More than 200 people gathered online along with members and friends of First Presbyterian Church of Uvalde, Texas, Wednesday evening for a moving and powerful prayer service on the day following the shootings at Robb Elementary School in that community. View the 50-minute service here. Read more »
May 26, 2022
A grieving and shocked community gathers to pray
More than 200 people gathered online along with members and friends of First Presbyterian Church of Uvalde, Texas, Wednesday evening for a moving and powerful prayer service on the day following the shootings at Robb Elementary School in that community. View the 50-minute service here. Read more »
The Rev. Carolyn Winfrey Gillette, a Presbyterian hymn-writer who has penned new lyrics to more than 400 hymns, has published her most recent hymn, “We Pray for Peace” to Finlandia, the tune for the hymn “Be Still, My Soul” and “This is My Song.” 
Presbyterians have been stepping up to help Afghan families feel welcome in the United States, from providing meals and housing to helping children get registered in school. 
Just outside of the town of Blacksburg, South Carolina, which is located about 40 miles southwest of Charlotte, North Carolina, sits a church with a unique rock exterior. It sits on a plot of land along Highway 5 across the street from its cemetery. There is perhaps no other church like it in the area, at least none that could match its solid-rock edifice that was built by Black men who left a permanent symbol in honor of God and their place of worship for future generations. 
It makes a big difference how much time we spend looking forward to what’s coming our way, and how much time we spend looking backward at where we’ve been. At least it does in driver’s education. I remember my driver’s ed instructor telling us to look in our rearview mirrors once every two seconds — which seems like bad advice to give to a bunch of literalistic teenagers. 
June 20 is World Refugee Day. Displaced from their homes amid unimaginable circumstances, refugees’ journeys are long and difficult. 
Juneteenth, the official freeing of enslaved people on June 19, 1865, in Texas, is one of the most important events in American history — but most students haven’t even been taught it. Maybe that will change now that Juneteenth is a national holiday. 
Afghan refugees in Prince William County, Virginia, had two major needs: job opportunities and Halal food. There was experience in the community with farming and cattle-raising in the northern Virginia county’s Afghan community. Some refugees had pooled their resources to purchase cattle and secure land. 
It’s a precious gift to be there to say goodbye. But when the actual moment comes, it can be hard to know what to do or where to start. Maybe we are thrown by the beeping ICU screens. Or maybe we don’t know how to begin unwinding a conflict that has been years in the making. Sometimes there’s plenty of time to say all that is needed, and the words flow with ease. Many times, though, we struggle for words in those precious moments. As Stephen Jenkinson, who has written extensively about grief, observed: We often stumble into our dying as amateurs.