Ministry in Motion

A grace is a short prayer or thankful phrase said before or after eating. I grew up reciting a prayer that went something like this: "Bless us, O Lord, and these, Thy gifts,   which we are about to receive from Thy bounty.   Through Christ, our Lord. Amen." “Saying grace" is a term that comes from the Ecclesiastical Latin phrase  gratiarum actio , "act of thanks."  In Christian theology, the act of saying grace is derived from the Bible, in which Jesus and the Apostle Paul pray before meals (cf.  Luke 24:30 ,  Acts 27:35 ) . The practice reflects the belief that humans should thank God who is the origin of everything. The concept of giving thanks after the meal is based on the verse in Deuteronomy 8:10 “You shall eat, and give thanks and bless…” President Franklin Roosevelt famously asserted, " The only thing we have to  fear , is fear itself." Take a poll of common fears that people share and you’ll often get results such as

The past - can you learn from it? T here is a difference between thinking about the past, living in it, and wanting to change or erase it. Sometimes we live in the past because it's familiar — we know what happened, so there are no surprises. Maybe, from time to time, we are tempted to revisit the past because we’re comforted by the “good old days” As an Enneagram Four I totally get that one of the biggest challenges I face is learning to let go of feelings from the past…sigh. More recently there’s a media and social buzz about editing the past, because it makes some feel uncomfortable. But, One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present. ~ Golda Meir I suppose for some ppl living in the past allows them to avoid dealing with issues in the present. Consider that forgetting our own history, personal or social, sets us up for possibly not fully understanding the present and our role in it. To forget our story is to abandon w

Is the Character of Adaptability and  Flexibility working in you? One definition of adaptability is the ability to adjust oneself readily to different conditions; the ability of an entity or organism to alter itself or its responses to the changed circumstances or environment. I think Christ was a classic quintessential example of adaptability: The Son of God also became the Son of Man. The Apostle Paul added some practicum to the subject of adaptability and flexibility when he wrote to the church saying: “…I have voluntarily become a servant to any and all in order to reach a wide range of people: religious, nonreligious, meticulous moralists, loose-living immoralists, the defeated, the demoralized—whoever. I didn’t take on their way of life. I kept my bearings in Christ—but I entered their world and tried to experience things from their point of view. I’ve become just about every sort of servant there is in my attempts to lead those I meet into a God-saved life…” By bein