Our Youth Need You! So often, we struggle to determine what can we do to help with a situation. How can we make a difference? Well, here you go...

This 24th Sunday after Pentecost brings to us readings that exalt values attributed to the biblical understanding of a widow. I got quite fascinated by a comparative reading of the selected texts that allude to the word "widow". I asked myself, "What if we all could be widows in the eyes of our God, who is the author and owner of all possessions!"

Charles M. Irish 7/13/29 - 10/12/15 "My dad, whose life you all have come here tonight to celebrate, and in some way must have touched your lives, was just an ordinary guy. Like you and me. And he would say that if he was here. He just pushed ahead with whatever God gave him or put in front of him. He was bold like that." Sounded to me a bit like bold Bartimaeus in Sunday's gospel reading. “I want to see!”

I’ve got a bone to pick with you, Annie. Of course I love Annie. Who wouldn’t love her frizzy-red hair, shining eyes, and her sunny optimism in the face of her life’s cruel disappointments? Even a hardened millionaire and the President of the United States joined her for the moving anthem, “The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow.” There was not a dry eye in the Oval Office. There is one problem, Annie: you’re fictional. And your advice doesn’t always hold.

Have you ever made a jigsaw puzzle? When you first start out, you’re wondering how in the world all of these pieces will fit together to look like the picture on the box. And be honest, don’t you secretly worry until you place the last piece that one might be missing, that somehow someone left out the last piece or someone lost it? As you come down to the finale placements, you’re trying to visualize just how the last ones fit together, to see if the picture before you will actually match the one advertised. Do you find yourself distracted as your attention drifts from the task at hand? Maybe a piece doesn’t fit just as you thought it would, or a piece that you were sure would fit in the corner suddenly proves to be vital for another area of the puzzle.

Seems to me, we somehow think the box, which is quite real, i.e. the one with only X number of breaths for any of us, is really real, will last forever, but another part of us, somewhere deep down, knows it won’t. Yet we paint it, decorate it, treat it, as if it will, with our cheers or tears for ourselves, others, and the world. And well we should on the one hand, but there is the other hand.

Prayer is foundational to our life with God. Talking to God about our world, our friends, families and ourselves begins the conversation. Listening to God about our world, our friends, families and ourselves moves the conversation forward. Whether you have prayed for a lifetime or only occasionally, we hope you will join us this Fall for our church-wide study. The only thing Jesus' friends ever asked him to teach them was how to pray.

Believe it: There once was a day when breaths were not numbered. When there was no lid on the box, or even four walls for that matter. So where did the box come from you ask, and our X number of inhales and exhales originate? Listen and look.

When life falls apart you can do one of two things. You can waste some of the little energy you have left keeping up the pretense that everything is okay, or you can save it for what really matters and stop putting on a mask. And after all, who do you think you're kidding, anyway?

Part One: "I don't get it." What I don’t get is why people--other people of course-- don’t get it. Think about it. It’s as if each of us lives inside a box. A big box for sure; some bigger, I suppose, some smaller, some taller and some shorter, but a box with a lid, and thus a limited amount of air. And so we only have so many breaths.