out –
Out of the city,
Out of their comfort zones
Out beyond
where they were
what they knew
what they understood
what they imagined
what they comprehended.
Out.
Ascension is,
therefore,
about movement –
not just up
– but OUT!
Out –
for those
who first lived this story
and for us.
How are we –
How are you –
Called OUT?

Mind blown one more time.

BODIES
FOOTPRINTS
OUT

There is so much good news in
all of this
that I cannot quite
comprehend
how I missed it
or ignored it
all these years,
probably assuming
that Ascension
is unnecessary,
or inconvenient
or that, like those earlier followers
gaping after the place
where Jesus used to be,
there is nothing to see here.

How wrong I was!
And how captivated
I now am –
by this least celebrated,
most forgotten feast day
that I never used to think about
and now
cannot seem to stop thinking about –
and wondering
and imagining
ways that
the Ascension
can come to life,
not only as a feast day,
but as we seek to
faithfully
be the Body of Christ –
in,
and through,
and with our own bodies –
leaving footprints of Divine Love
Out –
Out beyond where we are
what we know
what we understand
what we imagine
And what we comprehend
so that our lives
as Resurrection people
become lived out
as Ascension people.

If you are interested in receiving the Celebrate! Worship for Every Festival Processional Liturgy with Holy Communion for the Ascension of our Lord from Nourishing Vocation with Children at St. Olaf College, email nourishing-vocation@stolaf.edu

Dr. Charlene Rachuy Cox

Rev. Dr. Charlene Rachuy Cox (affectionately known as “Char”) holds a Doctor of Ministry Degree from the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, with an emphasis in Spirituality; a Master of Sacred Theology Degree from the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, with an emphasis in Preaching and Worship, a Master of Divinity Degree from Luther Seminary, and a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Augustana University, Sioux Falls. She has served as a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America for over 28 years, serving in seminary, collegiate, and congregational settings. She loves reading – especially memoirs and historical fiction, and enjoys writing poetry, travelling, and all things winter.

Facebook | PrChar
Website | Charlene Rachuy Cox

Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.

As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.

Char Cox 3/26/24 Char Cox 3/26/24

Nurturing Children in the Faith

Rev. Dr. Char Cox fondly reflects on her Sunday School experience in this poem.

***Photo by*** ***Ben White*** on ***Unsplash***

I can still smell
the sweet musty scent
of the church basement
where I went to Sunday School
as a child.

I can still see the
white plastic, church-light-coin-box
in which we deposited our pennies
on the Sundays
closest to our birthdays –
one penny for each year of our age.

I can still hear the old upright piano,
slightly out of tune,
and so familiar
as we sang our Opening songs
every Sunday –
He Leadeth Me,
O God our Help in Ages Past,
Savior Like a Shepherd Lead Us.

I can still see the little chairs
on which we sat,
the tables around which we gathered,
the steps that we climbed to the sanctuary,
and the clusters of children and adults
throughout the one big room,
learning Bible stories
and Luther’s Small Catechism,
and that there are people of faith
who love you
and care about you
and who want the best for you in life
and want you to know
and trust
and believe
more than anything else in the world
that God loves you
as God’s own beloved child –
full stop.
No exceptions.

And I can still see Eunice.
Eunice was my Kindergarten Sunday School teacher.
Eunice played the guitar
and she sang songs
and she wore white fashion boots
and smiled a lot
and she taught us about Jesus.

I remember one Sunday
in particular.
It was a day that we left the basement
for Sunday school.
We didn’t have to sit
on the little wooden chairs that day.
We didn’t have to sit still
for the whole hour that day.
Instead,
Eunice led us up the steps
that came in the back of the church,
and we went up the aisle
and got to sit on the floor
inside the altar rail.
We never got to go
inside the altar rail –
But that day we did.
And Eunice told us
to look up –
Look up at the picture that
was above the white and gold-trimmed altar.
Look up,
She said.
What do you see?
She asked,
when you look at the picture?

I was a shy five-year-old,
so I kept my thoughts to myself,
But someone said what I was thinking.
A man sinking in the water.
Someone else said,
Jesus standing on the water.
Someone else said,
Jesus pulling the sinking man up.

And Eunice smiled and nodded.

After she heard
everything we had to say about the picture –
the picture of Peter sinking
in the water
and Jesus holding on for dear life –
Eunice asked us
if we knew what the name of our Church was.
I thought it was a trick question
because our church had two names.
And somebody said “Rosehill.”
Somebody else said, “Emmanuel.”
And Eunice told us
that both were right.
Our church was
Emmanuel Lutheran Church of Rosehill Township.
And then she said,
Today I want to talk to you about
Emmanuel.
She asked us if any of us
knew what “Emmanuel” meant.
When we all shook our heads,
She said,
Emmanuel means “God with us.”
It is one of the names of Jesus.
She had us say Emmanuel
with her several times,
And then she told us to
look up at the picture above the altar again.
Look up.

As we did so,
Eunice told us the story of Peter,
stepping out of the boat,
and trying to walk toward Jesus
on the water.
She told us
how he started to sink
and how Jesus reached out to save him.
She told us
that there would be times in our lives
when we would feel like Peter,
when we would feel like we were sinking,
but to always remember
that Jesus is always with us,
that Jesus will always reach out to help us,
to pull us up to his safe arms.
She told us
to always remember
that whatever happened to us –
whatever we experienced –
good or bad –
happy or sad –
Jesus would always be with us –
just like Jesus was with Peter
that day on the water.

I can still see Eunice –
the passion in her eyes,
the smile on her face,
the joy in her voice
as she told us about Emmanuel –
God who is always with us.

I have frequently thought
about that day
over the years –
how formative it was,
how it has stuck with me,
how often I return to it,
and how,
when I close my eyes,
I can still see that picture
that was above
that old church altar –
and if I let myself
imagine it –
I can feel the arms of Jesus
reaching out
in both gentleness and power
to hold onto me,
especially when life is hard.

Eunice
is in her eighties now,
and I am fortunate
that I still have a relationship
with this one who taught
me the faith
so many years ago.
In many ways,
I am still a Kindergartener
and she is still my teacher.
Eunice continues to embrace life,
to be full of laughter,
love, and joy,
still singing about Jesus,
still reminding me
that more than anything else in the world,
Jesus is always with me.
God loves me.
as God’s own beloved child.
full stop.
No exceptions.

Several years ago
when my wife and I
were getting married,
there were some
in our small, rural community
who were less than kind,
and Eunice sent us a card
and to let us know
how much she loved us both,
to congratulate us,
to speak a word
of acceptance,
love,
and grace.
It was a holy,
life-giving,
sacramental gesture.

Every once in a while,
we will get a letter in the mail
with a clipping
from the newspaper,
or rainbow bracelets,
or a simply profound word of kindness,
And when those missives come –
We got one such letter last week,
prompting me to write this reflection –
it is as if I am five years-old again,
sitting at the foot of that old wooden altar,
staring up at Peter sinking in the water –
Jesus holding on for dear life –
and hearing again
and anew –
Jesus is always with you –

And I am reminded
how utterly important it is
to keep on speaking
words of
acceptance,
grace,
and love
into people’s lives.
No one can ever hear too many times,
Jesus is always with you.
No one can hear too many times
God loves you.
No one can hear too many times
You are God’s own beloved child.
Full stop.
No exceptions.

And so, dear readers,
If you are a Eunice
in other people’s lives,
thanks be to God for you.

If you need a Eunice
in your life today,
I’ve got a word for you:
Jesus is always with you.
God loves you
as God’s own beloved child –
full stop.
No exceptions.

And finally,
thank God
for sweet, musty church basements
and the messages of grace
that get planted there.

Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.

Dr. Michael J. Chan 2/27/24 Dr. Michael J. Chan 2/27/24

An Analgesic Faith: Reflections on Psalm 77

Lent has recently become Dr. Michael J. Chan's favorite season in the church year. The 40 Lenten days commemorate Jesus' time in the wilderness, where he was tempted both by the devil and the harsh environment.

***Photo by*** ***Danist Soh*** on ***Unsplash***

Lent has recently become my favorite season in the church year. The 40 Lenten days commemorate Jesus' time in the wilderness, where he was tempted both by the devil and the harsh environment.

Lent is bookended by bleak events: it begins with Ash Wednesday, reminding us that we are but dust (Gen 2:7; 3:19) and ends just before Holy Week, which highlights Jesus’ execution and resurrection.

In the season of Lent, death is everywhere.

No wonder Psalm 77 found itself into the lectionary’s daily readings. Verses 2-3 capture the spirit of the psalm and of the season:

In my day of distress I seek Yhwh;

At night, my arms are stretched out without ceasing

my soul refuses comfort

I think of God and I groan

My spirit meditates and becomes feeble. Selah (my translation)

But the spirit and season of Lent are often far removed from the experiences of many American Christians, and most especially those whose traditions are not structured according to traditional church calendars.

Too often American Christians as asked to numb their pain. Instead of a faith big enough for this whole human life, broken-hearted people are offered shallow platitudes like “God has a plan” or “God won’t give you more than you can handle,” or “God’s ways are higher than our ways,” so stop asking questions.

This is an analgesic “faith.” But a faith numb to the world is no faith. It’s a delusion.

If all our faith can do is numb pain, then it’s a faith worth rejecting. Lent is there to remind us of what a durable, trustworthy faith should look and feel like.

If Christian faith has no room for broken hearts, messy human stories, and scarred bodies then it is precisely the kind of religion that Karl Marx described when he said: “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”

We must do better.

“Things Take the Time They Take”

Unlike American culture, Lent doesn’t ask us to hurry up and get over sorrow or to paper over the shocking violence of this world. Lent doesn’t shuffle us along from sorrow to happiness.

It’s worth remembering that Jesus’ own 40 days in the wilderness evokes the narrative of Israel’s much longer 40-year period in the desert, known especially from the book of Numbers. Jesus relives those years of wandering, adversity, and delay. The season of Lent allows us to experience these narratives according to ritual time.

Lent creates space for us to sit with life’s pain and to feel it fully and collectively. The author of Psalm 77, for instance, does not end in praise or thanksgiving, like other laments. It turns to the memory of God’s actions in the past (see vv. 11-20), but the God of memory never materializes in the present. At the end of it all, the psalmist’s sharp-edged questions still stand: “Will Yhwh reject forever? . . . Has God forgotten to be gracious?” (vv. 7- 9).

The fact that Lent is a season for the entire church also tells us that we aren't meant to sit in this heaviness alone.

We aren’t meant to rush through the darkness to get to the light. We can’t speed the night in order to get to morning. You can’t rush your way to Easter.

When you try to shortcut the journey you never actually leave the driveway.

As Mary Oliver puts it: “things take the time they take”

The Spirit of Lent, the Spirit of Lament

As a church we often fail tender-hearted people. Instead of offering a faith that is spacious enough for all of human life, we hand them a cheap plastic mask and call it, “faith.”

Doesn’t the world feel so much better when you wear it? Isn’t the world so much happier and sunnier when you choose the blue pill, rather than the red pill? (The Matrix, 1999). Go ahead. Forget reality and live in a dream.

But poet Cleo Wade is correct when she says, “You can either have a mask or a real life. There isn’t a Third Option.”

Lent is a season to recover a real life. It’s a season of self-reflection and of turning away from the things that leach life away.

If Lent is the season for recovering honesty, psalms of lament (like Psalm 77) give us the language for doing so. Laments are poems in which human beings complain about this world, one another, and of course God. Laments are the human clapback to God, who is often accused of being distant and unresponsive.

Lent gives us permission to sit in dust and ashes but also to push back against a culture that is so deeply uncomfortable with pain, disruption, loss, and death.

A Worthy Rebellion

Just because Lent is a season of sorrow, lament, and self-reflection, however, doesn’t mean that it isn’t also a season of hope.

But Lent teaches us something important about the shape of hope: True hope always has scars.

That may be the difference between hope and optimism. True hope comes from tilled soil. It springs up out of broken ground. Like all green and growing things, hope takes time. It’s a seed. Seeds begin their lives in darkness.

But hope doesn’t always arrive on our timeline. We don’t get to control when the light arrives. In that way, it’s less like the sun and more like a lightning strike.

Hope also takes honesty. But honesty is hard and painful, because it requires us to look at ourselves and our world through clear, undistorted lenses. We can’t get to the lands of hope and healing without first crossing the bridges of honesty. There are no detours, no shortcuts, and no alternate routes.

People often give something up during Lent. Instead, I’ll ask you to pick something up--a worthy rebellion: This Lent, don’t settle for an analgesic faith. Insist on a kind of faith that is spacious enough for this entire life—the mess, the joy, the hurt, the injury, and also the recovery.

Laura Jean Truman 4/20/23 Laura Jean Truman 4/20/23

Easter: The Sacredness of a Good Feast

We carefully read through Lenten devotionals and give up things for forty days, but then rush through Easter as if it’s one day, and never take time to think about what fifty days of feasting could look like for our so-tired souls.

Some years ago, I spent a month from Lent through Easter in an Anglican monastery in England. Lent had already started when I entered the monastery, and the pictures and icons on the walls of the chapel were covered with black cloth. There were no “Alleluia’s” in the liturgy, and our meals were very simple – no butter for our bread, no meat or sugar – and even more silence than normal was held. It was an all consuming Lent, serious and heavy. I followed the chapel bells to breakfast and to prayers and to feeding the chickens and lunch and more prayers, and I thought about serious and heavy things, and it felt very holy.

At sunset on Holy Saturday, we gathered for Easter Vigil, a liturgical service that begins in darkness on the evening of Holy Saturday and bursts into light at midnight on Easter morning. We gathered around a barrel bonfire outside, flames coming up to the edge of the metal rim. After the first Scripture reading, the small collection of monk and nuns and I filed into the chapel. The chapel was so dark, and only single candle was lit, but I could see faint outlines of bouquets of flowers on the walls. Things are about to be different. But not yet. Wait a little longer.

During an Easter Vigil, the priest reads a dozen very long Scripture passages from fall to redemption, and modern services usually cut the liturgy down from its traditional length for the time constraints of their parishioners. These monks had no time constraints. We read it all. Time got hazy. Nothing existed except this tiny chapel and the huge story of God’s faithfulness rolling over us, Genesis, Exodus, Ezekiel, Romans, Gospels. We read and read and my feet felt wobbly and then – midnight.

All the bells rang. I didn’t even know there were that many bells in the whole monastery. Everything rang. All the lights went on, and everything I had just seen the outlines of – flowers and icons and statues – burst into view. Incense flooded the room. Music flooded the room. He is risen! He is risen indeed, alleluia!

The exact moment from repentance to resurrection was explosive. It is finished, it is over, it is time to feast, the Light is here, it has overcome the whole world. Now we celebrate.

The next day we had Easter feast. There was steak and Cadbury eggs and wine. We talked and talked and talked and laughed and everyone had a thousand things to say and a hundred funny stories. Everyone ate too much steak and drank too much wine and I ate too many Cadbury eggs. Silliness reigned.

And then, to my surprise, the monks kept feasting after Easter Sunday. The Easter seasons stayed celebratory. The mood of the monastery lifted, food got more decadent, silence was held more loosely. I felt Easter as a whole season of celebration for the first time.

That Easter feast season at the monastery didn’t just change how I experienced Easter. It changed how I experienced Lent, too. Lent felt like it had been for a purpose, not just suffering for the sake of suffering. Now Lent wasn’t just a long slog towards a single day of theological importance. Lent leads towards something. Lent culminates in redemption, a redemption even longer and more all-consuming than the serious, heavy work that came before.

Lent culminates in a feast.

It is quite a shock to learn that Easter is not just a day, but an entire season of feasting in the liturgical year. Not only that, it’s fifty full days, ten days longer than our Lenten penitence. We carefully read through Lenten devotionals and give up things for forty days, but then rush through Easter as if it’s one day, and never take time to think about what fifty days of feasting could look like for our so-tired souls.

Modern Western Christians are terrible at feasting.

I talked with a mentor once about how to mark seasons of flourishing and happiness as “spiritual.” She was skeptical if such a thing was even possible, and whether delight could ever be as spiritual as sorrow. Joy is good, she said. But it isn’t as meaningful as suffering. C.S. Lewis says something similar, that “God whispers in our joys but shouts in our pain.” This idea is pervasive – God is more tangible during suffering, and meaning is in the valleys and never on the mountaintops. Celebration doesn’t create wisdom and it doesn’t cultivate virtues and it certainly does not bring us as close to God, ourselves, or others as suffering does. Echoes of the Puritan roots of white evangelicalism tell us that only pain and hard work can be holy.

The tradition of the church, though, as well as the witness of Scripture, emphasizes the holiness of a season of celebration, just as much as the holiness of a season of repentance. The church marks the importance of both “fasts” (periods of repentance and self-denial) and “feasts” (periods of celebration and joy), and doesn’t give one more weight than the other. They exist together, equally spiritual moments in time. Neither is more essential and neither brings us closer to God.

Fasting and feasting exist together, a liturgical ecosystem that can’t be separated without all the other parts weakening. We fast so that we can feast. We feast so that we can fast. When we hurry past feasting because it isn’t “spiritually weighty,” our fasting and repentance will get self-important, penitential for the sake of performance, and stripped of humility and gratitude and community – all virtues that are developed and shaped by celebration.

And the very first time Jesus breaks into the mundane with the magic of a miracle is not to do something productive or salvific – it is to bring wine to a wedding, and prolong a feast so it didn’t end prematurely.

Maybe Jesus knows we’re always looking for an excuse to end our feasting prematurely.

What a time to talk about feasting, though. We are all so, so tired.

Dostoevsky laments that we aren’t holy because we don’t have enough time, that God gives us only 24 hours in a day, which is “not enough time to sleep, let alone repent!” and our exhausted bodies feel that. Seasons of repentance are hard enough. Sometimes it feels like a season of feasting is even harder. Both of those things require energy and focus, and as we continue to emerge from a pandemic, all times feels blurred and sometimes all that feels possible is surviving. Even if celebration is not frivolous, even if joy is not spiritually meaningless – how are we supposed to even want to celebrate when our hearts are so heavy, and our bodies are so tired?

The last thing we ought to do is make “feasting” another Should, another spiritual rule to check off. And the very last we should do is put on a fake smile, lay out a forced feast, and try to toxic positivity our way into celebration.

But sometimes, if we carve out a tiny space for joy, a tiny space where we are permitted to play, a tiny space where we let ourselves enjoy the taste and touch and smell of ordinary things -- without trying to force happiness to appear, or pretend it’s here when it’s not – sometimes, small pieces of joy can find us.

Just carving out a very small space can be enough.

“Laughter is carbonated holiness,” Anne Lamott says. May that holiness find its way into your life this Easter season – in moments you’re hunting for it, and surprising us in moments we never thought feasting was possible.

Laura Jean Truman

Laura Jean is a queer writer, preacher, and former chaplain living in Atlanta, GA. Originally from New England, Laura Jean holds a BA in Philosophy from the University of New Hampshire and an MDiv from Emory University: Candler School of Theology, with emphases in monasticism, mysticism, and existentialism.

Laura Jean’s essays and prayers can be found on their Substack and their retired Patheos site “Old Things New”; published in the collections Preaching As Resistance ed. by Phil Snyder and A Rhythm of Prayer ed. by Sarah Bessey.

Facebook | facebook.com/laurajeantrumanwriter
Instagram | @laurajeantruman
Twitter | @Laurajeantruman
Website | laurajeantruman.com

Photo by Eric Sun

Learn More

Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.

As an ecumenical and inclusive ministry of St. Andrew Lutheran Church, the content of each Church Anew blog represents the voice of the individual writer and does not necessarily reflect the position of Church Anew or St. Andrew Lutheran Church on any specific topic.

Char Cox 4/10/23 Char Cox 4/10/23

Defining Roads

There are many roads in this life. Some are actual roads that take us from “point A to point B.” Others are metaphorical, roads that we travel in our hearts. Many of the roads we travel, we never think of again, but some roads are so defining that they become drawn across our story with indelible ink.

The following devotion was featured in Unfinished, Church Anew’s Lent in a Box series for 2023. Learn more about the resources here.

Matthew 28:1-10

1 After the Sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. 2 And suddenly there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. 3 His appearance was like lightning and his clothing white as snow. 4 For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men. 5 But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. 6 He is not here, for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. 7 Then go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.’ This is my message for you.” 8 So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy and ran to tell his disciples. 9 Suddenly Jesus met them and said, “Greetings!” And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. 10 Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers and sisters to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”

What are some of your defining roads?

What about the road that you traveled to the first day of school, or the road that you took as you moved from one community to the next, moving with your family, or to college, or for a new job? Or what about the road that you traveled toward a significant relationship or the road away from a relationship? And what about the road home, how would you describe that road?

In the story of Jesus, much of his life was lived on the road. He was born on the road, away from home, in his ancestral town of Bethlehem. When he was very small, he traveled the immigrant road with his family, fleeing a tyrant who wanted him dead. When he was 12, he journeyed with his family to Jerusalem, and there was a frantic search for him on the road home. And the whole of his ministry life was spent on the road, traveling from place to place – teaching, healing the sick, casting out demons, giving sight to the blind, raising the dead.

His was a life on the road.

But at the beginning of the Easter story, it is not Jesus who is on the road: it is the ever-faithful women. They have traveled with him throughout his ministry, tending to his needs, serving him, following him along the various roads he traveled. They followed down the road to Jerusalem, and they walked the road with him during the last week of his life, a road from which most of his followers eventually fled. Then, on the first day of the week, they walked the road to the grave, the road of grief, the road of sorrow, the road of despair.

As they walked this road, they did not know that the grave would not be what they expected it to be. For the first time in forever, the grave had been forever changed. For the first time in forever, one who once was dead, lives to die no more. As if that was not good news enough, the messenger from God then told them, Jesus is going ahead of you, and you will see him.

Jesus is going ahead of you.

That same promise is for you. On whatever road you find yourself, Jesus is going ahead of you. As you travel the everyday road of your daily routine, Jesus is going ahead of you. Whether you travel the road of joy or sorrow, hope or despair, anxiety or contentment, fear or certainty, Jesus is going ahead of you, and that makes all the difference in the world.

May this promise grant you strength for today’s road, courage to keep going when the burdens are heavy and your footsteps are slow, and assurance that whatever roads you travel, you never walk alone.

Prayer

God of Resurrection and Life, you go ahead us wherever the road may take us. In confidence and hope, give us good courage to trust and believe that wherever we go, we never journey alone. In the name of Jesus, Amen.

Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.

Natalia Terfa 4/3/23 Natalia Terfa 4/3/23

Lent Devotions: The Gift of Awe

The following devotion was featured in Unfinished, Church Anew’s Lent in a Box series for 2023. Learn more about the resources here.

The Gift of Awe

Rev. Natalia Terfa

Matthew 8:23-27

23 And when he got into the boat, his disciples followed him. 24 A windstorm suddenly arose on the sea, so great that the boat was being swamped by the waves, but he was asleep. 25 And they went and woke him up, saying, “Lord, save us! We are perishing!” 26 And he said to them, “Why are you afraid, you of little faith?” Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a dead calm. 27 They were amazed, saying, “What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?”

I love to paint a mental picture of a particular moment in this story. It’s the minute or two right after Jesus calms the storm. I imagine the disciples all sitting there, silent and still, just looking at each other in total shock. I imagine Jesus acting normally, no big deal, like he didn’t just rebuke nature and like nature didn’t just listen to him, and the disciples are coming down off one adrenaline rush and heading right into another because DID THAT JUST HAPPEN?! WHO IS THIS GUY?!

No one wants to say anything, but also they all want to say something.

It makes me laugh to picture it.

The disciples quickly go from afraid to terrified. For very different reasons, but still, they aren’t done with their big feelings quite yet. They have watched Jesus heal people, feed people, perform miracles, cast out demons, and yet this is what makes them afraid?

Yes. This is when they realize how powerful God is.

When Martin Luther wrote his Small Catechism, he kept using the language of “fearing God.” It took me well into adulthood to understand that what he spoke of was the very feeling that the disciples shared when the storm listened to God and the sea went calm. It’s awe, but more.

I’m not sure we have too many opportunities to experience this same thing, but I think leaving room for awe in our lives can get us a little closer.

What inspires awe for you?

For me it’s big nature - like the sky at night, or mountains, or the ocean. Things that remind me of my smallness, and the beauty of God’s bigness.

Awe.

I wonder what it might feel like to make a little time for awe in the days we have left in this Lenten season. How might you cultivate a bit of the awe that creates space for faith, just as it did for the disciples on that boat in the moments of calm right after the storm.

Prayer

Awesome God, thank you for the ways you show us the bigness of your creation and love. Thank you for the gift of awe, and help us draw us closer to you each time we experience it. Amen.

Rev. Natalia Terfa

Natalia is a Lutheran pastor and author who lives in Minneapolis with her hubby, kiddo, and kitty babies. She loves to bake, to read, practice yoga, and find nature adventures. She is passionate about the church of the future, one with no boundaries and filled to the brim with love and grace and laughter and snark and a lot of fellow “not that kind of Christians.”
Natalia co-hosts Cafeteria Christian, a podcast for people who love Jesus but aren’t so sure about his followers.

Learn more

Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.

Char Cox 3/30/23 Char Cox 3/30/23

Vocare: Called to Regret

You are invited to focus on your personal regrets by both naming and reframing them, and by so doing, nourish in a particular way, God’s call for both your present and your future.

The following Vocare spiritual practice is featured in Church Anew’s Lent in a Box for 2023 and was developed by Rev. Dr. Charlene Rachuy Cox as part of the Nourishing Vocation Project of The Lutheran Center at St. Olaf College. We will be offering one piece of the Vocare practice each week.

Vocare is an ongoing spiritual practice designed to help you discern and embrace your various callings so that you can more intentionally live life on purpose for the common good.

Through guided reflection on personal life experiences via the lenses of values, openness, call, attentiveness, regrets, and experiences of God’s presence, the Vocare practice nourishes discernment of three primary questions. Who am I called to be? What am I called to do? Why am I here?

Vocare Practice: Called TO Regret

You are invited to focus on your personal regrets by both naming and reframing them, and by so doing, nourish in a particular way, God’s call for both your present and your future. When carefully tended to so that hindsight becomes insight, our regrets can be powerful and lifegiving voices of call for us. Use the time between the following guided questions for your own reflection and meditation. Bring to mind a circumstance or experience of regret from your own life. Is this a regret that still has you dwelling in hindsight, or is it a regret from which you now have gained insight? How has this regret shaped your life and its horizons?

Reflect upon your regrets

How easy it is for me to name and learn from my regrets?
What are my regrets from today?
What insight do I gain from them?
What do I need for tomorrow?

Prayer

Help me, O God, to learn from my regrets so that I might live more faithfully in each tomorrow. In Jesus name, Amen.

Check out our Instagram reel for a video version of this reflection.

Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.

Church Anew 3/27/23 Church Anew 3/27/23

Lent Devotions: No Hope There

The following devotion was featured in Unfinished, Church Anew’s Lent in a Box series for 2023. Learn more and purchase access to all the resources here.

No Hope There

Rev. Megan Graves

John 11:1-45 (read the passage)

Nope, no hope there.

No chance of anything good coming from that person.

Oh, that stinks. I don’t want to go near it.

That’s been too far gone for too long there’s no hope of any life coming from that anymore.

How many times have you looked out at the world and said one of these things to yourself? Often we look at circumstances that others find themselves in and write them off as a complete loss – there’s no hope for them, nothing good could come of it, no change possible.

Martha, though she hoped for a different outcome, held this attitude that there was no hope for her brother in this passage. She believed Jesus’s presence could have changed the outcome earlier, but now there was no hope of anything but what had already come to pass. Outside of the tomb, she proclaims, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.”

As she continues to feel hopeless about the situation, Jesus challenges her lack of faith: “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?”

What happens to the world when we no longer live as though we believe in the power of God?

What happens when we lose hope in the movement of the Holy Spirit?

Scripture shows us that Jesus showed up to heal the sick, feed the hungry, to raise the dead, and more. When we believe that God still moves in such transformative ways, when we expect these things to happen in the world, and that sometimes God invites us to participate in making them happen, what a difference it can make. If we believe that God still moves in life giving ways, we will see the glory of God all around us.

Prayer

Life-giving God, help us to live and move in the spaces we are called to inhabit in such a way that we know the glory of God because of our belief. We give thanks for your continual work of bringing hope to the hopeless. In your name we pray, Amen.

Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.

Char Cox 3/23/23 Char Cox 3/23/23

Vocare: Called to Attentiveness

You are invited to focus on where you regularly invest your attention by considering what captures your time, energy, thoughts, and imagination in everyday life.

Vocare is an ongoing spiritual practice designed to help you discern and embrace your various callings so that you can more intentionally live life on purpose for the common good.

Vocare Practice: Called TO ATTENTIVENESS

You are invited to focus on where you regularly invest your attention by considering what captures your time, energy, thoughts, and imagination in everyday life. By so considering, you are invited to nourish in a particular way, God’s present-tense call in and through daily living. Use the time between the following guided questions for your own reflection and meditation. Bring to mind a specific day, or season in your own life. Is this day or season fairly typical for you, or is it an anomaly in the rhythm of your life? How has your attention in this specific day or season shaped your life and its horizons?

Reflect upon your attentiveness

How do I typically decide where I invest my attention?
What captured and held my attention today?
Where do I wish I could have invested my attention today?
Did my attention align with my values?
What do I need for tomorrow?

Prayer

Turn my attention to you, O God, that I might recognize you at work in my life. In the name of Jesus, Amen.

Check out our Instagram reel for a video version of this reflection.

Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.

Natalia Terfa 3/20/23 Natalia Terfa 3/20/23

Lent Devotions: Pressing on the Bruise

The following devotion was featured in Unfinished, Church Anew’s Lent in a Box series for 2023. Learn more about the resources here.

Pressing on the Bruise

Rev. Natalia Terfa

John 4:5-42

5 So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.

7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” 11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” 13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir,give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”

16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” 17 The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband,’ 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” 19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”

27 Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?” 28 Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, 29 “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” 30 They left the city and were on their way to him.

31 Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” 32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” 33 So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?” 34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. 35 Do you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting.36 The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together.37 For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ 38 I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”

39 Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. 41 And many more believed because of his word. 42 They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”

The story of the Woman at the Well has always felt like poking at a bruise. Painful and vulnerable. She is an outsider three times over. She’s a Samaritan (1), a woman (2), and she has a less than stellar reputation (3). I could take a long, long time to talk about why that last point isn’t quite right - but to keep it short I’ll just remind you that in this time a woman could not initiate divorce on her own and likely had very little say over her own marital status, so calling her a “fallen” woman is to miss the point entirely. Despite all that, it is still likely she was divorced and/or widowed a few times over. Because she avoided the well at the time when most women and children would visit, it meant that she was excluded from the communal act of drawing water.

Like I said, she was an outsider.

Jesus does what no one else has done for her and with her in a long time - he engages with her.

He doesn’t look away, doesn’t walk away, doesn’t pretend he doesn’t see her.

He sees her and tells her he knows all of her story.

He presses on the bruise.

This painful moment is why I have always struggled with this story, but it is also the reason I have learned to love it.

Because it is here that Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God, stands with the outsider to end all outsiders, at high noon, all pretense stripped away, and offers her living water. Not forgiveness, since there’s nothing to forgive, but offers her life and life abundant. Life that cannot be taken away like a husband or a reputation.

This is my story and your story too.

Jesus meets us right where we are, in the bright light of the noonday sun, and lays us bare, everything good and bad, honorable and awful. And then the Messiah, the one who saves, hands us living water: life that cannot be washed away, erased, or lost.

Prayer

O God, you are the water of life. Help us trust that wherever we are thirsty, you will find us, gather us in, and return us to life with you. Amen.

Learn more

Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.

Char Cox 3/16/23 Char Cox 3/16/23

Vocare: Called by God

Vocare is an ongoing spiritual practice designed to help you discern and embrace your various callings so that you can more intentionally live life on purpose for the common good.

Vocare Practice: Called BY GOD

You are invited to focus on the many and varied voices that call to you each and every day. Some of those voices are literal. Others are metaphorical. Some are external, and some are internal. Some of the voices that call to us are life-giving, and while others are life-draining. Some are worthy of our attention. Others distract us and merit being silenced. Reflecting upon the voices that call to us helps us understand which voices we listen to and why. Likewise, it helps us consider which voices we would do well to preference and which it would be wise to dismiss or ignore. Use the time between the following guided questions for your own reflection and meditation. Bring to mind a one of the voices that speaks loudly to you. Is this a voice that builds you up, or is it a voice that tears you down? How has this voice shaped your life and its horizons?

Reflect upon your openness

How do I typically decide which voices I listen to?
What voices called to me today?
Which ones did I listen to?
Which ones did I not listen to?
What do I need for tomorrow?

Prayer

Inspire me, O God, to trust in your call upon my life. In the name of Jesus, Amen.

Check out our Instagram reel for a video version of this reflection.

Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.

Church Anew 3/13/23 Church Anew 3/13/23

Lent Devotions: Out of the Depths

The following devotion was featured in Unfinished, Church Anew’s Lent in a Box series for 2023. Learn more and purchase access to all the resources here.

Out of the Depths

Deacon Jon M. Leiseth

Psalm 130

1 Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.
2 Lord, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
to the voice of my supplications!

3 If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities,
Lord, who could stand?
4 But there is forgiveness with you,
so that you may be revered.

5 I wait for the Lord; my soul waits,
    and in his word I hope;
6 my soul waits for the Lord
    more than those who watch for the morning,
    more than those who watch for the morning.

7 O Israel, hope in the Lord!
    For with the Lord there is steadfast love,
    and with him is great power to redeem.
8 It is he who will redeem Israel
    from all its iniquities.

In the past, when I read the phrase “out of the depths” in a psalm, I imagined the depths of despair and suffering, the depths or lows of depression, low spirits and the like.

In writing this devotion, though, it finally dawned on me that there is also a physical topography of lows and highs at work in Psalm 130. Jerusalem is hilly, after all. Sometimes Jerusalem is referred to as Mount Zion and the Mount of Olives, the hill which is Golgotha and other physically high places are part of Jerusalem. Sure enough, I found a few commentaries on the Psalms of Ascent (120-134) and read of these psalms as pilgrimage songs, sung while going up to the hills of Jerusalem from the surrounding valleys.

Uphill climbs are simply part of being human though, right? They are definitely a part of my life and the lives of those I know best.

Sinning can make for an uphill climb, but not all uphill climbs are caused by sin! Several people I love most dearly are currently climbing some particularly rocky hills; hills which they did not choose and which they did nothing to deserve; hills which have no summit in sight.

What do we do when there is very little or even nothing to be done and hope is wearing thin?

In Psalm 130 we find the sentence, “I wait for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning.”

Do you feel a sense of longing in this sentence? Perhaps longing is simply another form of hoping, and perhaps this is what we are called into together, not only in life’s uphill climbs, but in the season of Lent.

Prayer

O God,

we long for you.

We long for your forgiveness,

your mercy,

your love.

We long for you as watchmen wait for the morning.

When living our lives feels like stumbling uphill in the middle of the night,

send your Spirit to awaken us to your presence

in these and all the steps we travel in life.

We pray in the name of Jesus Christ,

who traveled to crucifixion and resurrection in Jerusalem.

Amen.

Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.

Char Cox 3/9/23 Char Cox 3/9/23

Vocare: Called to Openness

Vocare is an ongoing spiritual practice designed to help you discern and embrace your various callings so that you can more intentionally live life on purpose for the common good.

Vocare Practice: Called to Openness

You are invited to focus on your own experiences of openness. Openness summons us to dwell in “holy indifference,” focusing our hearts and minds not on outcomes or results, but rather concentrating on being sustained in every present moment by God who works all things for good. Use the time between the following guided questions for your own reflection and meditation. Bring to mind an experience from your own life when you needed to be open to something. Is this an experience of openness that has reached a conclusion, or is it an experience of openness that is still unfolding? How has this particular experience of openness shaped your life and its horizons?

Reflect upon your openness

How do I typically respond to invitations or expectations to be open?
To what was I asked to be open today?
To what did I say “yes?”
To what did I say “no?”
What do I need for tomorrow?

Prayer

Open my heart, O God, to the mysteries of your saving love. In the name of Jesus, Amen.

Check out our Instagram reel for a video version of this reflection.

Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.

Amar Peterman 3/7/23 Amar Peterman 3/7/23

We Are Not Alone This Lent

This post was orginally published on Amar D. Peterman’s Substack, “This Common Life.”

The streets of southern Italy have come to my mind often these past few months. While I will always long for smooth gelato and Italian espresso, what I have continued to reflect on for several years now are the grandiose cathedrals whose stained-glass windows and ancient stone have watched over the city for centuries.

If I close my eyes, I can picture Saint Peter’s Square in the Vatican City with statues of hundreds of saints looking down, seemingly, from the heavens. I remember walking through the narrow streets of Rome, looking at every cathedral I could find. Despite my inability to understand the Latin and Italian inscriptions, the very walls of the church preached the Gospel over me without a single word. As my eyes faced the apse, I saw statues of saints surrounding me. The walls drew my eyes upwards towards endless windows that depicted stories from scripture as the bright sun broke through the painted glass.

Yet, even in this magnificent display of God’s greatness and “otherness,” the priest offered the elements of Christ’s body and blood during the Mass. Surrounded by visual reminders of God’s transcendence, Jesus Christ is present – able to be felt, tasted, and made a part of us.

The book of Hebrews speaks often about this. The author writes in chapter twelve:

1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 2 looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. (12:1-2)

This cloud of witnesses includes the saints of old—those who have run the race before us in faith that God will continue to work in our world today. In Hebrews 11, the author recounts the leaders of our faith through the Old Testament: Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Rahab, Gideon, Samson, David, Samuel, and the prophets. The list continues on and on.

These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. (11:13)

For believers today, this great cloud of witnesses surely includes the saints of the Scriptures, but it also includes the saints of our recent past. Indeed, Paul refers to those in Christ as fellow saints, as holy ones who have been set apart by Christ (Romans 1:7). These include the saints deemed chattel who labored on the plantation, who suffered under exclusion and racism, who fought for the abolition of slavery, who were martyred for pursuing justice – they all stand as a cloud of witnesses around us as we continue in their work.

These saints continue their work today as they continue to witness to Christ who, as Howard Thurman writes, offered us a way to not only survive but flourish under the weight of the empire.

Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (4:14-16)

As we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, our ultimate encouragement is that we are united with a God who has suffered as we have. In fact, Scripture repeatedly points to suffering as our means of being made in the image of Christ.

In Hebrews, the author continues:

“In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears…Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him” (5: 7-9).

James also encourages his reader to “consider it all joy when we encounter trials,” because “the testing of your faith produces endurance,” which, when complete, makes us “perfect and complete, lacking in nothing” (James 1). Peter also, in his first epistle, likens our faith under the weight of suffering and trial to precious metals being refined by fire (1 Peter 1).

This Lenten season, we may find joy even in lament because we are not alone. The path of lent is one well-known by Jesus and the saints who have gone before us. It attunes us to a reality marked by death and a hope for future resurrection.

Amar D. Peterman

Amar D. Peterman (M.Div., Princeton Seminary) is an emerging Indian American scholar working at the intersection of faith and public life. A widely published author, his writing and research have been featured in Christianity Today, the Christian Century, Shared Justice, Georgetown University's Berkley Forum, and more. You can follow his writing through his column in Sojourners Magazine and his weekly sub stack: This Common Life.
Website | www.amarpeterman.com
Twitter | @amarpeterman
Instagram | @amarpeterman

Church Anew nourishes Christian leaders to create vibrant communities of faith.

Church Anew 3/6/23 Church Anew 3/6/23

Lent Devotions: Where is God?

The following devotion was featured in Unfinished, Church Anew’s Lent in a Box series for 2023. Learn more and purchase access to all the resources here.

Where Is God?

Rev. Dave Adams

Jonah 2

1 Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish, 2 saying,

“I called to the Lord out of my distress,

and he answered me;

out of the belly of Sheol I cried,

and you heard my voice.

3 You cast me into the deep,

into the heart of the seas,

and the flood surrounded me;

all your waves and your billows

passed over me.

4 Then I said, ‘I am driven away

from your sight;

how shall I look again

upon your holy temple?’

5 The waters closed in over me;

the deep surrounded me;

weeds were wrapped around my head

6 at the roots of the mountains.

I went down to the land

whose bars closed upon me forever;

yet you brought up my life from the Pit,

O Lord my God.

7 As my life was ebbing away,

I remembered the Lord,

and my prayer came to you,

into your holy temple.

8 Those who worship vain idols

forsake their true loyalty.

9 But I with the voice of thanksgiving

will sacrifice to you;

what I have vowed I will pay.

Deliverance belongs to the Lord!”

10 Then the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out onto the dry land.

“WHERE IS GOD?!?!!?” This is a question we all have asked ourselves when life is difficult.

We want answers. We want things to feel better. In short, we want God’s healing to come to us, to restore us, and to renew our faith. Still, when it feels as if everything is working against us, it often seems easier to run away from our problems…from our life…from God.

I have asked myself this question.

And, this question also hits me like a punch in the stomach when I consider the suffering, pain, confusion, and heartache that are present all around us. It makes me cry out to God for “HELP” on behalf of everyone who finds themselves at the bottom of the barrel, wondering how and when they will find their way out.

So, today I am thinking about Jonah, a man who tried to run away from God because he felt as though God was placing too much on his plate. In his attempt to flee from God’s presence, he found himself in the belly of a whale, which is probably about as far away from God as one could imagine. And yet, even in this darkness, fear, and isolation, God was with him, reminding him that nothing could separate him from God’s love, grace, mercy, and providence.

“Out of my despair I cried to you and you answered me. From the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice.” Jonah 2:3

For me, Jonah is a perfect example of a lesson I once heard in a sermon: “Thus far, no state of being has been without God’s presence.” Indeed, no matter how dark, slimy, painful, confusing, depressing, and lonely our story might be, God’s presence is still there.

And, as resurrection people, we know that through Jesus - who knows what suffering and pain feels like - we are able to be God’s presence for others, shining God’s love and mercy into life’s difficult moments.

Prayer

Holy God, hear me when I cry to you, helping me to see your presence in my neighbors. And help me to be your presence when my neighbors are crying to you. Amen.

Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.

Char Cox 3/2/23 Char Cox 3/2/23

Vocare: Called to Values

Vocare is an ongoing spiritual practice designed to help you discern and embrace your various callings so that you can more intentionally live life on purpose for the common good.

Vocare Practice: Called to Values

You are invited to focus on your own values.

Values are the things that we most hold dear, those principles or commitments that guide how we think, what we believe, and how we act. Values can be both tangible and intangible. They can be consciously present in our actions, and they can contribute unconscious influence upon our choices.

Considering personal values with intention helps us to name what our values really are and to determine if what we aspire to value is actually demonstrated in our everyday lives. Use the time between the following guided questions for your own reflection and meditation. Bring to mind an experience from your own life when you had to choose between conflicting values. Is this a value-centered choice that has been resolved, or is it a value-centered choice that is unresolved? How has this particular experience of value-centeredness shaped your life and its horizons?

Reflect upon your values

What do I value?
How have I lived my values today?
How have my values been in conflict today?
What do I need for tomorrow?

Prayer

Lead me by your Spirit, O God, to value what you value. In the name of Jesus, Amen.

Check out our Instagram reel for a video version of this reflection.

Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.

Deanna A. Thompson 2/27/23 Deanna A. Thompson 2/27/23

Lent Devotions: Adapting to the Wilderness

The following devotion was featured in Unfinished, Church Anew’s Lent in a Box series for 2023. Learn more and purchase access to all the resources here.

Matthew 4:1-11

1 Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tested by the devil. 2 He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterward he was famished. 3 The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” 4 But he answered, “It is written,

‘One does not live by bread alone,

but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ ”

5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, 6 saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written,

‘He will command his angels concerning you,’

and ‘On their hands they will bear you up,

so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’ ”

7 Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’ ”

8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory, 9 and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” 10 Then Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written,

‘Worship the Lord your God,

and serve only him.’ ”

11 Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.

Scholars examining this passage often focus on what it says about Jesus’ identity. The devil’s temptation of Jesus begins with the words, “If you are the Son of God . . .” (4.3) trying to provoke Jesus to live into his identity through self-serving power and control.

But Jesus refuses, demonstrating his identity as Son of God is more about obedience and fidelity to God than it is to the use (and abuse) of power.

That’s all interesting and helpful, but I’m still stuck on the part where Jesus is led by the Spirit, into the wilderness, to be tempted by the devil.

What sense are we to make of that?

First it seems that Jesus being led into the wilderness where he fasts for 40 days and 40 nights connects him to the Israelites’ 40 years of wanderings in the wilderness. Like Jesus, they were tempted to follow their own path rather than God’s. Jesus models resistance to temptation.

For Israel, for Jesus, for us: wilderness is a kind of wildland that’s not inhabited by humans. It’s a place where we’re not in the driver’s seat, where we need to adapt to survive.

It’s a place where the typical tools we rely on to navigate life are stripped away. Jesus was led by the Spirit to the wilderness to prepare for his ministry. And each time he is tempted and he turns to words of scripture to refute the temptation (cf. verses 4, 7, 10). Each time he identifies how the Word of God relates to the challenge of his life in that moment, and how the Word offers guidance on how to repel temptation.

Prayer

Spirit of the Wilderness: Times in the wilderness are challenging. It’s tempting to listen to voices that lead us away from You. Spirit of God encourage us, as You did Jesus, to seek God’s wisdom and say “Be gone!” when the devil gets too close. In Christ we pray, Amen.

Dr. Deanna A. Thompson

Dr. Deanna A. Thompson is an author, speaker, and the *Director of the Lutheran Center for Faith, Values, and Community* and the *Martin E. Marty Regents Chair of Religion and the Academy* at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. Thompson’s writing and speaking covers on topics ranging from Martin Luther and feminism, scriptural interpretation (Deuteronomy in particular), cancer and faith, and being the church in the digital age. When she’s not writing, speaking, or teaching, Thompson can be found hiking in a national park with her husband and two children.
Website | deannaathompson.com

Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.

Natalia Terfa 2/23/23 Natalia Terfa 2/23/23

Lent Devotions: Lent is not a holiness contest

The following devotion was featured in Unfinished, Church Anew’s Lent in a Box series for 2023. Learn more about the resources here.

Matthew 6:1-6; 16-21

1 “Beware of practicing your righteousness before others in order to be seen by them, for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.

2 “So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 3 But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your alms may be done in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

5 “And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 6 But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

16 “And whenever you fast, do not look somber, like the hypocrites, for they mark their faces to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 17 But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, 18 so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

19 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, 20 but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

In this season of Lent, there were (and maybe still are) traditionally three ways you could “work on” repentance - turning back to God. The first is by giving, the second is by praying, the third is by fasting. These are all the things Jesus warns about in this part of his sermon on the mount. It’s important to note that the sermon he is preaching isn’t just this part about giving, praying, and fasting, but it’s a continuation of the sermon that also contains the beatitudes, and reminders we are salt and light in the world for the Kingdom of God. It’s all one sermon.

One sermon that is systematically taking the typical way of doing things and flipping them all upside down. When you remember this, you realize that this part of the sermon is no different. Jesus takes the things that people usually do in order to repent, to turn around, to turn back to God, and says - why? Why are you doing these? For others? For yourself? For God?

“When you give, don’t blow a trumpet so everyone knows you do it. When you pray, don’t do it loudly and where everyone can see you, so they see how holy you are. When you give something up, don’t put on a sad face so that people ask you what’s wrong.”

You know exactly what Jesus is talking about. It’s not that fasting, giving, and praying are somehow no longer good. Instead, Jesus wants people to think about their motivation.

Faith is not a holiness contest. It is not something you win by doing it the loudest and the best.

Lent is a season to reflect on our own motivations so we can turn around, repent, and then use those things (prayer, giving, fasting) instead to reconnect to God and each other - the way it was always meant to be.

Prayer

Merciful God, we thank you for the gifts of prayer, giving, and fasting. Help us see the ways in which we have used these gifts for our own gain, and instead help us use them to turn towards you and each other. Amen.

Learn more

Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.

Char Cox 2/22/23 Char Cox 2/22/23

Vocare: Called to Renewal

Vocare is an ongoing spiritual practice designed to help you discern and embrace your various callings so that you can more intentionally live life on purpose for the common good.

Vocare Practice for Ash Wednesday

You are invited to focus on God’s call to renewal for you. Renewal comes in host of different forms and through a variety of times and experiences in our lives. Sometimes, renewal comes through unexpected, unplanned, or even undesired circumstances. At other times, renewal is a conscientious and intentional choice. Either way, seasons of renewal are “between no longer and not yet.” In these “in between times,” we are changed. Use the time between the following guided questions for your own reflection and meditation. Bring to mind an experience from your own life when you experienced renewal. Is this an experience of renewal that is in the past, or is it an experience of renewal that is ongoing? How has this experience of renewal shaped your life and its horizons?

Reflect upon how God is calling you to renewal in this season

Who am I called to be – in this “not yet” time?
What am I called to do – in this “not yet” time?
Why am I here – in this “not yet” time?
What do I need for this “not yet” time?

Prayer

Turn me toward you, O God, to Lenten practices that call me from death to life. In the name of Jesus, Amen.

Check out our Instagram reel for a video version of this reflection.

Church Anew is dedicated to igniting faithful imagination and sustaining inspired innovation by offering transformative learning opportunities for church leaders and faithful people.

Laura Jean Truman 2/14/23 Laura Jean Truman 2/14/23

This is a Table For All Who Are Hungry (If You Are Hungry, Come)

We share this reflection from Atlanta-based writer, Laura Jean Truman, originally published on Laura Jean’s blog in February 2020.

Come, come, whoever you are.

Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving.

It doesn’t matter.

Ours is not a caravan of despair.

Come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times.

Come, yet again, come, come.

Rumi

It is Christian orthodoxy that only Christians can take communion. This is a “family table,” as some theologies put it. Taking communion is something that you do once you are initiated into Christian community – whether that means baptism, “accepting Jesus into your heart,” or a lengthy confirmation process, every Christian denomination believes that eating the body and blood of Jesus (whether it’s called communion, Eucharist, or just the Table) is something for people on the inside, not the outside.

I don’t believe that anymore.

This may be a family meal, but we are all family.

In my conservative background, communion was paradoxically “not such a big deal” because it was just a “symbol” or “remembrance,” but it was also treated a bit hysterically, thousands of new weird rules around what kind of a mood you had to be in to “take communion” always cropping up (don’t be mad at anyone! don’t have any unrepentant sin! don’t be in a bad mood! you gotta be perfect or feel perfect before you take this shiny silver plate!). Like my hippie friends warning me about psychedelics, evangelicals were always saying things like you have to be in a good headspace before you eat!

I don’t remember feeling any particular way about communion as a kid and young adult. I remember those two things: it’s just a symbol people and it’s only for Christians. Why something so bland and meaningless, relegated to weeknights and intentionally downplayed in salvific importance, would be so aggressively protected as just for Christians is beyond me.

After college, I was furiously angry at the church and briefly identified as an atheist before finding myself wandering back to spirituality – not an atheist, not a Christian, but in an in-between place where it felt like God was reaching out to me, but I felt too tired to have that conversation. So I didn’t. What I did do, though, was end up at a silent Anglican monastery during Lent, and in that woodsy set-aside place, I took communion.

I ate it every single day, walking up to the altar with the monks and nuns and holding hands in a circle. We sang very old prayers and the priest put a thin wafer on my tongue, every day, for a month.

I didn’t go to the monastery believing in Jesus, but I left the monastery believing in Jesus.

Was it taking communion that made me a Christian? Was it the rhythm of liturgy, the silence of the woods, the communion of saints, the space to walk and breathe, the good books? I don’t know always how God finds our wounded, wandering hearts when they are too battered to come searching for Her. I don’t know how Jesus still finds us when we are too tired to have that conversation.

I do know that when I didn’t have words, Jesus found me in my body – in what I ate, and in what I drank.

When I came back to Christianity, I went back to my old “communion is only for Christians” ways pretty quickly, because orthodoxy is a helluva drug, and because I had never heard anyone give a defense of another way. I went through life with my personal experience in my back pocket, and my contradictory theology in my front pocket, like we all do in some ways. But when I read Sara Miles’ book Take This Bread, where she shares her own story of moving from atheism to Christ during Eucharist, I wanted to holler and shout and dance. This was my experience, this was what I believed, this was how God is longing to break into the world and into our souls, in the food that we eat and the wine that we drink.

Nothing made more sense to me than that someone would encounter Jesus for the first time at the Table, just like Paul thrown off his horse on the way to Damascus. I think I’d always believed that you could meet Jesus in physical things, bump into Him the way you bump into a friend out at a restaurant. Oh, hello, Jesus, here you are, at the diner, sharing waffles.

That this encounter could happen at the Table – it wasn’t orthodox, but it felt right.

I wrestled in conversations with more traditional friends over this. “If everyone just comes up, without thinking about it, without knowing it’s important, it loses some of the sacredness. If everyone just eats and drinks like it’s another religious ritual like sit-stand-kneel, the holiness is lost.”

How do we practice radical hospitality, but let everyone know exactly what it is that they’re getting into?

I was asked to preach at my seminary’s chapel service in my final year, and I invited my then-pastor to come preside over the Table. He was a conservative Presbyterian, and if there’s one thing that a Presby likes, it’s a good Table fencing (fencing the table is a fancy way of saying that it’s your job to tell the congregation who is allowed to take communion and who is not). My seminary didn’t fence the Table at their services, at least not out loud, so I had to tell him that he wasn’t allowed to tell the non-Christians to stay away. He was surprisingly chill with it. I thought he’d balk, blessed conservative that he is, but he only nodded and promised that he wouldn’t.

My pastor stood up and spoke over the bread and wine, casually and informally, like evangelicals do. Then he held the Body of Christ out over the congregation of grad students and professors and said –

This is a table for all who are hungry. If you are hungry – come.

I will never say anything else when I preside over the table, ever again.

This is a table for all who are hungry. If you are hungry – come.

An open table theology matters so much to me because it feels like the Gospel, the Gospel that says that at the very center of our life with God is reckless, unimaginable grace that comes seeking us on our good days and bad days and weak days and strong days alike.

This is a Table for all who are hungry. If you are hungry – come.

On the days that we are so entirely burnt out, on the days that we’re tired and sad and scared and lonely and we don’t know if being a Christian makes any sense, but we know that we’re hungry, God’s table is set and God’s table is radically hospitable.

Open Table theology might be the worst theology in the whole world. Maybe one day I’ll find my way to a more orthodox way of being, but for now, I can’t imagine a God who doesn’t want every single person to come and eat and drink, no matter what we believe, no matter what we can articulate, no matter what conversations with God we are able to have or unafraid to have or entirely incapable of having. This God is open to everyone, at all moments, calling us and wanting us and holding us no matter if we come with good intentions or terrible intentions or as perpetrators of dysfunctional family systems or as oppressors or as oppressed.

God is opening constantly the doors and inviting, inviting, inviting.

And experiencing this God only in a disembodied way – praying, writing, talking – doesn’t feel like enough.

Our invitation into the Presence is visceral. It is in our eating and in our drinking.

That embodied invitation matters.

If you’re hungry, come.

This is the Gospel.

We all experience hunger differently. I know it as a gap in my soul between what I am and what I want to be. I know it as an ache inside me that wants to be whole and doesn’t know how to be. I know it as a longing for Narnia, as the feeling that there’s something just around the corner that I haven’t seen yet but I want to swing open the door and turn the light on, and maybe, maybe, I’ll catch it before it hides.

I’m a “wanderer and a worshiper and a lover of leaving” (Rumi) and these are exactly the people that God has set God’s table for.

Is this an adequate and complete theology of the Table? No. Absolutely not.

But some theologies we carry in our guts and not in our brains, some theologies we feel in our bodies, and sacraments are physical things, to taste and touch and eat and be dunked under. They are water. Bread. Wine. Oil on our heads. Dust on our foreheads.

Don’t “think and believe” that the Lord is good, “taste and see.”

All the questions of “am I enough” and “am I good” and “do I belong” fall away as bread dissolves on your tongue because there’s no question that I’m good, because I am in Christ, and in Christ’s death, just as Christ was with us in His life.

We are all inside this suffering and death and resurrection together.

The first time I ever served someone communion, it was to a seminary classmate that I’d just had a fight with in class. One of my professors had grabbed me in chapel to serve at the table and I was still hot around the collar from me and Emily’s head-butting. We were both strong-willed seminarians, and while I don’t remember what we fought about, we were both still really mad. I was sitting in the front of chapel stewing, and my professor snagged me to serve communion (“Say whatever you say in your tradition. Doesn’t matter”), and then Emily was walking up in line towards me.

I ripped off a piece of the dark molasses brown bread and placed it in my ornery colleague’s open hands and told her,

This is the body of Christ, broken for you, Emily.

She looked me in the eyes and we both got a little teary, and she took and ate.

I’ve presided at the table a lot since then. I’ve served communion in retirement communities and queer living room churches and at weddings and once, in a hockey stadium.

This first time I looked at my enemy who was my neighbor and told her that this is the body of Christ, broken for you, is still my favorite.

This is the table for the ragamuffins and failures and the ones who pick fights in seminary classrooms and the ones who don’t want to talk to God at all and the ones who have made terrible mistakes that they don’t even know how to begin repenting of and the ones who don’t think their whole embodied self is welcome and the ones who don’t know for sure if Jesus is worth it and the ones who are sure that they are not worth it.

This is for the ones who have been kicked out of their families and the ones who have walked away from their loved ones.

This is for the ones who have succeeded at great cost to their souls and the ones who are afraid to try.

This is the family table for the ones who aren’t sure they really want to be family with the other folks coming up taking this bread and this wine.

This is a Table for all who are hungry. If you are hungry – come.

Laura Jean Truman

Laura Jean is a queer writer, preacher, and former chaplain living in Atlanta, GA. Originally from New England, Laura Jean holds a BA in Philosophy from the University of New Hampshire and an MDiv from Emory University: Candler School of Theology, with emphases in monasticism, mysticism, and existentialism.

Laura Jean’s essays and prayers can be found on their Substack and their retired Patheos site “Old Things New”; published in the collections Preaching As Resistance ed. by Phil Snyder and A Rhythm of Prayer ed. by Sarah Bessey.

Facebook | facebook.com/laurajeantrumanwriter
Instagram | @laurajeantruman
Twitter | @Laurajeantruman
Website | laurajeantruman.com

Photo by Eric Sun

Learn More

Blog Posts

Dr. Charlene Rachuy Cox

Dr. Charlene Rachuy Cox

“Things Take the Time They Take”

The Spirit of Lent, the Spirit of Lament

A Worthy Rebellion

Lent culminates in a feast.

Modern Western Christians are terrible at feasting.

Maybe Jesus knows we’re always looking for an excuse to end our feasting prematurely.

Laura Jean Truman

Laura Jean’s essays and prayers can be found on their Substack and their retired Patheos site “Old Things New”; published in the collections Preaching As Resistance ed. by Phil Snyder and A Rhythm of Prayer ed. by Sarah Bessey.

Facebook | facebook.com/laurajeantrumanwriterInstagram | @laurajeantrumanTwitter | @LaurajeantrumanWebsite | laurajeantruman.com

Photo by Eric Sun

What are some of your defining roads?

His was a life on the road.

Jesus is going ahead of you.

Dr. Charlene Rachuy Cox

Rev. Natalia Terfa

Natalia co-hosts Cafeteria Christian, a podcast for people who love Jesus but aren’t so sure about his followers.

Vocare Practice: Called TO Regret

Reflect upon your regrets

Prayer

Dr. Charlene Rachuy Cox

No Hope There

Rev. Megan Graves

Vocare Practice: Called TO ATTENTIVENESS

Reflect upon your attentiveness

Prayer

Dr. Charlene Rachuy Cox

Rev. Natalia Terfa

Natalia co-hosts Cafeteria Christian, a podcast for people who love Jesus but aren’t so sure about his followers.

Vocare Practice: Called BY GOD

Reflect upon your openness

Prayer

Dr. Charlene Rachuy Cox

Out of the Depths

Vocare Practice: Called to Openness

Reflect upon your openness

Prayer

Dr. Charlene Rachuy Cox

Amar D. Peterman

Website | www.amarpeterman.comTwitter | @amarpetermanInstagram | @amarpeterman

Where Is God?

Vocare Practice: Called to Values

Reflect upon your values

Prayer

Dr. Charlene Rachuy Cox

Dr. Deanna A. Thompson

Website | deannaathompson.com

Rev. Natalia Terfa

Natalia co-hosts Cafeteria Christian, a podcast for people who love Jesus but aren’t so sure about his followers.

Dr. Charlene Rachuy Cox

Laura Jean Truman

Laura Jean’s essays and prayers can be found on their Substack and their retired Patheos site “Old Things New”; published in the collections Preaching As Resistance ed. by Phil Snyder and A Rhythm of Prayer ed. by Sarah Bessey.

Facebook | facebook.com/laurajeantrumanwriterInstagram | @laurajeantrumanTwitter | @LaurajeantrumanWebsite | laurajeantruman.com

Photo by Eric Sun

Facebook | facebook.com/laurajeantrumanwriter
Instagram | @laurajeantruman
Twitter | @Laurajeantruman
Website | laurajeantruman.com

Website | www.amarpeterman.com
Twitter | @amarpeterman
Instagram | @amarpeterman

Facebook | facebook.com/laurajeantrumanwriter
Instagram | @laurajeantruman
Twitter | @Laurajeantruman
Website | laurajeantruman.com