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Andy and I are preparing to leave on a mission trip to northeastern Arizona, where we will be part of a team from Walnut Creek Presbyterian Church to NAOMI House, a ministry to Native American foster children. I will be blogging on the church’s website all week. Here’s the link, if you are interested in what a sixties-something retired minister is doing in her “spare time”! No, seriously, this is a faith stretcher for sure, completely out of my comfort zone. Your prayers would be appreciated. Read on: https://naomiwcpc.wordpress.com/2021/06/30/2021-naomi-mission-trip-begins-soon/

Part 2 in a series of reflections on the Capitol insurrection and Christians’ participation Our essential task is to establish a biblical point of view regarding the Christian’s relationship with government and politics. For this, we must start in the Old Testament at the point Israel—God’s chosen people—was establishing itself as a land and a people. The conquest of the land of Canaan (generally what we name the country of Israel today) took place after the Israelites had wandered in the Sinai desert for forty years. God, through the leader Moses, had led them out of slavery in Egypt, across

Now don’t fall over in a dead faint as I write my first blog post in about a year and a half. No precipitating event has compelled me to write. Sitting down today with the purpose of writing something was completely spur of the moment. It’s just time to start engaging again, bringing the Word to life. I’ll be honest: I have no idea who my readers are now, but I hope you will give me some feedback (by means of “Comments”) so that I get a sense of you and what you find of value here. The quick updates

It has been three months since I told you I would not be writing “until the end of June.” Here it is, mid-September, and a couple of you have expressed curiosity, concern, or relief that I have been silent all this time! Though I don’t particularly feel the need to explain myself, the fact that concerns about my health tend to crop up moves me to do so. Health update: I remain convincingly cancer-free and grateful everyday to God for the gift of life. I still get checked out with a CT scan every three months—though that has gone to

[Sorry for the delay . . . “Life” has been happening, and my days have been zooming! Yesterday it was getting a water leak fixed.] The topic of God is popping up here and there, not only in my personal life but in our culture. My thoughts are sparked this week by the latest Pew Survey, which took the pulse of American religious practice, denominational affiliation, and basic beliefs. You can read the results of the survey here and here. The attention-getters in this survey are the changes in the religious landscape since this survey was done previously in 2007. In

Blogging presents some challenges, some of which are confronting me these days. So I thought it might be helpful to sketch those out a bit as a way of setting the context for what is to come. Blogging for many writers replaces personal journaling, particularly for those who choose to write every day. Successful blogs can be very targeted, for example, on family food experiences or grief processing. My theme, Bringing the Word to Life, simply calls me to reflect on what is happening (either in my own life or in current events) in light of Scripture. I have gone