December 1, 2014 First Sunday in Advent Isaiah 2: 1-5 Matthew 24: 36-44 Charissa Clark Howe Advent is a really difficult time in the church calendar for choosing hymns because there just aren’t many advent hymns out there. Perhaps it’s because advent is about waiting and most of us don’t like waiting, let alone singing about it. But there is one advent hymn that seems to have captured all of our hearts – “O…
November 24, 2013 Luke 23: 33-43 Rev. Catherine Purves It used to be that everyone knew where they were and what they were doing on the day that President Kennedy was shot. I certainly remember. But that was a generation ago now, fifty years. For many, that is already assigned to the realm of history. If you were around then, and if you were old enough (I was in 7th grade), then it…
November 17, 2013 Isaiah 65: 17-25 Luke 21: 5-19 Rev. Catherine Purves For some reason in the last few weeks I’ve watched two movies in which Washington D.C., and specifically the Capital building, was under attack in an attempt to bring down the government. I also accidentally watched “World War Z” because Brad Pitt was in it; I didn’t realize that the ‘Z’ stood for zombie. Then when Gordon was home last weekend…
November 10, 2013 2 Thessalonians 2: 1-3a, 13-17 Luke 20: 27039 Rev. Catherine Purves There seems to be a kind of great divide among Christians. I noticed this especially when I was taking a class at the Seminary this term. You may remember that in my class we were reading biographies of influential people in American Church History. I learned about all sorts of different church leaders. Some were decidedly strange. Actually, most…
November 3, 2013 Luke 19: 1-10 Rev. Catherine Purves On Wednesday of this week I went with Barb and Jack Gusew to a meeting of the West Branch of our Presbytery. These Branch meetings are not for the usual business of the Presbytery. They are times when the elders and the clergy in the western part of the Presbytery can gather for worship and fellowship, we have dinner together, and we usually have…