St. Margaret’s Celebrates 50th Anniversary

From the Archives: February 24, 1956The thought this week has been to develop the idea that true prayer starts with, and is always, the sense of being in God’s presence. First, we think about God. We think only of the Being of God. We quie....(View this reading and...

Before I ever knew what a sycamore tree looked like, I could tell you that a wee little man climbed one and ended up having dinner with Jesus. You may have learned the story in the same song I did. And now, perhaps the song is stuck in your head as well! The....(View...

You are God’s temple. Read the words again—allow them to wash over you and soak into every fiber of your being. What do you feel? Relief? Disbelief? Pride? Other feelings—maybe several? Take a long, good look at yourself. Admire God’s Holy Spirit dw....(View this...

When the psalmist puts Israel’s sin in such explicit terms, it seems pretty silly that people would exchange their relationship with God to worship a baby bull. Usually when we find ourselves worshiping false idols, exchanging our own glory isn’t so obvious. ....(View...

When it comes down to it, none of us can be reduced to being either a sheep or a goat, though it sure is tempting to try. I believe that Jesus searches out every last sheep in each of our lives and communities, searching for us like lost coins, lighting lamp....(View...

We’ve likely all heard awful sermons on this parable—and some of them were preached by me. These sermons share a complete failure to show any charity toward the Pharisee and an extreme lifting up of humility, almost to the point of idolatry. Humility is....(View this...

Everything I know about metallurgy was taught to me during Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood or some similar children’s show. The image that is clear in my mind is of a black iron cup full of boiling metal that looked like lava being poured from one container into another...

From the Archives: December 22, 1955Perhaps some of us have lost our hearts, our ability to love. But God can give them back to us. God plans that each one of us should be a complete person, with good health, intelligence, and wholesome emot....(View this reading and...

We don’t know for sure who the author of James was, though there is plenty of scholarly speculation. I suspect he wasn’t much fun to know. This person was an excellent arbiter of what was best for the burgeoning Christian community but probably a bit too righteous and...

The word gossip sounds strange: It conjures something Puritan and shame-ridden, or a nosey sitcom neighbor who operates the town grapevine. I doubt that any of us thinks of ourselves as a gossip, especially when gossip has become a 24-hour, multimedia facet of the...