CategoryEmail Devotions

Weekly devotions by email from our Pastors and guest devotioneers. New devotions are posted here and emailed every Wednesday morning.

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That Still, Small Voice

We thank Cindy Stauffer, our guest devotional provider this morning. I’m not sure what to call these encounters: God moments? Angels unaware? Divine intervention?  Has it ever happened to you? A chance meeting that commands you to stop, listen and pay attention. Someone is trying to “tell you” something. The universe is tapping you on the…

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A Father’s Love

A father is neither an anchor to hold us back, nor a sail to take us there, but a guiding light whose love shows us the way.  (George Webster Douglas)  I write to you both as a son and a father and a grandfather who has been on both the receiving end and the giving…

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Not Your Grandma’s Church

Nancy and I spent the past weekend with our son Justin and his wife Megan at their home in Frederick.  Come Sunday morning, Justin and I decided to try and surprise our former vicar Matthew Beers at one of the churches he serves in Thurmont, Maryland.  We drove up for the 8AM service and were…

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So Many Reminders ….

I’m leaving the Intensive Care Unit yesterday afternoon after having spent some time with one of our church families that has a loved one in the ICU.  As I walk down the hall I pass a window that offers a lovely view of the southeast corner of Lancaster city, from the relatively high 6th floor…

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Life Beyond Confirmation

Lord, it is time: we pray for our children.  Not only for them in their infancy, when disease or accident alone might harm them; not only for them in childhood, when their dreams begin and school is hard and our own discipline’s the hardest thing they must endure; not only for them in adolescence, when…

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Death is Not the Final Word

Some of you know I am a bit of a poetry junkie.  I subscribe to a couple of poetry blogs … The Writer’s Almanac … Panhala … Poem of the Week.  They are all different. The Writer’s Almanac is my favorite, as it has the widest breadth of poems from classic to modern, from rhythmic…

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What’s in a Name?

I ask that people make no reference to my name; let them call themselves Christians, not Lutherans. What is Luther? After all, the teaching is not mine. Neither was I crucified for anyone. (Martin Luther, 1522 treatise) The Ethiopian eunuch … I mean really … how often do you get to say those words in…

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Fool’s Gold

 I want to know You/ I want to hear Your voice/ I want to know You more. I want to touch You/ I want to see Your face/ I want to know You more. “In the Secret” by Chris Tomlin — New Day Service song. Did you hear Mark Zuckerberg say last week that, “FaceBook…

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Concerning a Dodge Caravan … and Hope

Email Devotion For The Week Of Easter 3 Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer.   (Romans 12:12, NRSV) We were the only two people in the building who were crying … literally … the only two of the dozens of people surrounding us at the local CarMax showroom.  We were signing over the…

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Jesus Christ Superstar Revisited

Email Devotion For The Week Of Easter 2 Then Judas Iscariot, who was one of the twelve, went to the chief priests in order to betray him to them. (Mark 14:10) A week ago Sunday, I gathered with nine and a half million of my best friends to watch Jesus Christ Superstar on NBC TV.  I have…