I think there is no suffering greater than
what is caused by the doubts of those who want to believe. 
I know what torment this is, but I can only see it, 
in myself anyway, as the process by which faith is deepened. 
What people don’t realize is how much religion costs. 
They think faith is a big electric blanket, 
when of course it is the cross. 
It is much harder to believe than not to believe. 
If you feel you can’t believe, you must at least do this: 
keep an open mind. 
Keep it open toward faith, 
keep wanting it, 
keep asking for it, 
and leave the rest to God.

~Flannery O’Connor from The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor 

Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

In some sense it always Advent, even now in Lent. We are pilgrims, ever leaning into the future. We are always waiting. Yet. Yet we are living now, in this precise moment. It is all we have. The past has slipped through our fingers, the future is for the moment unknowable. It can feel like we are merely marking time, or enduring the storms that rage. Yet. Yet we can live, not simply wrapped in our own thoughts, but awake to the needs that present themselves now, awake to each other, awake to God…
Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

Grace and peace be yours in abundance.
1 Peter 1:2

Or as in another translation, “Grace and peace be yours to the fullest measure.” Grace and peace, as much as you can contain, and then God expands your capacity! Grace is God’s self-giving in Christ, undeserved, utterly unlooked for, free, but always seeking the response of an answering love of grateful glad obedience. Peace is that pervasive sense that nothing can separate us from God’s love, and that God’s grace is sufficient whatever comes our way. These are the signs of God’s work within and among the people of God. Chosen, once strangers, perhaps scattered, but graced with peace.

Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

Immortal, invisible, God only wise, 
In light inaccessible hid from our eyes,
Most blessèd, most glorious, the Ancient of Days,
Almighty, victorious, thy great Name we praise.

Worship is a balance between intimacy and awe. Praise is the recognition of God’s glory, the acknowledgement of our limited understanding, and a celebration of God’s grace, wisdom, mercy and love. This verse is a confession of the heart that God is beyond our grasp, his purposes are from everlasting to everlasting. In a world of flux and uncertainty, when our hearts are anxious and life seems uncertain, take time to look beyond the horizons of our sight to the only wise God, the Ancient of Days.

Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

Marked by Ashes
 
Ruler of the Night, Guarantor of the day…
This day — a gift from you.
This day — like none other you have ever given, or we have ever received.
This Wednesday dazzles us with gift and newness and possibility.
This Wednesday burdens us with the tasks of the day, for we are already halfway home
     halfway back to committees and memos,
     halfway back to calls and appointments,
     halfway on to next Sunday,
     halfway back, half frazzled, half expectant,
     half turned toward you, half rather not.
This Wednesday is a long way from Ash Wednesday,
   but all our Wednesdays are marked by ashes —
     we begin this day with that taste of ash in our mouth:
       of failed hope and broken promises,
       of forgotten children and frightened women,
     we ourselves are ashes to ashes, dust to dust;
     we can taste our mortality as we roll the ash around on our tongues.
We are able to ponder our ashness with
   some confidence, only because our every Wednesday of ashes
   anticipates your Easter victory over that dry, flaky taste of death.
On this Wednesday, we submit our ashen way to you —
   you Easter parade of newness.
   Before the sun sets, take our Wednesday and Easter us,
     Easter us to joy and energy and courage and freedom;
     Easter us that we may be fearless for your truth.
   Come here and Easter our Wednesday with
     mercy and justice and peace and generosity.
We pray as we wait for the Risen One who comes soon.
 
Walter Brueggemann

Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

Giving Grace

Don't save up and hoard your grace,
don't wait to give to yourself
or others. Like honey in the tombs
of pharaohs, it will remain usable
for thousands of years, but you don't
want to get caught letting it build up
and crystallize in you. Offer it freely
on the street to anyone you meet,
during every argument, when a wave
of shame high as a king tide tries
to engulf you. Pry open the jar
and pass it around, this sweet grace
of forgiveness, of saying to yourself:
we're all just doing the best we can.

James Crews

 
Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

Terrible things are happening in the world, and as sometimes it is more than I can take in, I am seeking refuge this morning in hope.

To live in hope is to thirst. To thirst for justice, for mercy, for healing, for welcome, for peace. To hope is to build up, not tear apart. St. Augustine wrote that the courage to challenge injustice was a daughter of hope. To live in hope, then, is to stretch my heart wide enough to encompass the needs of my neighbors as my own, to feed the hungry, house the homeless and welcome the refugee. “We are workers,” said St. Oscar Romero, “We are prophets of a future not our own.” 

Fear is the antithesis of hope. Fear seethes and rails. It preaches ruin and destruction; it deafens us to reality. Fear is a failure to see what is possible, a failure to see the worth and dignity of everyone I encounter. Yet fear clings like tar, I confess I cannot easily shake it off.  There is a reason, I suspect, that the phrase “Do not be afraid!” appears again and again in the Gospels. To live in hope is to turn down the volume on the rhetoric that demonizes others and tune in to the voices that call us to companion each other, as Jesus has promised to accompany us.

 Hope is not fragile, nor is it always gentle. Sometimes it is a bit gritty. But it is always a grace. Thanks be to God.

 Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson

Pastor for Spiritual Formation

Drawn to love?

Matthew 23:36-8 
 
“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’” This is the first and greatest commandment.”
 
In his answer Jesus concentrated all the questions about what true obedience to God might look like. Love God with everything you have, and all that you are. Worship, adoration, praise and thanksgiving are the first response of our hearts to God’s gracious love and faithful mercy. To love God is to give God that space in our lives where we grow and are transformed by the Spirit who pours God’s love into our hearts. We love because God first loved us —the initiative always comes from God. Our response is loving gratitude and faithful obedience to that love. 
 
Matthew 23:39-40 
 
“And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
 
Jesus links love for God and love for neighbor. And don’t bother trying to define neighbor to make it manageable and convenient. The Good Samaritan story put an end to all that moral squirming. To love God, we must love those made in God’s image, and in whom we meet those Jesus called sisters and brothers. For as much as you love the poor, hungry, hurting, lonely, scared, struggling person you come across on each day’s journey, to that extent you love Jesus, and show your love for God to be genuine, because costly, generous because a sign of the grace that has helped us.
 
John 13:34-35 
 
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 
 
The commandment is new because it has a new point of reference; “As I have loved you.” Jesus is the exemplar of what Christian love looks like, how it speaks and acts. Jesus had just washed the feet of each disciple. This wasn’t an act of passive humility; this was Jesus’ answering all the earlier arguments about who was the greatest. The one who serves, who takes care of others’ needs, they are the greatest. That kind of servant love is the logo of the Christian community. Wear it— with humility!
 
Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

Luke 2:17 “When they had seen him they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child. And all who heard it were amazed…”

There’s quite a lot of amazement that goes on in the Christmas story. Mary’s annunciation; Joseph’s dream and the angel; shepherds ambushed by God’s choir; the shepherds’ gawking and gossip. And those who heard them were amazed. Why not? Angels and heavenly choirs, a baby supposed to be the Messiah, a young woman both scared and honored above all women. The vocabulary of Christmas is full of big words – Jesus, Immanuel, Bethlehem, signs and prophets, child, manger, shepherds, glory, joy, peace, God’s favour, spreading the word. And it’s our story, and these words are our words, the vocabulary of God’s gift beyond all our telling. 

Grace and peace,

Anita Sorenson
Pastor for Spiritual Formation

When the song of the angels is stilled,

when the star in the sky is gone,

when the kings and princes are home,

when the shepherds are back with their flock,

the work of Christmas begins:

to find the lost,

to heal the broken,

to feed the hungry,

to release the prisoner,

to rebuild the nations,

to bring peace among others,

to make music in the heart.

Howard Thurman