Covenant Presbyterian Church Sunday school teacher Laura Baake teaches a special group of kids each week in her hometown of Lubbock, Texas. Her elementary school-age class has raised money for the Presbyterian Giving Catalog the past two years, and the children make all the decisions on where they want to donate the money they raise. You might not think a group of elementary school students would be very thoughtful about which projects to support, but you would be wrong.
Presbytery of Detroit leaders published an open letter Monday, written “from a place of deep pain and anger as we witness the division and inequality laid bare by (the coronavirus), particularly in our region.”
We knelt on the pavement, three long lines of women. One woman at a time led in prayer, acknowledging our need and crying out for God’s intervention in South Sudan.
Creator God,
From the rising of the sun in the east to its setting in the west, you have blessed us with life, family, food from creation and spiritual ways drawing us closer to you.
All his life, the Rev. David Maxwell has found prayer baffling.
Maxwell, who leads Presbyterian Publishing Corporation’s curriculum imprint, Geneva Press, said during a recent weekly chapel service at the Presbyterian Center that he often finds prayer “awkward, irrational and confusing — and I know I’m not alone in my discomfort.”
For three days, I joined other Young Adult Volunteers and a diverse group of Christians as we walked from Ghost Ranch to the Sanctuario de Chimayo, a historic church in northern New Mexico. The tiring, trying and transformative 50-mile journey through the beautiful countryside continues to color my spiritual growth. Reflecting now, more than a year later, I smile, remembering a poignant moment of the trek: when we held others in intercessional prayer.
The postlude played. I stood at the sanctuary door, greeting congregants as they made their way to coffee hour. On this day, though, I wasn’t sharing pleasantries as I shook hands. I was anointing with oil a hand of each person exiting the sanctuary. As I made the sign of a cross on each palm, I gave a blessing: Be the beautiful you God sees you to be.
The Rev. Lorenzo Small admits he had never heard of prayer walking until a pastor friend told him about it. So, he tried it. The prayer walk made such an impact on Small for being “very simple and yet very effective” that wherever the pastor goes, prayer walking goes with him.
On June 5, the Rev. Dr. Lloyd John Ogilvie completed his baptism at 88 years old and passed into the hands of his loving Savior. Known for many accomplishments in his life, not the least of which was his 23 years as pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood in Los Angeles, Ogilvie was perhaps best known for his time serving as chaplain of the Senate from 1995 to 2003.
