We will pray daily
This is the opening statement of the Missional Wisdom Foundation's Rule of Life. Since I bumped into the MWF in 2012 (when my husband Luke Lingle began Launch & Lead), I have wondered about that line.
SHELTER FROM THE STORM: Walking Tall Wilmington founder Randy Evans (not pictured) took in a group of people who had no where to go during Hurricane Florence as part of Walking Tall Wilmington’s mission to help an under-served population. Photo by Randy Evans
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I frequently find myself searching for different ways to connect with God. When I discovered contemplative prayer, I fell in love with visio divina: the practice of sitting with a picture, noticing what I notice, asking questions, and praying about it.
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The dishes have dried. The crumbs and snippets of yarn have been swept up. The sticky notes have been tabulated. National Gathering 2019 is a snapshot; taken, shared, and finished. In that moment, at that place, we were the Missional Wisdom Foundation, gathered.
As I journeyed through Advent this year I often felt like I had opened a puzzle box that was filled with wonderful pieces but they had nothing to do with one another.
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God of darkness and God of light. At the beginning of time you breathed out stars into the heavens, and with the hand of a master artist you made sure each one was in its right place.
As you gather with whomever you find yourself with this Thanksgiving, how can you offer belonging as an act of hospitality?
We at the Neighboring Movement recently reached a huge milestone. Our first cohort successfully finished a program we developed called the Good Neighbor Experiment.
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This passage exemplifies for me the nature of God’s work in building and sustaining relationships with us. It tells the theological story of Christ’s personhood and God-hood, and the messy, beautiful mix that it is.
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UMC LEAD is excited to announce that registration and the speaker application for the 8th annual LEAD Conference are now open. This year’s conference will be held in New Orleans, Louisiana from January 13th-16th, 2019. The host hotel will be The Troubadour and the host church will be St. Mark's UMC.
I thought of the many times I had puzzled over the ancient Sunday Gospel Reading Cycle. I had prayed the cycle for many years; I found it deeply meaningful and loved it profoundly.
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Matthew’s gospel was written to the Messianic Jews of Antioch two to five years after the destruction of the Great Temple of Jerusalem and the massacre of all its priests. The Temple, its rules and priests had represented the center of their lives, and now many were certain that God had abandoned them.
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Eyes blinded by tears—more than that—blinded by fear, blinded by dreams crushed as fine as the dust under her feet as she walks.
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Songs have this amazing ability to stick with us...
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The artist depicts the mystery of the Trinity as three rotating orbs, spinning in 3D space, each occupying one plane, yet all intersecting.
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One thing that is very clear: it is important to all of us that we connect to our communities and celebrate the relationships that are formed through these connections.
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Wisdom from the Winter Garden
By Kate Rudd
The winter garden is not beautiful to the untrained eye. No more neat, vibrant rows of lettuce, carrots, chard, squash, and tomatoes. No colorful display of flower blossoms or insects abuzz. No neighborhood children running to pick carrots—exclaiming over how a radish grows. Nothing but empty lines, sad perennials. The intelligent gardener uses winter to enrich their soil with a diverse jungle of cover crops to nurture microbial activity, replenish nutrients depleted from last season, and build the soil by growing then composting organic matter. These techniques significantly enhance next season’s potential, but in winter this looks like chaos that doesn’t fill harvest baskets. It is generally barren, decaying, messy. It seems meaningless and a little depressing.
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