2013 05 12 Mother's Day: Filled with Hope (selections from Rev 21 and 22; Ps 97)

When a woman gets married, she hopes to change her husband.  When a man gets married, he hopes his wife will never change.  And they are both wrong.

Today, we are as much conditioned by belief in science as we are faith in religion.

Hope.  This word is a very personal thing for my life and my philosophy. 

Wishes and Hopes.

Text:  Luke 21:25–36  First Sunday of Advent, Dec. 2 2012

Preached by Rev. James Murray at Dominion-Chalmers United Church.

I have posted my draft of the story and message for Sunday, December 9 in a blog.  The message includes two stories: one about Robert Fulgum on appreciating the love directed our way and one whose origin I have lost on our continuous option of making positive choices.  Overall, my message considers reasons to hope, making the choice to hope, and making the choice to make our hopes real.

 Here are my current drafts of my story and message for December 2, 2012

Seeing Hope

From Milestones to Stepping stones. Text: Joshua 4:1-7 Mark 10:17–31

By Rev. James Murray at Dominion-Chalmers United Church, October 14  2012

If your house was on fire, and you had the time to save only one thing, what would you save? Would you save a family heirloom which has been passed down through the generations? Would you save your favourite painting? Would you save your wedding quilt? Or would you try to save a photo album?

Reg Bibby just dropped this into my inbox this evening. It is his latest analysis of where the church is headed in the next few years. Bibby is Canada's leading sociologist of religion and is well known for his trenchant and challenging analysis of Canada's religious landscape.

It is downloadable and free.

See here for more.

http://www.reginaldbibby.com/

A Call to Action

First off, I don't want to pick on waterfall here, but she's made two statements in other threads that reflect an attitude that I've heard before from even liberal Christians. It's not a reflection on her that I'm using her words, she just happened to express the attitude very succinctly and nicely.

Hope was born in a stable, and those the world had judged wise came to see. After witnessing this fragile new hope, the Magi “went home by a different way.” They were not the same.

My thoughts this Epiphany are filled with both the fragile new hope that I saw born at the UN climate change talks in Durban, and the bitter disappointment that calls us to go home by a new and different way.