Garbage
I might’ve said, “Is there anything I can do to help you?” He said, “I can get the garbage out to the porch but I can’t get it to the curb.” Every Thursday morning his trash bags wait for me on his porch and I tote them to the curb. I do a pretty fair…
Air conditioning
The old car was a beater … rusty … passenger window stuck shut … muffler didn’t muffle much and the radio didn’t radio at all … but it mostly ran OK. A friend needed to get to Boston in a hurry. I handed him the key and he drove on the hottest day of the…
Certainty
It may be the times we live in. People seem so certain … of everything! It’s contagious! A friend said to me, “I wish I could be as certain of just one thing as you are of everything!” I needed to hear that. I’m learning to let go. Stand down. Give ground. Hold my peace….
Messenger
Friend, I am glad to hear from you. It is true that our Lord doesn’t tell me everything that’s on his mind, or tell me all that I think I ought to know. I am sure there are good reasons for this. I live, as patiently as I can, simply not knowing. Then, as if…
Lepers
When I was a boy, my family lived in the West Indies. There, I saw lepers. On Saturdays, lepers came and sat on the ground outside the city market. Wrapped in rough cloth, even their faces, they begged for alms. My mother knelt and spoke to the shrouded figures. She offered what she had, food…
Ministry
This ministry business has, for me, held rather more disappointments than successes, trying to fix broken bits of the world that simply stay broken. That may be the natural order of God’s world, I don’t know. I’ve learned that grand plans and great intentions are for naught next to the good that comes of spending…
Timing
I went to the museum for a little time alone. Entering the lobby, I saw a couple I knew. Bess was in a wheelchair, Andy was fussing with the machine that validates parking tickets. “Darn thing! Ticket’s jammed!” I helped. We chatted, retrieved their coats, then made our way to the parking deck. Though we…
Notebook
He was a nice guy who had lived a rough life. You could see it in his face and hands. Some of it was his fault but not all of it. He carried a ballpoint pen and notebook in his shirt pocket and I asked him about it. He said, “Hard as I try, I…
Farm
My parents, married in 1947, bought a working farm. They were not farmers and Nature reclaimed the fields. The barn became my mother’s studio and my father’s study. My sister and I grew up in that quiet realm. When our parents died, we sold the farm to a friend. Recently, I returned to the farm…
Seeing the world as it is (from the archives)
When do we first see the world as it is? Not a perfect and well-ordered world but a world untidy, slightly broken and not as we had thought? I was a boy. My mother, father and sister and I were traveling on a train. We had boarded the Pullman car the evening before and slept…
Did You Know? – Deacon Josh
The Rev. Josh Butler is a Vocational Deacon in the Diocese of Ohio.
It is the deacon who ends the service, dismissing the congregation to go out in the community to serve. In his Deacon’s Dismissal, Josh offers reflections to strengthen and inspire us in our call to service.
