Category: Rev. Martha’s Blog

Good Morning Church!

What a beautiful spring morning it is! The rain has washed everything clean and the sun is shining through the new leaves on the trees. God’s creation never ceases to amaze us, does it?

I will be away on a retreat this weekend with a wonderful group of friends. I am so looking forward to having a chance to do nothing but enjoy being in that creation and letting its calm and beauty fill me with the presence of God. I plan on breathing deeply and seeking nothing but a renewal of spirit and soul. But I have left you in very good hands while I am away. On Sunday, Rev. Gary Lawrence will be preaching. Gary is an old friend and a newly retired pastor in the United Methodist Church, and I promise you will not want to miss getting to know him and hearing him preach. He is absolutely one of my favorite people! And he will continue in our now favorite book of 1 John. I will be interested to see what he finds there!

Take care and I will see you all next week! I love you and appreciate your giving me this opportunity to get away for a little while. Retreat is crucial to our spiritual growth, and I am looking forward to being in a place where I can do just that!

Love you all!

Rev. Martha

Happy Friday!

Hope you are all well and that your feet are securely connected to the ground…….the April wind is having a great time out there!

But when we get together for worship on Sunday morning, we will be safe and calm……… protected by God’s loving hand, and so glad to be together! Our sermon will be based on I Joyn 3:1-7 as well as one of my very favorite movies, “Tender Mercies”, with Robert Duval and Tess Harper. The movie is the story of a guy named Mac Sledge, a really, really talented country singer who let money and fame and whiskey get the best of him. It is what happened after he hit rock bottom that I want to share with you.  I John tells us that we are “children of God”. And God is showering down tender mercy on us all the time. Sometimes, we are able to recognize it. But most times, we don’t have a clue. John tells us that all things come in good time! I think this is a message we all need to hear!

More →

Greetings Easter People!

I hope you have had a wonderful Easter week, and that you have finished all the left overs from Easter dinner and have found every one of the Easter eggs in your yard! (One year we hid them in the house, and there was one unfound egg…… oh, boy! a week or so later it was not hard to find at all!!)

I have been enjoying seeing all the families walking by our house who are on Spring break – just relaxing and having fun and catching their breath! To rest and renew is so important. The Contemporary English version of the Bible says, “By the seventh day, God had finished all the work he had to do, so he rested.” So should we!

More →

Good Saturday Morning, Whitesburg UMC!

Are y’all ready? We are putting on our shoes and getting prepared to walk into a week that is unlike any other week of the church year: Holy Week. This is the week we literally put all else aside and walk in gratitude and love with Jesus during the last week of his life on earth. It’s a week full of light and darkness. It’s a week full of unbelievable pain at how cruel the world can be as well as unbelievable joy at the depth of the love God has for the world. I want to encourage you to continue with your daily practice of devotional reading and prayer. But I also hope you will be a part of all the church is doing this week as well.

Every church lives out the week differently depending on their traditions and situations.

Here’s what the week looks like for us at Whitesburg:

More →

Greetings, Whitesburg UMC, on this dreary Friday afternoon!

Sunday is St. Patrick’s Day! And no, before you ask……….we won’t be changing the paraments in the Sanctuary from purple to green!!!!!  But feel to wear it! Or not. St. Patrick’s special day is one of those days that is of great importance to some and little or none to others! I know a guy who gathers with his friends every year without fail for food and green beer at their traditional table at the Irish Pub here in town. My niece lives in Savannah and always shares on Facebook the morning mass they attend, the parade news, the pictures of her house filled with guests (it looks like so much fun)! I never had fun like that. But I do remember as a child being told I had to wear green so I wouldn’t get pinched. St. Patrick is cool! It is said he got rid of all the snakes in Ireland. Not sure that’s true, but it is not something just anyone can put on a resume!

More →

Good Friday Morning!

I hope you are all well and are discovering the surprises that this season of Lent can bring when we simply let ourselves be and walk with Jesus each day. Along with “The Sanctuary for Lent”, which is the little devotional book that we all were given a few Sundays ago, I am reading a book called “A Different Kind of Fast”, by Christine Valters Paintner. Instead of inviting me to fast from some of the things I possess (or eat/drink!), she invites me to fast from some of the things I do……usually things that really are not that good for me. For example, for the third week of Lent she has invited me to fast from speed and rushing, and to instead embrace slowness and pausing.

More →

Good Morning, My Friends!

I hope this email finds you safe and dry and warm and full of the knowledge of the deep, deep love that God has for you. As we live in this world that is filled with controversy and anger and violence and division, that lovely fact is one we simply cannot afford to forget. I have spent the morning trying to help a homeless man find a place to sleep tonight. No easy task! Realizing that he is only one – only one out of the millions who are homeless or poor or hungry or in the midst of warfare that has destroyed their homes and their cities, or migrants who are seeking a safe place to live and raise their families……. The list can go on and on. Well, it’s enough to make you want to cry.

More →

Morning Everyone!

Burrrr!!!!  It is cold outside! The wind is blowing and it is (at least right now) a dreary looking day out there. We are still wiping the ashes off our foreheads, knowing that the season in the church called Lent has begun. As I remember, what I told you the other night at the Ash Wednesday service is that we can’t get to Easter without first going through Lent. In order to really, really, really appreciate the gift of Christ, we have to do some serious thinking and some authentic prayer about what had to happen before the empty tomb. If you didn’t get one on Wednesday night, there is a little Lenten Devotional Book waiting for you at the church. I hope you will use it each of the 40 days of Lent to help in your following Jesus to the cross. It is a deep and beautiful journey!

More →

As I sit to write this blog, I am aware that there is a big bolt of bright red fabric on my desk. It is there be-cause Terry Flanders found it in the midst of her spring cleaning. She knew that Pentecost Sunday is coming……and RED is what you do at church on Pentecost Sunday! My mind is going in all different directions. I’m not sure exactly how, I do know that the Sanctuary will be transformed on May 28 to remind us of fire……. and of the very real presence of the Holy Spirit burning in our life together!

More →