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Thoughts about love
“In my old age, I have come to believe that love is not a noun but a verb. An action. Like water, it flows to its own current. If you were to corner it in a dam, true love is so bountiful it would flow over. Even in separation, even in death, it moves and changes. It lives within memory, in the haunting of a touch, the transience of a smell, or the nuance of a sigh. It seeks to leave a trace like a fossil in the sand, a leaf burned into baking asphalt… “I told my daughter, the first time she fell in love, not to hold it too close. Think of...
read moreSupporting the GNOC
His Branches has been partnering with the Gerhardt Neighborhood Outreach Center (GNOC) in Rochester’s northeast quadrant for over 6 years, establishing a satellite clinic there called Joy Family Medicine, and supporting the development of a sister reproductive counseling center called Place of Hope. This spring and summer GNOC is hosting two fundraising events that you might be interested in participating in, a Breakfast at Oak Hill Country Club coming up this month on Friday, June 20, and a Golf Classic at Webster East Golf Course on...
read moreSquare Fair 2014
The 19th Ward Community Association will be hosting its annual Square Fair this coming weekend and the weather promises to be perfect! Festivities start Friday night, June 6th, at 7:00 pm with a Parade from 216 Thurston Road to Chili Avenue to Woodbine Street and ending up at the Square Fair. The Fair itself opens Saturday morning, June 7th, with a Pancake Breakfast at 8:30, followed by Entertainment on an open stage from 9:45 am to 4:30 pm and Vendors from 10:00 am to 5:30 pm. Throughout the day there will be Raffles, Children’s...
read moreAmazing Grace
Reflecting on our Banquet less than two weeks ago – a time of celebration and one of spreading the word of what is being done, what we hope to do and hope to involve others in doing, and how it’s all by God’s Amazing Grace – a friend reminded me of a wonderful speech given by Eric Metaxis at the National Prayer Breakfast a couple years ago. Eric has a powerful testimony of how he came to a living faith, one that sees the world as it is with eyes wide open, and was led to write biographies of two men of God whose lives had a...
read moreA Great Bike Clinic
It was supposed to rain on Saturday, but the Lord heard our prayers (and those of lots of neighborhood kids who wanted their bikes fixed) and sent sunshine streaming down on our Spring Bike Clinic! Dozens of kids, family members, and friends came from all directions in the neighborhood to sign up for our free bike raffle and get their own bikes in shape for the season. Then the wonderful crew of volunteer mechanics from R Community Bikes rolled in with their fully equipped truck, loaded with tools and parts and 15 DONATED BIKES and HELMETS...
read moreNational Day of Prayer
Today a city-wide team of over 100 energized intercessors gathered in downtown Rochester to commemorate the National Day of Prayer and hold up our community and its leaders in concerted prayer. The ceremonies, led by a coalition of local pastoral leaders guided by Bishop David Singleton, spiritual leader of Ark of Jesus Ministries, were opened by the sounding of shofars as the intercessors formed a prayer chain that nearly encircled the County Office Building. It is clear that a prayer momentum is beginning to build for unity in the Body of...
read moreStreams in the desert
Often we encounter tears, sometimes for understandable reasons when something sad happens but sometimes unexpectedly when a particularly happy event takes place. Over the years I’ve come to recognize tears as part of God’s way of refreshing our hearts and making room for healing and restoration. Of course, bitter tears can be shed, a kind of fist-shaking in God’s face – “Why did You let this happen to me” – as if we would be a better judge of how things should happen. This kind only diminishes a...
read moreA Legacy of Love
What could be more amazing than arriving at the tomb and finding it empty, meeting an angel, discovering that the person you thought was dead is really alive and loves you more than you can even imagine? Easter fills us with hope that grows stronger and stronger with each year, each season. Sometimes it seems like winter will never pass and that spring will never come, but then there it is! Warmth and love and life and flowers! It’s far, far deeper and broader and eternally more significant than Easter eggs and baskets and...
read moreEaster Egg Hunt!
Today’s Easter Egg Hunt was one of the best ever! We had wonderful weather, sunny all day and in the mid-50s, and a great turnout. Kids and their parents and older siblings began arriving to line up half an hour in advance, little children first. Big-hearted neighbors, under the lead of Rora Rice, had gathered hundreds of plastic eggs and stuffed them with wholesome candies, collected a couple dozen Easter baskets for the occasion, and then made and put up signs weeks in advance. The crew arrived at noon and “hid” over 500...
read moreWho Was Jesus?
As we meditate on the events of Good Friday, we often wonder Who was this man? Coming from a Western cultural background, our mind fills with images from our childhood of what Jesus might have looked like and how He behaved, often forgetting that He was of humble Middle Eastern background, a young Hebrew man deeply steeped by His own choosing in the teachings, traditions, and worldview of his heritage. What we call the “Last Supper” was really a Passover Seder in which the bread of life was the Aphikoman and the cup was a cup of...
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