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Praying about the flow of time: Praying for the New Year with symbols

Lynne Baab • Thursday January 9 2025

The prayer leader showed me a plastic bin full of pieces of fabric. All were solid colors, and I could see a range of blues, a forest of greens, and the yellows, reds, oranges, pinks, and purples of every kind of flower. She told me about the way she uses the box to lead groups into prayer.

She asks people to think about one praise and one concern. What color represents each prayer, she asks. Some people might be able to identify colors right away. Others may need to rummage in the box to identify a color that connects with one...

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Praying about the flow of time: The feast of Epiphany and having epiphanies

Lynne Baab • Thursday January 2 2025

I think I was in my thirties when I first heard the phrase “aha moment.” It described something I had experienced now and then, those wonderful flashes of clarity and sudden insight when I understand something deeply for the first time or profoundly change my perspective. I’d known about the Season of Epiphany since my childhood in Episcopal and Anglican churches, but I had never questioned the meaning of the word “epiphany.” It turns out that “aha moment” and “epiphany” are synonyms. Another synonym for these words is “lightbulb moment.”

Epiphany is a day, January 6, the Twelfth Day of Christmas. The...

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Praying about the flow of time: Two after-Christmas events

Lynne Baab • Thursday December 26 2024

I experienced seven Christmases as a Presbyterian associate pastor. Here’s how it works when you’re an associate minister. The senior minister preaches at Christmas and Easter, and you get the Sundays immediately following. The senior minister, usually experiencing fatigue from those two big events, deserves a Sunday off to recover.

The lectionary Gospel readings for the Sunday after Christmas focus on these stories in the three-year cycle: the wise men (Matthew 2:1-12),the slaughter of the baby boys in Bethlehem (Matthew 2:16-18), and the boy Jesus in the temple (Luke 2:41-52). For some reason, I never got to preach on the boy Jesus...

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Praying about the flow of time: The incarnation and prayer

Lynne Baab • Tuesday December 17 2024

In a recent guest sermon at our church, artist/writer/performer Scott Erickson said, “Prayer is paying attention to God’s presence already there in our lives.” His words summarized the central idea I was pondering for this just-before-Christmas blog post.

I encourage you to ponder what difference it makes for your prayers that God became incarnate in Jesus. At Christmas, we celebrate Immanuel, God with us here on earth. At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit brought the incarnate God into our hearts and minds — “God’s presence already there in our lives.” We can grow in prayer by pondering this amazing reality of God with us.

Sure,...

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