All In A Days Grace

It might seem strange to use dry-cleaning as an analogy to our posture this Advent, but I actually think it’s an accurate example of how we sometimes approach our faith. Do you clean your clothing before you drop it off at the dry cleaners? Of course not..but if you do…we need to talk. If you’re like my husband and I, we collect a large pile of things to be dry-cleaned and then drop it off. There are things that have small stains we thought we might be able to get out ourselves, but put in the pile along with those stained items that we doubt the dry cleaners will be able to fix. You know the stains, the ones that as soon as they happen we think “That’s it..this stain is never coming out!” If you’re also like my husband and I, that “pile” of clothing might sit around for a while. We live close to the dry cleaners. We literally pass it on the way out of our community, but we constantly “put off” the stop. Let me help you connect the analogy going on here. Advent is a time of preparatio...

This little blue yarn man hangs on my Christmas tree each year.   He stands out among the red and green sparkly decorations, giving contrast to the tree itself. Very much in the same way his story does the same. The story of this little blue yarn man stands in contrast to the context and circumstances that surround his creation. Let me explain… Before going into ministry I worked in the medical field. Over the course of 15 years I had the opportunity to work in several different departments. When asked what my favorite department was I don’t even have to think about it. It was Oncology. Yes Oncology…the place we go when some unexplained mass shows up in our body. The place where the words malignant and benign live. A place where that word cancer often times rears its ugly head. Yes, that was my favorite place to work. It was in that place that people got real. It was in that place that everyone, no matter age, socioeconomic status or walk of life had one thing in common. Their ...