By Janice Love

• Marvelous Things by Janice Love (12/20/2016)
  ... it, but can’t help thinking to myself, <em>how could you ever be?</em> Last year, gravitational waves were detected from an event that happened over a billion years ago, long before humans even existed on the Earth. Two black holes, each much heavier than our sun, collided, causing the waves. Before they dramatically merged, these two black holes were orbiting each other 100 times per second...
• Declare How Much God has Done for You by Janice Love (6/20/2013)
  ...g visit to my sister’s on the Saskatchewan prairies holds the promise of a visit to their cabin with boating, tubing, skiing and skipping stones on the to do list – unlike our last visit when our son learned to sandbag for the first time as his uncle and cousins sought to keep the lake water from drowning the cabin. This last image of flooding and water out of control, unfortunately a prominent...
• Do You Love Me? by Janice Love (4/11/2013)
  ...r continued bafflement speaks volumes to the shock of what has taken place. Thousands of years later the ripples of that decisive Act of God can continue to confound us; the church is still in need of this gift of time to yearly reorient ourselves to what God is up to. Unexpected, startling, the Resurrection of Jesus has left the disciples at loose ends, unsure of what the implications are and ...
• Rejoice in the Truth by Janice Love (1/31/2013)
  ... Isaiah in his home congregation to announce the arrival of God’s jubilee and of God’s Messiah. All eyes are on him now as he launches into his ministry. We have this Sunday only to contemplate what Jesus is up to in this part of his ministry before we leap ahead five chapters and a few years to the Transfiguration, Ash Wednesday and the preparation of Lent for the Paschal and Resurrection. This y...
• So It Is To Be. Amen. by Janice Love (11/21/2012)
  ...to Jeremiah, Isaiah sings to God that he will not be afraid. Jesus says it the most - to his disciples and to those he heals. I remember once making this claim to a group of youth I was training (a more accurate translation of the Greek word <em>didache</em>, one of the ancient marks of the church, than “teaching”). One of them looked at me incredulously and wondered, honestly, if that was ev...
• Rebuked by Janice Love (9/15/2012)
  ...to find himself debating with a Gentile woman, who is seeking healing for her daughter, and opening the hearing and speaking of a Greek man. A Jesus surprised about the direction his mission is taking may not be what we are used to envisioning. We get yelled at this week. Yelled at by both Wisdom and Jesus. In public.<!--more--> After setting the stage at the beginning of Proverbs with t...
• Amazing Jesus by Janice Love (7/4/2012)
  ... pleasant weather.<!--more--> Already here in just the 6th chapter, however, Jesus, stepping onto the stage fully grown, has been baptized, called his disciples, been proclaiming the good news and teaching with authority, exorcising unclean spirits, healing the sick and the lame, stated his lordship over the Sabbath, redefined his family, calmed the sea and the wind, raised a child from the ...
• And So We Speak by Janice Love (6/8/2012)
  ...ek, Easter and Pentecost. In the light of our travel once again around the life of the Son that gives us life, we pick up the continuous reading through of our Scriptures. And we find Paul speaking.<!--more--> Paul speaks the truth – the truth of his and our vulnerability. We are wasting away: our bodies, our buildings, the work of our hands, the dream of a church according to our cons...
• "My Lord and My God" by Janice Love (4/12/2012)
  ...rom the practice of requiring men to cover their clothed genitals with their hand as they swore that what they were about to say was “the whole truth and nothing but the truth”. The implication being that they were staking their own future generations on their testimony. This was in the times when only males were considered as witnesses. Ed suggests that witness may be, therefore, the better wo...
• The Holy One of God by Janice Love (1/25/2012)
  ...son of Epiphany in the first chapter of Mark’s gospel. For a gospel that is very much about being on the move – forty times in sixteen chapters the Greek word for immediately/at once/then occurs – this seems counterintuitive. It is not, though, if we consider that Epiphany is the season for the church to try and get its head and heart and life around just who Jesus is and what is the good news...
• Lamb and Shepherd: The Feast of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe by Janice Love (11/17/2011)
  ...year olds (yes, at forty-six my nickname is “the kid”). I try not to look at the poster as it gets my goat, blithely proclaiming that the destination matters not, only the journey is important. Except, of course, the destination in large part determines the journey and without a destination the journey can get pretty lost and chaotic. This coming Sunday, Reign of Christ or Christ the King Sunday, ...
• The Reckoning by Janice Love (9/6/2011)
  ...ey would survive the experience to return to their families. It is this same risk we undertake when we host scripture, actually seeking to encounter a Word from the God whose fury can consume like stubble, whose answer to our “Here I am” will not leave us untransformed. And so we come to the collision of these texts with this time, just over half way through the season after Pentecost, when the ...
• Here I Am by Janice Love (6/20/2011)
  ... story I have skirted somewhat with my almost 8 year old son.  Maybe because it hits a little too close to home, he being a long awaited (13 years) child.  How do I tell him of a God who demands of Abraham the sacrifice of his beloved son, Isaac, as a way to test him?  <!--more-->Ah, perhaps there is the rub – the sovereignty of this God we worship who can and will demand, command and test.  Now, ...
• Followers by Janice Love (5/10/2011)
  ... the early church, after the disciples’ baptism in the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and Peter’s surprisingly fearless sermon, is certainly a rosy one.  Where is this church, because I want to go there?!<!--more--> Perhaps Paul’s account of the struggles at the church in Corinth better match our own experience of the church in North America. Paul’s eloquence in his reflections on the cross of Christ...
• Being Born From Above by Janice Love (3/15/2011)
  ...eligious.”<!--more--> It goes against our instinct though, as dying does, to blindly go as an individual or as a church where God might send us.  Especially in a culture that likes to encourage careful decision making, planning, saving for retirement (okay, yes, I am an instinctual planner that likes to have some sense of control, which is why I don’t like to fly in airplanes where I can’t even...
• Repent: The Kingdom Is Near by Janice Love (1/20/2011)
  ...-9</a>, <a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=162524897">I Corinthians 1:10-18</a>, <a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=162524922">Matthew 4:12-23</a> Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.    ~Matthew 4:17b And so it begins.  The history of the world shifts, never to be the same again.  For over ten years now I have had the joy of being part of the Christian Seasons calendar te...
• The Son of Man Is Coming by Janice Love (11/28/2010)
  ...?ql=157909641">Romans 13: 11-14</a>, <a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=157909707">Matthew 24: 36-44</a> And so we begin the waiting…again.  Paul writes, “For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near.”  We are two thousand years nearer now and still we wait, surrounded yet by too much night.  My husband likes to take the time to talk ...
• Humble Pie* by Janice Love (10/20/2010)
  ...http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=154616618">16-18</a>, <a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=154616639">Luke 18: 9-14</a> About 15 years ago my husband and I began to notice a disturbing trend in the denomination in which we were both raised – the practice of eliminating the prayer of confession from the worship service, essentially making confession a non-practice. The reasons seemed to be caught up...
• Consecrated by Janice Love (8/18/2010)
  ...49132335">Hebrews 12: 18-29</a>, <a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=149132358">Luke 13: 10-17</a> God is on the move in the texts for this coming Sunday. In Jeremiah we find God calling, commanding, reassuring. In Hebrews there is a whole lot of shaking going on, “so that what cannot be shaken may remain.” Luke finds Jesus healing and shaming. We are about half way through the longest sea...
• Zealous for the Lord by Janice Love (6/16/2010)
  ...rg/?ql=143658627">Galatians 3:23-29</a>, <a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=143658660">Luke 8:26-39</a></div> I admit to admiration for Elijah’s zeal for the LORD, though perhaps not always for his methods. His dedication to Yahweh is absolute. He is on the run for his life now because of it, feeling alone and exhausted; tired of the compromises with idols, evil and the powers that be which Isr...
• Celebrate! by Janice Love (3/9/2010)
  ...h’s sculpture, “The Return of the Prodigal.” (pictured*) It has led me to contemplate not only the joy of heaven over one sinner who repents but also the suffering of God over the lost, the dead, the unrepentant. Perhaps it is parents who best glimpse this pain as we ache, grieve and pray for our children, at times tempted to shout out, as in Psalm 32, “Do not be like a horse or a mule, withou...
• The Word Read by Janice Love (1/19/2010)
  ...use they may at first be sweet as honey, but later bitter to the point of making us want to try to pitch Christ off the nearest cliff. We have such rich texts to host this week in anticipation of Sunday’s liturgy. In the middle of Nehemiah, which can sometimes read like a campaign for re-election, sits this gem, chapter 8. There has been a great build up, literally, to this point. Nehemiah, ma...