What Kind of Soil?

Some of you know that during Covid I became a vegetable gardener. There’s few bigger changes than a tiny seed into a vegetable! Vegetable gardening was something I had wanted to do for a very long time, but I was always very busy in the spring getting ready for the Conference Annual Meeting, so it…

The Long Journey

As I said at the beginning of worship, the next few weeks are going to be focused on how small changes, changes that we don’t think even matter, can build up over time to make a big difference. James Clear, in his book Atomic Habits, writes, “It’s so easy to overestimate the importance of one…

Love’s Bright Star

Epiphany is one of my favourite celebrations in the church year. I’m not sure why, I don’t remember any emphasis on it when I was growing up… although I overheard references to ‘Old Christmas’ when we lived close to my mother’s family in southern Manitoba in a community that was primarily German/Ukrainian and Mennonite. Maybe…

Jesus Came

This morning morning at ‘Breakfast With Jesus,’ our casual worship service around tables with food, I read Papa Panov’s Special Christmas, where an old man waits to see Jesus all day, and in the meantime, welcomes a variety of people into his home: feeds, clothes and shelters them. He was disappointed at the end of…

Sing a Song

I never had much time for Mary, the mother of Jesus, through most of my growing up years. Aside being trotted out, dressed in blue every Christmas, and I don’t I ever got to be Mary in a pageant, I don’t think I ever heard of her again all year. And the only thing that…

Mary Said Yes

Well, good morning everyone. My, what a fine gathering! Do you recognize me without my blue shawl? You know me as Mary, although I was more commonly called by my Jewish name, Miriam. And this is the kind of thing I wore most days, not the blue of royalty, although I am honored that I…

Weary Silence

I’m letting you know that towards the end of my sermon, there is going to be a time when I ask a question about what are the hopeful things that you see and experience in our church and in the world… and it’s not going to be a rhetorical question… I’m actually going to be…

Start Close In

It’s Remembrance Day next Saturday… A day set aside to remember all men, women and children who have died and who continue to die as a result of war. They lost their tomorrows… And we lost their tomorrows. The world lost and continues to lose the potential of so many people. Not just people living in this mostly safe country…

Leadership of the Saints?

This is a week where I have been heartily wishing that we hadn’t switched to the Narrative Lectionary! Even after doing A LOT of research, I was still wishing that. But part of the reason we made the decision to switch was so that we read passages like what you’re going to hear in a…