Embracing Grace

Buran Phillips used the phrase Embracing Grace in the May Issue of Presbyterians Today and one of the phrases used was Embracing Grace. Sounds like it should be a book title or a song.
Embracing Grace how sweet the words


I am sure and certain that faith life is one that is lived in the embracing Grace of God's love. Do you feel it. It's all around.

God abides

And welcome to the world Jacob Dinesh T.
We are better for your being here.

Bobbie Giltz McGarey
@2008

Lest we forget

We are carried by the past but expected not to rest there but rather to live in the present and welcome the future.


God abides
Bobbie Giltz McGarey
@2008

All in the Golden Afternoon

"All in the golden afternoon
full leisurely we glide;
Both our oars with little stall
By little arms are plied,
While little hands much vain pretence
our wanderings to guide."
Lewis Carroll the beginning of Alice in Wonderland.

Somehow I can remember small parts of texts I've read some time ago and they come to me as I think of other things. Perhaps like Alice in Wonderland we need sometimes to allow our thoughts to flow beyond the usual ways of seeing the world. Surely that is a story that is filled with wonder and questions.

Not long after that poem after Alice has fallen into the hole and grown bigger and then smaller and smaller.... and then she falls into a pool of salt which she realizes were her tears...and she said... Wow I could drown in my own tears.

I heard a report on the way home yesterday about a woman in China where the quake hit who had walked 35 Km already and was seated at the side of the road hoping that someone would come along to take them to the nearest town. She wept. She had reason for her utter sadness and her deep dispair.

Let us pray for all those today because of loss, or grief, or trauma, or even the kitchen roof falling in are feeling like ... they are drowning in their own tears.

God abides and for that I am ever grateful.
Bobbie McGarey
@2008

The reading

Grace and peace
Every morning I can I read the lectionary, (a cycle of readings through the Bible) and today's lesson in the New Testament was from Ephesians 4:17-32.
Somehow today it blew me away. After listing some of the ways that
people were behaving the writer says20That is not the way you learned Christ.
I sometimes wonder why folks don't come to worship and to hear the Good
News. I think it must be that the actions of some of us speaks louder
than our words. That the way we love the world and especially one
another shows itself to world and people want nothing of it.
When I was getting a haircut there were two women who were not speaking
kindly of some of the people in their church. This was a public place.
They had mentioned the name of the church and then began to talk about
this person and that person and it just wasn't fun. When I was leaving
I said as gently as I could: How we speak to one another projects how
we love Jesus more than most anything we can do. I walked out.
(I imagine they started talking about me... ha ha ha) but the point is that if I had not been a believer would I after hearing them consider going to church?
How you live what you claim to believe is the testament to your love of God.
Ephesians 4:17-32goes into more detail. Apparently people haven't
changed much as these admonitions speak to us today as much as to the
folks in theEphesus church.
Do they apply?
20That is not the way you learned Christ.
How did you learn Christ---and perhaps even more importantly---how do you live Christ?

God abides
Bobbie Giltz McGarey
@2008

the Wind

So here we are in the church year getting ready to celebrate and mark Pentecost. The wind of the spirit that blew through the people...because it was so helpful to have an image that people could underwstand...flames...something real and tangible that would relate to people.
And then today, a big Oklahoma storm came blowing thru. It was pretty exciting. I was at church with Joan and we watched the clouds come up over the trees really dark and then wow the wind started blowing. It was still before and then the winds, some say at 65 mph, came flying through. The rain and the hail came from several directions. We finally got a warning sirene when the winds and the hail looked to be a problem. We made it thru but apparently we hear that there are lines down and the storm is heading East.
Looking at the winds we understand here the power they have. The trees bending and yielding to survive. To resist is to break.
The wind of the spirit is coming. Let it be for you a joy complete.
God abides
Bobbie Giltz McGarey
@2008