In this category are Full of Years blogs that examine how time fills the lives of older persons. Time as a gift and time as a responsibility. Implicit in all entries: This is a good time to be living fully.
With Advent on the horizon, this might be a good time to revisit one of its strong themes: The Second Coming. More specifically, how the world will end in the time it takes to *blink. The speed of this life-changing event will likely overwhelm or paralyze any effective reaction to what’s occurring. Suddenly life as we know it will be finished and the events of Judgment Day—prefacing eternalMORE...
Reformation Day’s lessons, prayers, hymns and sermons have receded into the online vaults where past worship services are stored. Now it’s time to move onward, maybe even forward. In the next few months, congregations like yours and mine will be fashioning the future as we imagine the coming year’s programs and budgets. We hope to instill the spirit of reformation into the coming year. That workMORE...
Right now the church year calendar is stacked with feasts and festivals: Reformation Day, All Saints Day, All Souls Day. What might these holidays tell us if we combined them into one celebration? One possibility occurs to me: We can rejoice that there are so many saints and souls whose lives have changed for the better. Another way of saying that: Repentance, conversion and transformation areMORE...
One continuing lament about growing older: The lost souls that continue in my memory without continuing in my current relationships. To be clear, these are not people I have consigned to perdition on account of their persistent perfidies. Instead, they are all the saints with whom I’m no longer in touch. Their state of well-being is unknown to me, their contact information lapsed or lost. TheMORE...
Remember learning how to diagram sentences? That happened for me in 7th and 8th grade. During those years I figured out how to translate spoken or written language into exquisite charts that showed the relationships of words and clauses within the shape of an entire sentence. A speaker or writer could chart the size, complexity and inner-relationships of language. In this way, word structuresMORE...
It’s difficult to treat addictions of any kind, and anger addiction adds its own layers of complexity. The complications are easy to see: Anger is both an individual and group phenomenon. A subculture of anger-merchants has worked for decades to insert anger into the way this society functions. Fuel for continuing anger is easily accessible, so those addicted to anger may not seek help. PoliticsMORE...
Okay, complete the following axiom: “If life gives you lemons, ……! Schooled in the intricate arcania of maxims, most folks would write something on the order of “make lemonade,” right? That seems fair enough—we want to be positive about the bad breaks or sour moments in our life’s journey, so lemonade-making seems like the positive, asset-based thing to do with an accumulation of lemonsMORE...
A worship concept that’s helped me during difficult times is called “the ongoing alleluia.” The idea is both simple and profound: When worshippers gather together, their alleluias are part of something that spans the world endlessly, that involves them and like the wind of the Spirit, passes through on its way to others, present in all time and space. Many of these alleluias are offered inMORE...
Lately I’ve noticed the increasing appearance of inflection point. This new 1 buzzword signals that we’ve ridden the arc of our society downward, and are at the point where the direction of our nation is turning upward again. Commentators usually name a specific event as a possible arc-turning moment. An inflection point clearly divides before from after, and carries an implicitly hopeful messageMORE...
One of the quiet blessings of the sequestrated lifestyle is the invitation to daydream, to wander in thought. Over the past many months, I’ve taken advantage of this opportunity, and sometimes find myself meandering off into memories about people, places and events from long ago and far away. Those reveries have been part of my prayer life, in a practice I’ve termed “praying the map”—taking cuesMORE...
BOB SITZE has filled the many years of his lifework in diverse settings around the United States. His calling has included careers as a teacher/principal, church musician, writer/author, denominational executive staff member and meat worker. Bob lives in Wheaton, IL.