Hunting Ridge Presbyterian Church

Luke 18:18-30      God-Sense is a way of exploring how we use our senses to increase our awareness of God’s presence, to better connect with God using more than our minds, which we Presbyterians are so good at!  Part of what I hope you have been sensing during our Lenten focus on God-Sense is that connecting with God is an intentional act.   Of course we can be surprised by God’s amazing presence any time—bowled over at an unexpected turn of events, a conquering of cancer cells, a call from a long separated family member.  In those kinds of times we connect with God in gratitude, with praise, with overflowing joy.  God is reaching out to connect with us through many different avenues on a continual basis.  Yet it can be easy to be oblivious to God’s presence:  we fill our days with work and worry, texts and trivialities, drama or boredom.  Being receptive to God-Sense, being open to connecting with God mostly requires being still for a time.  When we stop and make time to listen, to look, to touch, to feel, to taste —we put ourselves in a much better place to be aware of God’s presence.  We have been experimenting with different kinds of prayer experiences, including silence, movement, visual images, laying on of hands, a pleasing scent.

Take a slow deep breath.    Continue reading “Paying Attention” →

Luke 10:25-37   Hands On….                3.19.17

In one of our worship services at the NEXT conference in Kansas City, we stood and held hands around the tables we had been sitting at and sang the familiar civil rights protest song, We Shall Overcome.  I was singing and swaying, as you do when you sing We Shall Overcome.  And I was watching the two men across the table from us.  One had a prosthetic arm with a mechanical hand.  The other man had two hands, and he held that mechanical hand as we sang and swayed together.  He was not afraid to touch a metal claw instead of a hand of flesh and bone.  I was wondering what I would have done if I were standing next to the one handed man.  I think I would have placed my hand on the man’s shoulder so he could feel the touch of my hand in companionship and solidarity as we sang those moving words which carry so much emotional weight.  I would not have liked holding a metal claw and singing We shall overcome.  As the tears started to sting in my eyes and the chill ran down my back, Continue reading “Hands On….” →