Thomas Merton on Loving Others

--by Fr. Kevin

On Saturday, I preached about the teaching and spirit of the Pharisees, which A. W. Tozer summarized this way: “The blight of the Pharisee’s heart … was doctrine without love.” This makes me very glad for Savior’s mission statement that keeps us coming back to loving God, loving others, and loving life. I’ve been helped and challenged by this from Thomas Merton: “Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody’s business. What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy.”

 

A Word from Fr. Kevin on Names

--by Fr. Kevin

Eugene Peterson once said that next to the Bible, the church directory is the most important book in the pastor’s study. To learn someone’s name and use it is a gift. I encourage each person at Savior to learn the name of others at the church. Did you know that by doing that, you are becoming more like God, who knows each one of us intimately and calls us by name?

·      Jesus says the good shepherd (a metaphor for himself) “calls his own sheep by name” (John 10:3)

·      Isaiah says that God “brings out the starry host one by one and calls forth each of them by name” (Isaiah 40:26)

·      Jesus reveals that he’s alive again to Mary Magdalene by using 1 word, her name: “Mary!” (John 20:16).

(And if you forget a name, as I sometimes do, there is grace.)

"I Am Here for You": beautiful words by Robert Lax

Robert Lax was an American poet, a convert from Judaism to Catholicism, and a friend of Thomas Merton. In his work Psalm, he includes these words, which (to me) can be read in several ways: as the commitment of a friend to a friend, or the prayer of a soul to God:

"I am here for you. I have no other person to be here for and no other reason to be here. I am here at your disposal. Your disposition. I have no desire except to do what you'd have me do. I have heard of other desires. I haven't heard of any that mean as much to me as that. Haven't heard of any that would mean as much to me as knowing I was doing what you wanted me to do. Or even not knowing I was doing it. Simply doing it.”

—from Psalm by Robert Lax (Zurich: Pendo, 1991).

Here's a Prayer Resource to Try: Daily Office Booklets from Rookie Anglican

--by Deacon Josh Steele

In the weeks leading up to Advent 2016, I had a problem.

I was serving as a youth pastor at St. Peter's Anglican Church in Birmingham, AL, and I wanted to challenge my students to try to do the Daily Office of Morning and Evening Prayer for the four weeks of Advent. 

However, I faced a small crisis of user-UNfriendliness!

  • First, none of my students were familiar enough with using the 1979 Book of Common Prayer to realistically use it for the Daily Office during Advent.
  • Second, the ACNA's new Daily Office liturgies and lectionary were only available as confusing PDFs and Word Documents.
  • And third, although there were/are great apps out there for the Daily Office, I wanted to give my students an analog way to pray.

So, I created a "Daily Office Booklet"—a simplified version of the offices of Morning and Evening Prayer, with the readings listed out for you, so that you just need your Bible and a Booklet to do the Daily Office.

I've continued to make these Daily Office Booklets ever since, and I offer them to you as a potentially helpful aid to your prayer life. 

If you're interested in the Daily Office Booklet, go here to learn more.

Children at Savior

People often comment to me about the children at Savior: “I love how the kids are so included” or “Pastor Mary gets my kid.”

What’s behind those comments is a deep commitment to children and youth. I was trying to explain this at our Welcome to Savior dessert recently, and here’s what I came up with (on the fly, so much more could be said):

* We take children’s spiritual lives seriously. They are not just “the church of the future” but “the church of now.” They experience God and pray and take in the Word of God. In our ministry to them, we don’t think, “How do we entertain them?” (not that fun is bad) but “How do we guide them in their spiritual lives?” A child this Saturday, in the younger room, commented on the mystery of Ascension, “Jesus went away so that he could be with us always, at all times and everywhere.” "

* We involve them throughout our life together. As our staff plans, we make sure the children and youth are fully participating with us—as musicians, acolytes, dancers, Bible dramatists, worshipers, missionaries. They help teach all of us, lead us, add to our joy. As Pastor Mary says, "When we don’t find ways to integrate children into the life of the church, the church misses out. Our worship can become too heady, our fears grow out of proportion. We need to be reminded that God has asked us to cling to our unyielding child-like faith that God can do it all; that God loves us; that God, in his very mysterious way, is truly with us, even in us."

I am thankful for Pastor Mary, for youth mentor Rick Page, and for the many of you who serve our children and youth.

--Fr. Kevin