My Father always said I had the memory of an elephant–a dead one. It’s true I don’t remember things well. I read a great deal, but I don’t remember a lot of what I read. A few years ago my sister gave me a small journal and I began writing down things I read that struck me as interesting. I wish I had done that many years ago. From time to time I go through the journal and think about the quotations there. Sometimes that’s where an idea for a blog comes from. I commend this to people as a spiritual practice.

Here’s the most recent quote by the Alice in Wonderland author Lewis Carroll (The Rev. Charles L. Dodgson in real life). “Would it be so very irreverent to let your child have a storybook to read during the sermon?” It seems to me good advice because most little kids don’t get much out of the torrent of words that makes up a sermon. It’s not that there’s something wrong with the sermon, at least not the ones we hear at Joy, it’s just that children have short attention spans and they can’t digest the churchy vocabulary that isn’t used anywhere else.

That says something about how we share the Christian faith with others. It needs to be simple, plain language, a sharing of our own personal experience. How has Christ made a difference in my life? What story can I tell that illustrates that? If story telling works for kids, it probably works for adults as well.

Read Psalm 66:16 and remember: God loves YOU unconditionally.

Wayne