On Sunday 11/5, we welcomed Jennifer Helriggle, Vice President of Philanthropy for Shepherd's Hope to receive the 2017 Hope Prize.

For the third year, Hope gave 1/10 of July donations to a non-profit selected by the congregation. Throughout July we received nominations for a health & wellness nonprofit (in keeping with our 2017 focus on health & wellness) to receive the Hope Prize. During the first three weeks of August, all ages within the Hope family voted for the recipient.

Shepherd's Hope operates five clinics throughout Greater Orlando, in which medical professionals volunteer to provide exceptional health care to the under-insured.

Thank you, Shepherd's Hope, for your extraordinary work. Thank you, Hopesters, for seeing the need of the world around you and giving generously!

For our fourth annual VBS on 7/27, leaders taught us the theme verse, "Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God" (1 Corinthians 10.31). It's actually a life verse for me -- and a great lesson for Christ-followers of all ages.

The modern era taught us, erroneously, to compartmentalize our spiritual lives -- to think of faith as a Sunday morning exercise. It's my passion to help all of us realize that everything we do -- from worship and study and spiritual practices to playing, laughing, singing, listening, showing kindness, and pursuing our vocation --  is unto God. 

What a great lesson for the youngest Hopesters to grasp during their student years. It will serve them well throughout life.

So what are you doing for Jesus' sake, my friends? In a very real sense, the answer is "Everything we do!"

Just after Easter we heard from Debbie Scott-Robinson and her husband Paul, who spoke about Utange Orphans Charity and the way it meets concrete needs in Kenya.

Debbie & Paul established the orphanage 10 years ago. It houses 24 parent-less children -- but as many as 500 other orphaned children have been taken in by community members. With scarce resources, these poor-themselves neighbors often can only feed a needy orphan every few days, Debbie says. So the Robinsons launched Feed500, which provides a meal for orphans each Saturday and sends them home with a bag of maize to share with the family that's caring for them -- so they can all have something to eat during the week.

Each Saturday in Utange, 500 orphans walk to the Action Centre for the meal, cooked for them by local volunteers.  It takes some of them over an hour to get there. Some of them are just toddlers and some of the children are carrying babies not yet able to walk.

Approximately $7.50 will feed one orphaned child for an entire month, Debbie and Paul told us. We're inviting Hopesters and friends to consider giving an extra $7.50 in May and designating it "For Kenya." We'll forward our combined gift to care for these precious ones in early June.

Find more info at http://utangeorphans.org/Groups/249674/Utange_Orphans.aspx

Friends, for less than the cost of two lattes, we can change a life. Let's live like we get it!

Each year since we launched in 2012, Hope has offered Lenten Communities -- short-term electives designed to help us grow deeper with God and others. At least one of these offerings is always a "Virtual" community -- allowing participants to accommodate their unique schedules while connecting in a digital community for growth and accountability.

In 2017, our digital offering will be "Journey Through the Psalms" -- reading all 150 Psalms during the 40 days of Lent. Those who sign up will receive a brief introductory email on the Sunday prior that includes a link to the week's digital community bulletin board. Non-threatening questions offer readers a chance to reflect and engage each other.

In addition, we offer a book club with two face-to-face gatherings on America's Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege & the Bridge to a New America by Jim Wallis. We'll read on our own -- then gather with friends from Washington Shores Presbyterian at WSPC on Sundays 3/19 and 4/2 from 2-3:30 pm. We'll take pre-orders for a box lunch from Honeybaked Ham if Hopesters are interested (the WSPC folks will just be exiting church). In our first gathering, we'll address Chapters 1-5; on 4/2 we'll discuss Chapters 6-10. We have several copies of the book available at 50 percent off ($11 each).

Sign up at church or email Nancy at hopenona@gmail.com.

This week our staff signed and mailed the 2016 Hope Christmas cards, with designs submitted by members of the Hope family.

How fun to share these images and all they represent -- most notably the unique contribution each person can make to God's Kingdom. These designs include:

• Cupcake Nativity -- the Frosting-By-Numbers extravaganza created by people of Hope with art direction by Jillian Strogis
  
• Family Time -- a drawing by 7-year-old Gustavo
  
• Christmas Tree -- art from the archives of Lauren Kamperman
  
• Christmas Word Art -- designed by Tammy Strogis
  

The envelopes bear the postmark of Christmas, Florida. There may be a reward from "The Amazing Treasure Chest of Mostly Useful Prizes" for  observant recipients!

This year we'll also use extra copies of the Cupcake Nativity to acknowledge gifts toward the purchase of a $1,500 Village Garden Well through the Presbyterian Mission Agency. (Those who contribute a gift in honor or memory of another may take one of these cards and enclose a note describing the designation.) What a great way to share the vision of our congregation -- showcasing both our deep commitment to serve others and our overarching sense of fun!

Merry Christmas, All! It's such a privilege to be on this journey with you ... to serve with whole-heartedness and have fun to boot!

Scripture calls us to pray for one another and most of us, at least, are well-intentioned about it. We may especially offer prayers if we're aware of a crisis or sense a nudging from the Holy Spirit. Yet -- because we're human -- we may neglect non-pressing intercession when we're distracted by the swirl of our own lives.

This Fall, we're offering a simple tool to help you fulfill your call to pray for others ... and it's even kind of fun. We've created zip-lock 'prayer packs' that include the names of every household currently active at Hope (and a few listed on our rolls who must work on Sundays).

The idea? Draw one name each morning and, throughout the day, offer prayers for that person or family. If you know a specific need, pray it. If you don't know the person or any specifics, offer general prayers of blessing (health, wisdom, guidance, hope, provision, the awareness of God's love for them), biblical prayers like Ephesians 3.16-19 or Colossians 1.9-12, or silently hold their names before God and voice prayers if or as you feel prompted.

At my house, I've claimed an old metal candy box and inserted a cardboard divider in it. I've placed the slips face-down on one side. When I randomly draw one, I place it face-up on the other side. This way I can re-use the slips next quarter. Early next year we'll add the names of new regulars.

What a privilege to pray and know others are praying for us, too!  #HaveFunDoGood #LiveYourCalling

This Fall our congregation will engage several out-of-the-ordinary practices that will lift us out of our usual routine -- but which dovetail perfectly with our larger vision.

On Sunday 9/18, we'll conduct our 4th annual Day of Service -- offering worship through serving our community in lieu of our regular worship format. We'll serve at the Ride-4-Ronald, supporting Lake Nona's new Ronald McDonald House, and probably also at Lake Nona Middle School.

On Sunday 10/2, we'll travel to Washington Shores Presbyterian, not far from Camping World Stadium to celebrate World Communion Sunday. Washington Shores is the only predominantly African-American church in Central Florida Presbytery -- and leaders from our congregations hope to foster ongoing friendships through shared activities. During the last couple years, racial tensions have heightened nationally due to several high profile tragedies. Erika Rembert Smith, pastor at Washington Shores, the WSPC session, and Hope's leadership team agree that forming multi-racial friendships is an important step to model a better way in the world.

We hope to launch this new partnership with shared worship at 11 am, followed at 12:30 pm by dinner on the grounds. At a later date, members of WSPC will worship at Hope -- and we plan a shared study of issues concerning faith and race.

Though these plans mean we will not be seated together in the middle school cafeteria on these two occasions, we'll be worshiping together in ways that fulfill our call as a community of peace, justice and service.

This powerful meme circulates from time to time: "The holocaust was legal. Slavery was legal. Segregation was legal. If you use the state as a metric for ethics, you're going to have a bad time."

It's a sobering reminder that we must be vigilant to examine the status quo -- even when it's enshrined in law. 

Today most of us shudder to think that Rosa Parks (pictured above) would be expected, even legally required, to forfeit her seat on public transportation to an able-bodied man just because he was white and she wasn't. Such an expectation offends our sensibilities. It's just not right!  But in 1955, predominant culture proclaimed, "That's the way it is. Things can't be changed. Follow along or .... be arrested ... be vilified ... promote scandal ... ruin life for everyone else ... destroy the fabric of society...." You get the idea.

As Christ-followers, we must recognize the biblical call for the community to care for the vulnerable:  the widow, the orphan, the alien, the poor. In Luke 4.18-19, Jesus publicly lays out his own mission statement "to proclaim good news to the poor ... to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Read that slowly. Jesus' God-breathed mission focused on bringing help and hope to the vulnerable. It remains a call to all of us who follow him.

If law or cultural practice excludes people, deprives some persons of rights or power or dehumanizes a subset of the community, we Christ-followers can and must call it into question. Not convinced? Feeling sure we must "defend" or hold others to a biblical standard at all costs? Re-read the Gospels. When someone's life or practice varies from a biblical standard (say, an adulteress; tax collector; a leper; a demon-possessed person; people of other faiths like the Samaritans), how do the Pharisees, the ardently religious people of Jesus' day, respond to that person? How does Jesus respond to that person?

And just who should we try to emulate? Friends, let's live like we get it.

On Tuesday 6/28 a group of Hopesters & friends gathered for the "Beautiful Together: A Journey Toward Hope" concert at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts. What an amazing evening.

More than 50 Orlando arts groups joined forces to perform dance, readings, poems and songs in tribute to the men and women slain 6/12 in the Pulse nightclub massacre. Proceeds benefited the OneOrlando fund, supporting victims and families of the shooting that left 49 dead and 53 wounded.

Before and afterwards concert-goers roamed the memorials outside the Dr. Phillips Center,  which were surrounded by members of the Angel Wing Project -- "winged" volunteers who in the days following the mass shooting assembled outside the funerals of victims to protect family members from anti-gay protestors. They have performed ministry. 

If you have done it to the least of these, you have done it unto me. ~ Jesus, Matthew 25.40

The evening was a lovely reminder for The City Beautiful that we are Beautiful Together.

Recently I stumbled on this photo from the finish line at Run Nona 2011. Just 10 weeks before we formally launched Hope Pres, the camera caught Tammy Strogis, our future Director of Children's Ministry, and me as we shifted gears for the final stretch.

Some time after this event, I tossed the race bib -- only to realize later, when shuffling some paperwork, that my race number had serendipitously been 516. Five-sixteen. As in Matthew 5.16: "Let your light so shine before others that they will see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven." As in: one of the three framing verses for our neophyte congregation! I ordered a copy of the photo to celebrate God's lovely affirmation.

Last month, for the entirety of 5/16, we urged each other to "Shine 5/16" -- to live in a way that causes others to pay attention and look beyond us to the One who claims us. We extended five Marlow "Help Your Neighbor" Grants in May, too ... allowing Hope to partner with our personal on-the-ground efforts. Well done, team! Though 5/16 as a month/year designation won't recur for another century, we can live it every day. Friends, let's live like we get it!

Last week, 12 women from the Hope family met for an evening of color and light at Painting with a Twist in Winter Park.

Our own Sarah Allen, a professional artist, led our class -- teaching a roomful of novices how to engage a blank canvas without fear. Several people who've seen images like this one note that while we painted the same object with the same instruction & same color palette, each of our "Dawn of a New Day" paintings was distinctive.

For me, this became a lovely metaphor for following Jesus Christ. Each Christ-follower looks to the same model -- our leader, Jesus -- who shows us how to engage the world with grace ... colored by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. And while an observer should quickly recognize the pattern we're following, God uses our individual personalities, gifts and weaknesses to shape these efforts into a unique offering for the world. 

Thanks be to the creative God, who allows us to bring our own flair to his good and beautiful purpose! 

Each week before worship the team who arrives early to set up the space (chairs, banners, sound system, welcome & communion tables, hospitality, etc.) circles up to pray.

Typically we pray for God's Spirit to move in the lives of all who enter .... for God to draw people all over Lake Nona to himself -- leading them to grow in our church or in any of the other fine faith communities here .... for all who attend or serve during the week at Lake Nona Middle School .... for God's faithful presence amid chaotic circumstances.

This past Sunday, Charlene -- one of our faithful set-up team members -- quietly stepped from the circle to snap this picture. I love what it accurately communicates about this particular faith community. Hope Pres seems like a snapshot of the world: diverse in age, ethnicity, and faith heritage.  My favorite part of this photo is the hands. Look closely. Absorb what this communicates about following Jesus. Here. Now. In years ahead.

Look, friends. Believe. Live into it.

In support of our denomination's 1001 New Worshiping Communities movement, for the last two years I've helped interview candidates for 1001 apprenticeships. These experiences occur in different contexts across the country and include summer-long, nine month or one year formats. They're designed to help new leaders explore fresh expressions of the Church alongside a cohort of fellow adventurers, mentors and coaches. 

I feel so enriched by this experience: hearing the faith journey and dreams of Spirit-nudged entrepreneurs. These leaders are a microcosm of our changing world: diverse in ethnicity, denominational heritage, gender, age, you name it ... But consistently, they are women and men who love Jesus and want to follow him faithfully as they love and welcome others.

New worshiping communities ... without walls ... serving the least, the last and the lost ... building bridges of peace among people of different faiths or no faith ... leaving the familiar to meet people where they are.

Friends, God is doing a New Thing, and he's raising up men and women to give it skin. It makes my heart beat faster ... and it gives me hope for the church and the world. Thanks be to God.

Throughout April, we're hosting a Haiku Charity Contest -- tapping into this simple structure of language to express the delight, challenge, humor and call of creation care and faith.

Originated in Japan, haiku poetry features three short lines of 5 syllables, 7 syllables and 5 syllables. Here are two examples:

Only seventeen
syllables form the canvas
A paintbrush of words

Whose idea was this?
Can you really share your heart
in three little lines?

Through the end of the month, submit haikus at church with themes of Earth Care, Earth Beauty, Earth Stewardship (hey, it's Earth Day/Month!)  or Life at Hope Presbyterian (hey, it's us!). We'll have a category for children elementary school age or younger, and we'll award selections from The Amazing Treasure Chest of Mostly Useful Prizes to category winners. The overall winner may designate $30 to the approved charity of choice (we have a fluid list of more than 200 approved charities and we're open to new ones). So ...

Click off your remote
Mull ideas and grab paper
Show us what you've got

Tap your creative juices. Express yourself. Let's #DoGoodHaveFun!
 

This will likely be our last shared sunrise service under the arms of the giant oak in St. Cloud. The congregation of St. Cloud Pres has received an offer on the property and, if the way be clear, will sell it in the next few months.

We've met the community under this oak each Easter morning since 2011 -- even before Hope officially launched public worship.  Rev. Steve Graves, then the pastor at SCPC, invited me to preach as a way of introducing our soon-coming congregation to the Narcoossee Corridor. It's been a lovely partnership.

The St. Cloud congregation calls it "The Tree of Life." And, like life, it's stood sentinel over many changes in the wider community -- and even among those who've gathered beneath its leafy branches to celebrate the Lord's resurrection. The road has expanded; shopping plazas and gas stations have popped up near its closest intersection. Pastors and other leaders have come and gone; so have congregation members. And still it raises its arms to God.

On Sunday 3/27, we'll meet there again. Worship begins at 6:30 am, when the skies are still dark. And as light breaks through the limbs of The Tree of Life, we will celebrate the One who conquers death ... who speaks life and possibility into the land of despair and finality. What a Savior! Thanks be to God!

This week we've experimented with prayers at the Twilight Hour -- Vespers (Latin for "evening") -- and I've tried intentionally to watch for the changing light. To the point of setting an alarm that sings a welcoming chorus so I won't skate right past the coming of night.

Reflecting on blessings (or blessing unfinished business with a promise to return) and offering these reflections in gratitude to God has been quieting ... hope-inducing. I've especially embraced the idea of a ritual to mark the shift from workday to evening. This week, I've lighted a candle to symbolize that. The aesthetic draw to a dancing light and the incense of its aroma seems to help me make an internal transition.

St. John of the Cross said, "In the twilight of life, God will not judge us on our earthly possessions and human success, but rather on how much we have loved." How well have I loved this day?

I close each twilight experiment with a quote from Psalm 34.1-2, 5a: "I will bless the LORD at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul makes its boast in the LORD ... We look to you ... and so we shine."  Lord, I look to you. Shine through me; shine through us.

I snapped this photo three years ago, sitting at a breakfast booth in downtown Atlanta on the morning of our niece's wedding.

This image flashes across layers of my mind, with close-up color and distant monochrome ... the hard-to-read immediate and an easier-to-decipher distance.

Hidden at left, across the empty street, are two emblems of my alma mater, Georgia State University. Three degrees ago, my days at Georgia State are a blur of busy-ness -- carrying 15 hours of classes while at the same time (by the end) working up to 60 hours a week at multiple jobs. And remaining very active in my little home church. And maintaining friendships. And dating a bit. 

I carried a lot of great experience from GSU, which was then exclusively a commuter university. Studying journalism in downtown Atlanta, students shadowed journalists with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and covered Atlanta police beats, sports teams and courts. In that pre-internet era, though, college friendships were often transient: I'd laugh and ponder all quarter with an intelligent, hilarious, thoughtful classmate then never see him or her again. It can be like that at a commuter college, when students may require a shift to night classes or an indefinite break from school to work -- and you each live one hour away, in opposite directions, from campus. Oh, well. Keep working.

As a result of that crazy busy schedule and the ebb-and-flow of commuter college life, I lost touch with most of my college buddies.

Then ... last week ... an email appeared in my inbox. The sender: the first friend I made in my first college class -- and one of my three most treasured college buds. This friend's name is Lowell Alexander and our 18-year-old selves learned very quickly that we had a boatload of mutual friends and a shared faith in Jesus Christ. We took several core classes together -- some by accident and most by design ... English, Algebra (two different classes, as I recall), Music Appreciation. Probably more.

But I was a journalism major and Lowell a music major -- and a very gifted songwriter and piano player. Our paths forked. We kept in touch for a little while, but he married and moved to Nashville as a staff writer for Sony, Warner and then EMI and I pursued the journalism/ministry paths. Yet I've never forgotten this humble and hilarious friend.

Six weeks ago, one of our mutual friends died suddenly from a short and fierce cancer battle. As he perused the condolence page, he spotted my name and contact info and he reached out. On Monday, we spent an hour on the phone, catching up. He is still the same kind man I remember -- gifted musician and happy husband, dad, son and brother.

We hope to connect next year when his family ventures to Orlando. What's fascinating: Though we hadn't spoken in about 30 years, we both hold specific, vivid memories of the other -- and we both recall the other as a great encourager in life and faith.

I've been buoyed in the days since by friendship reclaimed. And I'm reminded that, despite the monochrome veil of memory, many colorful people have graced our lives ... and we are richer, deeper, more colorful because of it.

[Jesus] also said, "The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come." ~ Mark 4.26-29 (emphasis mine)

In a thoughtful exercise of lectio divina (sacred reading) Sunday morning, a small group listened for God's word to us from this text. I was struck by the phrase, "he does not know how." Someone, presumably a farmer, scatters seed .... Nights and days pass .... The earth spins on its axis ... The man sleeps and rises .... Life continues as normal .... Presumably no one on earth knows better than this someone what's required for this seed in this piece of ground in this season. Likely no one cares more about its success.

But many things lie beyond the someone's capacity. The man can only do his part. Meanwhile, in the hidden places, God is doing the work this someone cannot. This is where life occurs!

This exercise + Sunday's lovely contemplative Taize worship (with wonderful guest musicians) underscore the theme of our 2-week MidMorning Prayer experiment.

• Plant ... and trust God (text)
• Listen ... don't be busy (Taize)
• Pause from work ... and invite God (MidMorning Prayer).

In short, I can easily grow distracted and restless ... working, relying primarily on action ... erroneously imagining responsibility for what is God's in the first and final place. MidMorning Prayer is, at a certain level, a call to humility -- to recognize that like the 'someone,' I do what I'm called to do and can ... and that God brings life. First to the seed and also to me. Trust God.

"Let your loveliness shine on us, and bless the work we do, bless the work of our hands.”
                                                                                                   ~ Psalm 90.17, Benedictine prayer book

A vintage globe that prominently features the Soviet Union ... an award-winning book I now own on Kindle ... These are a couple items you'll find on the table this Sunday 2/28 at Hope's first, ever-so-small Free to a Good Home Sale.

So, you're thinking, "How does Nancy not know that 'Free' and 'Sale' don't belong in the same sentence?" 

Here's the key: Everything you'll find on the table is free .... Take it; it's yours .... Really .... Take everything on the table if you want .... No obligation.  And, if you'd like, you may make a gift to the church's Hope Scholars fund in the basket on the table. The fund underwrites modest, equal-value college scholarships for in-house applicants and one senior at Orlando's  at-risk Oak Ridge High School. Since we launched Hope Scholars in 2012, we've given 16 college scholarships totaling, $10,480.

Participants may bring items for the Free to a Good Home Sale any Sunday til Easter, 3/27. If you contribute pieces, please take or arrange to share your unclaimed items with a charity thrift store. See Marcy, Tammy, Suzanne or me if you have questions.

So: You can take items without giving any money at all; you can make a donation without claiming any items from the pile (though surely every home needs a globe featuring the USSR!); or you can do both -- give an old globe (or book or bracelet) a new home and make a donation. No one will follow you out the door or whine that you took things and didn't make a donation. It's free. That's how grace works!

I've never considered myself a morning person. And though I long-ago considered myself a night person, the first two weeks of Hope's experiment with Praying the Hours are the two forms that most challenge me: Week 1 of The Night Watch/Vigils and Week 2 of The Awakening Hour/Dawn.

For six nights I rose at 1 am -- during the midnight to dawn window of The Night Watch -- to present myself before God and, in some mystical way, bodily pray solidarity with those who face real or metaphorical darkness. At least once I fended off deep resistance when the 'Dawn Chorus' alarm quietly sounded at 1 am -- shuffling into the next room so as not to disturb Paul. At the start of each Vigil I lit a candle and, illuminated only by its flickering light, I read a Psalm text and entered a brief liturgy, closing with prayer. Often I wordlessly held the names and faces of those I knew to be suffering: a friend who sat through the night by his mother's hospice bed; another friend awaiting surgery; nameless others enduring violence and war. Somehow my wakefulness became a prayer .... and I felt drawn nearer to The One Who Keeps Watch Always.

In this second week of rising to welcome the day, I've actually risen before the alarm -- cradling a mug of hot tea as I face the eastern sky. "Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you ..." (Psalm 143.8). I've slowly moved away from structure and quietly embraced the fresh canvas of God's new day -- listening to a quiet chorus of birds from North, South, East and West of me. On Wednesday, I opened the scriptures just after sunrise to my bookmark in Romans. Here is what I read (in The Message version): "But make sure that you don't get so absorbed and exhausted in taking care of all your day-by-day obligations that you lose track of the time and doze off, oblivious to God. The night is about over, dawn is about to break. Be up and awake to what God is doing!" (Romans 13.11-12, my italics). This text fell in the midst of my New Testament reading -- and I couldn't help but smile. Welcome, God! Join me in the journey of this day.