Both, our Gospel reading this morning (Mark 9:17-31) and the icon of St John’s Ladder of Divine Ascent draws our attention to something that we should really come to grips with at this point in Lent. Our belief in God is much more fragile for us broken human beings than we often realize…and yet, in spite of this, there’s enormous hope in the promise that we can still find salvation through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
The Power In God’s Promise
A few years ago, when Presvytera and I lived in Arizona, we moved into a house whose backyard had a conspicuously bare patch of ground. Nothing ever grew there. The Arizona desert is famous for illustrating every imaginable shade of brown. So, as I began to make good use of our back yard for grilling and entertaining guests, it wasn’t long before I was longing to see some color on that bare patch of desert soil.
The Tree That Sweetens Bitter Waters
This Sunday marks the crux of Lent…the midpoint of these 40 days. Here, our mother, the Church, offers to us The Cross to meditate upon, “to strengthen and refresh us.” But, a cross is a strange symbol from which to gain such reinforcement. Why would we believe that this implement of death could so strengthen us? Is there more to this symbol of the cross than we may realize?
Flip This House
Light Therapy
Wonder of Wonders
From a Fiery Furnace to a Star in the East
The Story of St. Nicholas for Children
Throwback Thursday for Thanksgiving
It’s funny, what we’ve come to think of as “the first Thanksgiving.” Although it’s historically fabricated, many of us were brought up to envision an idyllic scene from the autumn of 1621. As the story goes, friendly local Native Americans had swooped in to teach the starving English Pilgrim Colonists how to survive.