Tsh Oxenreider in her Advent devotional Shadow and Light writes “When we start driving a new-to-us car, it isn’t long before it seems like the make and model of our car has multiplied. We see it everywhere - in parking lots across from our spot and in traffic jams the next land over. We are made aware of our car’s existence elsewhere in our surroundings, we see it where we didn’t see it before.”
Read MoreHappy Thanksgiving, Mt. Baker Park Church! This Thanksgiving, I am thankful for each one of you. It’s time to get up those Christmas trees, pull out the candles and lights and start preparing for Christmas, but in between we have a very intentional season in our church calendar, Advent.
According to Kate Bowler (Professor of Religious History at Duke University), “Advent is a season of expectancy and preparation - and, perhaps surprisingly, the beginning of the Christian calendar.
Read MoreThis week we are wrapping up the 8 week series on The Lord’s Prayer. My hope for this series has been to deepen our understanding of a prayer we say together every week and for you to both cherish praying it communally and perhaps discover the power of praying it personally.
We end this week with “for thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever” which is not in the earliest manuscripts of the gospel of Matthew. This doxology is found in some later manuscripts but was added on by the early church because in Jewish culture it was unfathomable that they would end simply with “deliver us from the evil one.”
Read MoreThis week I met with the Session and we discussed the table discussion groups that you participated in in January of this year. The words that were often used to describe Mt. Baker Park Pres. were “authentic, open, inclusive;” a sense that you can come as you are with your questions and doubts and be accepted and welcomed.
It was also clear that studying the Bible together whether in small groups or in worship together on Sunday mornings is important to this congregation.
Read MoreWe have heard the podcasts and read the newspaper articles, forgiveness is good for your health. Forgiveness is associated with lower blood pressure, better sleep, better cardiovascular and immune-health outcomes, but it is so hard to do! We tend to either excuse or rationalize the offense or to hold onto the hurt. As we pray “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors” Jesus invites us to a third way.
Read MoreNo body likes the wilderness. The wilderness seasons of life can seem like times when God is absent; waiting for things to happen, longing for a change, wishing we were somewhere else - anywhere else!
But in the Bible wilderness seasons are often rich times of intimacy with God. Paradoxically, in those seasons that feel the most dry and desperate, God meets God’s people in new and unexpected ways, responding to their cries, remaining faithful to walk with them every step of the way.
Read MoreI was a sophomore in college and I did not want to stay on campus for my junior year. I needed a semester away and there was a program I wanted to participate in badly, in Egypt. I stayed #2 on the waitlist for the whole summer praying “God, open up a spot for me.” It didn’t happen. I did not know what I was going to do, it was August and the semester was set to start in just a few weeks.
Read MoreDear Mt. Baker Church,
“The Transition Process involves four elements: Listening, Discerning, Planning and Implementing. There are different activities throughout the year that help a congregation do this.” This is taken from the website of another church that is currently in transition after another long pastorate, Snohomish Presbyterian Church.
If you want to see what their transition process is like, you can do that here: https://www.snopres.org/transition
Read MoreHello MBPPC,
C.S. Lewis famously said:
“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
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