A small group of folks gathered Monday evening into Tuesday morning to do a unique event – Sleep out in the Park.  The point of the event was to raise awareness of the challenges around homelessness, especially in light of the pandemic. Doing sleep outs to raise awareness around...

Prayer for July 22, 2020: Please pray with me.  God who favors the poor, why is this title of your controversial?  There are many who don’t like the idea that you favor the poor.  Televangists who are successful and wealthy don’t like to talk about you favoring the poor....

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(I gave this sermon yesterday, Sunday, July 19, 2020. You can see the entire worship service and sermon at www.ststephenlc.org.) Gottfried Leibniz, a German philosopher and mathematician, and probably someone you have never heard of before, is credited with coining the term theodicy in 1710. What is theodicy?  It quite...

Prayer for July 16, 2020: Please pray with me.  God of grace, you give us the free gift of grace.  It requires nothing from us in order to receive it.  But it comes with responsibility in how we respond to it.  Give us the courage to live into that...

Why do we give permission for certain things to continue, even though we say we don’t want them to? I know, this may seem simplistic.  We may say that some things are just beyond our permission. But I’m not talking about us as just individually.  I’m talking about us...

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Lately I have heard arguments about funding different social service programs through government funding.  I’ve heard arguments about this related to food and health and education.  All of these have been hotly “debated” for a long time.  The arguments are pretty familiar too.  “We shouldn’t do x because then...

Prayer for July 14, 2020: Please pray with me.  God of complexities, you made the universe.  You created order out of chaos.  That doesn’t sound so simple.  That sounds like herding cats.  And you maintain order in the midst of chaos.  I can’t even imagine how frustrating that must...