The surprising doubleness of the Advent season I don’t know when or where I first learned about the Advent season as the four weeks before Christmas. Maybe as a child at the Lutheran church where I went to Sunday school. Or as a youth in the Anglican church I attended with a friend from high school. Or in one of the many different churches my husband and I visited as a young … [Read more...] about Venez, divin messie: Oh come, divine Messiah
April Yamasaki
April Yamasaki is a pastor, editor, and the author of Hope Beyond Our Sorrows: Learning to Live with Life-Changing Loss. She will teach two short courses this fall, each just one hour/week for six weeks: a morning course on the book of Ruth for Canadian Mennonite University’s Xplore program and an evening course on dreams and dreaming. For more information and to register your interest, see her website at AprilYamasaki.com.
Abundant Thanks to Abundant God
Thanksgiving Day in Canada has come and gone, but as we all know, giving thanks is not about a single day or weekend. Churches around the world give thanks every Sunday as part of their regular worship. Some of us give thanks every day when we pray before a meal, when some of us pray even before we get out of bed in the morning, or before we go to sleep at night. Every … [Read more...] about Abundant Thanks to Abundant God
On Writing a Better Story
Years ago, after my father died, I wrote down some of the things I remembered him saying. No education is ever wasted. Don’t spend what you don’t have, always pay cash. It’s a privilege to pay taxes – somebody has to pay for the roads. These things were part of our everyday conversation, and I don’t know that my father meant them to stick in my mind forever. But I’ve come to … [Read more...] about On Writing a Better Story
Psalms for Summer
Years ago, I was given a slim, pocket-sized Bible that held the New Testament and Psalms. Keeping the books of the New Testament together made sense to me since they tell the story of Jesus and his followers. But I wondered why the Psalms were added to the end of the New Testament. Why not add Genesis that tells the story of creation? Or the book of Exodus that gives the ten … [Read more...] about Psalms for Summer
Looking for a new church, and how I found one
After 25 years of congregational ministry, I felt a new wind of the Spirit blowing in my life, to complete my role as a pastor and focus instead on the writing side of my ministry. It felt like a huge step for my husband and me to leave the congregation that had first called and nurtured me in ministry, that had been home to both of us for so many years. Yet we sensed a new … [Read more...] about Looking for a new church, and how I found one