Pastor Brian's Blog

Where do you find hope?  It is easy to be hopeful when everything seems right.  But where do you find hope when you lose a job, receive a discouraging diagnosis, become alienated from a friend or family member, or feel disillusioned by current events.  When life seems out of control, it is harder to maintain hope.  The term for life without hope is despair.  As American poet Wendell Berry writes: It is hard to have hope. It is harder as you grow old, for hope must not depend on feeling good. 1 Often, we assume that hope is an inward feeling.  In the absence of a hopeful feeling, we might sink into despair.  For Thomas Aquinas, hope is not a feeling but more like an impulse.  He speaks of a “natural hope” that surges in a dog when a rabbit races by. 2   The dog chases the rabbit, hoping to catch it.  In this way, hope is not so much something we merely feel but something that moves us to action.  Hope is our mot...

Life is short and filled with anxiety and sadness.  We can navigate our existential uneasiness, however, by acknowledging our pains and letting them be transformed into joy through Christ who is reaching out to us in love.  In September, Pastor Brian will begin a new 3-week series called “Reaching Out.”  Based on the wisdom of Henri Nouwen, the series involves three spiritual movements: (1) from relevance to prayer; (2) from popularity to ministry; and (3) from leading to being led.  The tools that help us through these movements are contemplative prayer, confession and forgiveness, and discernment.  Nouwen might summarize this series in his own words: “We do not have to deny or avoid our loneliness, our hostilities, and illusions.  To the contrary: When we have the courage to let these realities come to our full attention, understand them and confess them, then they can slowly be converted into solitude, hospitality, and prayer…Transformed in l...