Sunday, January 12, 2014

today's sermon

So, I've been really heavy about this WV water stuff. Let me share with you the sermon (very short) I preached today at St. James, Higganum.

Still heavy but with a positive spin.


BAPTISM OF OUR LORD 2014
I know we have an annual meeting to do, so I'm preaching one of the shortest sermons I've ever preached.

There is a Sufi saying I love a lot—a saying I think we need to keep in mind in our lives. It goes like this: “when you hear hoof-beats, look for a Zebra….”
The Sufis are trying to tell us to look for the extraordinary, the wondrous, the unexpected, the mysterious in every common moment of our lives.
Good advice, I would say.

One of my professors in seminary, Jess Trotter, who was as gentle and genuine a man as you could ever hope to meet, told me this: “wherever you are, whoever you meet, tell yourself this: ‘that person is the one for whom Christ died’.”
I’d recommend that bit of wisdom to us all.
Imagine what a difference it would make in how you encountered and reacted to the people in your life—your family, your friends, you acquaintances, even total strangers—if when you came in contact with them you imagined that each of them was the ONE—the ‘very one’—for whom Christ died.
Good advice, I would say. Advice to transform our lives.

Just imagine what a difference it would make if in this Annual Meeting and in our lives as a community and individuals we always 'looked for Zebras' and knew in our hearts that everyone we met 'was the One for whom Christ died....”

Ponder that, if you will as we move forward.....

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About Me

some ponderings by an aging white man who is an Episcopal priest in Connecticut. Now retired but still working and still wondering what it all means...all of it.