In 1990, Gordon Cosby, Founder and Pastor of the Church of the Saviour, preached a sermon titled,”How Much Is Enough?”* I remembered it as I was doing some research for this article, but in my mind, the title had morphed to “How Much Do I Need?” So I went back to that sermon to see if my mind was playing tricks on me, and found he listed three areas of connectedness that he felt changes our   [Read More …]

Over 2,000 verses in the Bible wake us up to issues of poverty and justice. How we respond to them is our option and our responsibility. The start of a new year is the perfect time to discover the magic of gifts that keep on giving and to ask, “What need really speaks to my heart?” It is also the perfect time to plan your giving for 2018. We’re avoiding the term RESOLUTION here as over the   [Read More …]

There is no way any of our gifts could compare to the gifts God has given all of us – the gift of life, the gift of an incredibly beautiful, magical, mystical world, and most of us, the gift of his son Jesus Christ. But each of us – you and I and everyone else - can give gifts that keep on giving the way God’s gifts to us do. What are these gifts that keep on giving?   Some are donations made   [Read More …]

My father hoped to do well enough to provide a comfortable life for his family and to enjoy a measure of prestige in the process, but it wasn’t to be. This is his story and mine - the story our family lived. After serving 20 years in the Air Force as a B52 bomber pilot, he failed an eye exam that kept him from becoming a commercial pilot for Eastern Airlines. As a result, all the prestige of   [Read More …]

Where were you when hurricane winds devastated the entire island of Puerto Rico, significant sections of Houston, Texas and portions of Florida south from Miami through the Keys? Did you watch in horror as wildfires swept through the wine country north of San Francisco, leaving behind an unrecognizable barren path of ashes where thousands of homes and businesses once stood? This year, more than   [Read More …]

In an ideal world no one would go hungry because everyone would have enough to eat, no one would get sick because their drinking water was contaminated, and no one would die from exposure to heat or to cold.  Yesterday the long-awaited Republican tax plan was revealed and, as expected, it favors businesses and the wealthy. MSN reported that, not surprisingly, it “contradicted Trump’s rhetoric   [Read More …]

These days it seems like the homeless are everywhere: camping in our parks, living beneath bridges, sleeping over sidewalk grates on cold winter nights, and rummaging through garbage cans on city streets. How many of us look at them and wonder whether they are really homeless or professional beggars. It is hard, really hard, to see them as individuals whose needs mirror ours. Esther Elizabeth   [Read More …]