Tag: prayer
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Thanksgiving in Threes
A prayer for thanksgiving. O Living God, you who are Three-in-One and One-in-Three, we give thanks and praise for your abundant gifts—your mercy and grace. We give thanks… For friends who challenge, bless, and care.For books that confound, enlighten, and teach.For scriptures that nourish, correct, and upbuild.For Jesus, who heals, forgives, and saves.For ancestors of…
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Sonnet 1 – Billings Lake
Retreating glaciers carved the earth below,to leave a quilt of lakes upon the land,where winding threads of river shining flow,and birch and elm and pine take up their stand.Canoe, our passage in this ancient world,On bright-eyed morn, the water dark and glass,Wood paddle stroke creates a gentle swirl,The sunrise, pink orange blue, on surface cast.The…
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Tears as Prayers
The full meaning of our tears always escapes us, but they are taken into the gracious love of God, in Christ.
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The other side of Goodbye #backtoschool
September is a busy and important time here at The Presbyterian College, with new and returning students arriving for studies. For six years now, as a faculty member here, I’ve been part of a team receiving students as they arrive in Montreal. Often those students come from other places in the country, or even from…
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Home Depot Prayers
It goes without saying: Worship has been dramatically altered by the pandemic. Some of these alterations have been less than desirable, of course, but some of them have also been worth celebrating. Among the gifts of the pandemic, I would suggest, is our increasing attentiveness to everyday work and workers. Over past months there has…
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Grace in the Pandemic
The past weeks have been difficult and stressful for many of us, or perhaps all of us. It’s no exaggeration to say there have been sleepless nights, worries in the day, challenges in family life, and a kind of fogginess about where life is going. This is on top of the very real suffering that…
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A Christmas Prayer
My latest column in the Christian Courier is a prayer for Christmas. __________________ Praise to you, O living Word, for you give the gift of our world. You are the creating one through whom ancient Laurentian mountains have their craggy existence. By your imaginative power, forests of black spruce, larch, and balsam grow along ridges…
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Kierkegaard – God – Movement
The second of two reflections I offered on the prayers of Kierkegaard at the retreat of The Presbyterian College this year. Like everything, Kierkegaard looks “slant” at the idea of God’s immutability. — If there is anything that gives the impression of unchangeableness, it is perhaps the towering and intimidating mountains that populate the face…
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Kierkegaard – Love – Prayer
It had been too long since I had spent any concentrated time with the writings of Søren Kierkegaard – but this summer saw something of a revival in my love and attention toward his works. This revival was partly inspired by a family vacation to Denmark and Copenhagen, which included a visit (for me, at…
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Grief and Distance – Responding to the World Wide Web
In our digital age it’s not always easy to register an appropriate or meaningful emotional response when sad or difficult news reaches us from far-off places, whether through our social media feeds or on the digital news outlets we frequent. In the face of such news we will certainly feel something – a sense of sadness…
encrusted words 