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Praying about the flow of time: God is light

Lynne Baab • Wednesday January 15 2025

The psalmist sees God as “wrapped in light as with a garment” (Psalm 104:2). “I am the light of the world,” says Jesus (John 8:12). When John sees Jesus in a vision, Jesus’s face is “like the sun shining with full force” (Revelation 1:16). Later in Revelation, Jesus calls himself the “bright morning star” (22:16).

For the past several years, when I pray for people, I often name three things I want for them: God’s shalom, God’s protection, and God’s light. Naming God’s light almost every day in my prayers has made me more aware of the significance of the strong imagery...

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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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