A Growing Faith

“And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.” I Jn 4:16 “Our faith journey depends upon roads that transform us as we travel … that encourage us to become more of who God desires us to be.” Luther E. Smith Jr. It was a bright summer day. We had our water bottles, comfortable shoes, snacks, and we were off on an adventure. It had become our thing for the kids and me. One year, we made a list of all the parks and forest preserves near us and set out to explore them all.

Glean is a word worth embracing right now. The seasons are changing. Time keeps moving on. This moment is ripe to notice not only the world around you but the world within you. What can you glean from this life you have been given? Glean is also a good word to embrace now because it points us to something more, something truer than our temptation to mindlessly consume things, find immediate answers, and move on. Within seconds, we can find out what something is, how to use it

Let me remind you of a part of yourself you may not have thought about today: your creative self. Do you think of yourself as creative? Each one of us is creating a life. “Every morning you wake up to something that in all eternity never was before and never will be again,” writes Frederick Buechner. We start each day anew. What was may not be what is today. To live is to create - to become. Each of us, all of us, are actually hard-wired to create. God creates creators. God,

I feel drawn to the word steadfast in a world that is ever-changing. Within the word, you can sense a whispered plea; the need to remain steadfast; there is an invitation of hope to be steadfast; there is the potential to endure. So I share this word with you as a prayer and a promise. We are all on a path, taking a journey. Do you know where you are and how you got there? What is your whispered plea? What is guiding you? In what or in whom are you placing your confidence? Fa

I want to be interested. I think it is one way to live well. To be interested is to care, to learn. I was in St. Louis earlier this month and went to the Saint Louis Art Museum. Among the things that caught my eye at the Museum was a painting of Halsey Cooley Ives. Anders Leonard Zorn, Haley Cooley Ives, 1894-95, oil on canvas Like me, you may not be familiar with him. What I learned was that he was the first director of the Museum. A well-known portrait artist, Anders Leonar

“Know that the Lord is God. It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people and the sheep of his pasture.” Ps 100:3 I recently had a chance to stay in a little cottage by the sea. It was a simple, comfortable home set right off the water. However, between the house and the sea, there was a pasture. It was sectioned off into smaller lush green grassy plots. The center section had long grass. The grass in the section off to the left was shorter due to the fact that a sm