Scripps Sundays

In praying about what to send to you for your last Scripps Sunday of the year before you head home for Christmas, this question kept coming to mind, so I got up this morning and wrote this reflection...  What’s the invitation?   I shared this quote from my friend Lilly Lewin when I asked you all to be praying specifically for the trip for the banquet with the kids: “What if we view all of Advent as a series of Invitations from God?... This Advent we have an Invitation to believe-- Invited to believe in the incarnation… Invited to believe that we are not alone… Invited to believe that God is with us… Invited to believe that God sees us as we are and knows our hearts…”   And all, week the question has continued to be at the forefront of my mind in almost every situation—“What’s the invitation?”   When I had a sore throat and runny nose, I was worried that I would get others sick and that it would interfere with my time here in Kenya. I asked myself multiple tim...

This comes from the 5 emails about joy that I received that I told you about when we were running the marathon, and I thought this snippet was perfect for a little study break (and some perspective in the midst of lots of things on your to-do lists)... Look for joy this week!!  The team at NPR’s health and development blog,  Goats and Soda , invited photographers to submit photographs of happiness from around the globe. While there are distinctions to be made between happiness and joy — often summarized as happiness being a temporary experience and joy an abiding state of mind — these photos found on the link below certainly tap into joy and its many manifestations. Allow them to serve as inspiration for your own practice of finding joy in a complicated and challenging world. How Do You Take a Picture of Happiness? Research Highlight In three studies of the relationship between joy and gratitude, research revealed that joy and gratitude have a reciprocal relationship. “Not onl...