Well friends, we've made it to Advent once again. One of my most vivid childhood memories of this season is gathering with other children at the front of the church lighting an Advent wreath. In this tradition, each week of Advent, we would light one of five candles — three purple, one pink, and one … Continue reading An Apocalypse of Presence: A Reflection for Advent 1, 2020
Today we come to the end of this series on eight movements of faithful growth with this reflection on the movement toward accountability. I have to admit that I'm grateful this is the last piece of the framework. It is a helpful place for the series to end since accountability ties the other seven movements … Continue reading The Movement toward Accountability
One of the recurring themes so far in this series on eight movements of faithful growth (a framework suggested by Wilkie Au and Noreen Cannon Au in their wonderful book The Discerning Heart) has been the need to ask how the specific kinds of growth we've been talking about are about faith. The post on … Continue reading The Movement toward Trust in God’s Faithfulness
Today is the last Sunday before Advent, and therefore the final Sunday of the Western Christian calendar, known as Christ the King, or Reign of Christ Sunday. It's fitting that the Church sets apart this day of endings and beginnings — the fulfillment and fruition of the whole year from Christmas, Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost … Continue reading The King’s Justice
Today's topic in this series on movements of growth is a controversial one. It is "the movement toward trust in oneself." A lot of you won't find this surprising at all; we talk a lot in our culture about trusting ourselves, trusting our gut or intuition, and so on. But others of you — especially … Continue reading The Movement toward Trust in Oneself
Matthew Root 