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Texts: Acts 1:15-17, 21-26; 1 John 5:9-13; John 17:6-19
Never trust a strawberry. At least, never leave it unsupervised. A friend moved to an old farmhouse in the Skagit Valley. The house, a rental for many years now, has seen better days and has suffered somewhat from a lack of commitment to its overall health and welfare.
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A Pastoral Reflection, Week Six of Easter, A Year of Pandemic Living and Counting — May 14, 20215/15/2021 The news today is really good. There’s been such amazing progress with the COVID vaccine that the CDC announced that vaccinated people may begin gathering outdoors without masks!
Now, what does that mean for us? Texts: Acts 10:44-48; 1 John 5:1-6; John 15:9-17
We’ve been reading through the Book of Acts since Easter day. It tells us how the small community of Jesus’s followers began to move from the utter disaster of the cross and grave and the mystery of the resurrection into the community we now know as the church. As we hear the story week after week, I wonder who among the people in this story you most identify with, if you do at all. A Pastoral Reflection, Week Five of Easter, A Year and Counting of Pandemic Living — May 7, 20215/9/2021 Considering where we live, we are blessed. Yes we are. But are we good and faithful stewards of this blessing? Lately I’ve been thinking about how much the earth has suffered under our care. And how this suffering is a truly failure of faith.
A Pastoral Reflection, Week Four of Easter, A Year of Pandemic Living and Counting — May 1, 20215/1/2021 I’ve heard a lot of stories about people finding the time during the pandemic to initiate home renovations. We’re a bit late to the game, but this week, spurred on by the town’s annul offer to haul off large items we decided to go for it. We went small though…in our case, it was carpet that needed to go.
Texts: Acts 4:5-12; 1 John 3:16-24; John 10:11-18
Some people don’t care much for the shepherd and sheep imagery of scripture. It feels so antiquated, and sometimes ends up in unctuous preciousness. We’re generations removed, most of us anyway, from actual interaction with shepherds, sheep, lambs, pastures and sheepfolds. What is a sheepfold anyway? Texts: Acts 3:12-19; 1 John 3:1-7; Luke 24:36b- 48
You’re allowed to be a little clueless when you’re young. When I was just beginning to become independent in the kitchen, baking was my thing. With baked goods, you know they’re done when a toothpick stuck into the center of the pan comes up clean. Now, around our house toothpicks weren’t very plentiful. I don’t know what happened to them, but whenever I needed one there didn’t seem to be any to be had. A Pastoral Reflection, Week Two of Easter, A Year and Counting of Pandemic Living — April 15, 20214/19/2021 Now that the weather is warming up, the Salish Sea is seeing more boaters out and about. It makes me think of how Jesus went out and about with his disciples on a boat. It always seemed to me that it was just a convenient way for them to get across the water. But if our own ferries are any example, there’s a lot of inconvenience built into travelling by water.
Texts: Acts 4: 32-35; 1 John 1:1 – 2:2; John 20: 19-31
Jesus was hardly up from the grave when the faith community had its first test of life after resurrection. Consider it like the family situation that it truly was. The beloved elder brother had died. He was the one who had defined the family and kept them all together. Not actually even the oldest age-wise, he had drawn the genuine love and devotion of all the others who freely gave him their full trust. A Pastoral Reflection, Week of Easter One, A Year and Counting of Pandemic Living — April 9, 20214/11/2021 We’re three weeks into spring, and it’s time for spring cleaning. I’ve got a lot of stuff to deal with. The thing about stuff is that it’s sneaky. I like to think that I’ve been reducing the amount of stuff in my life but somehow stuff keeps happening. What is up with that?
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Author
The Rev. Beth Purdum Eden is an ordained minister in the Evangelical Lutheran Church. She has served in more than 6 parishes in the Western United States for 30 years. Archives
May 2021
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