03/27/2023 - Awaken My Ears, O Lord
By: Dawn Adams - Starting With ScriptureTo listen and hear is not simply an act of gathering information, it is meant to move us to acceptance ...
Devotionals
Devotionals
03/20/2023 - Transitions are Never Easy
By: Kevin Williams - Starting With ScriptureWhen faced with transition, worry, and doubt, faith is the energy needed to shift from what was to what ...
03/13/2023 - Where’s Jesus? Reflection on John 9:1-41
By: Carla Dietz - Starting With ScriptureAs long as we are willing to wash the mud out of our eyes in order to see.
03/02/2023 - When God Falls Off the Ceiling
By: Brenda Pelc-Faszcza - Starting With ScriptureThe God we seek is already right there, right here, where we are.
02/27/2023 - John 3:16 or Austin 3:16?
By: Victoria Allen - Starting With ScriptureIt's hard to disentangle ourselves from a culture that rewards winning instead of cooperating.
02/20/2023 - Temptation
By: Shannan Hudgins - Starting With ScriptureSaying ‘No!’ to whatever temptation leaves us empty of hope is surely challenging. Saying ‘Yes!’ to the ...
02/13/2023 - Letting It Sink In
By: Erick Olsen - Starting With ScriptureWe are able to love more fully as we trust more deeply in the truth that God loves us first.
02/06/2023 - Transfigured!
By: Deborah Rundlett - Starting With ScriptureRevelation brings with it ambivalence and uncertainty, possibility and potential danger.
01/30/2023 - You are Salt!
By: Ron Brown - Starting With ScriptureBeing the salt of the earth means giving the world flavor, preserving what is good and right.
01/23/2023 - Delivering What God Asks is Not Always Easy
By: Kathleen Peters - Starting With ScriptureHope never dies that we can be all what God wants us to be…no matter who we are or how far along we are ...
01/15/2023 - Christmas Is Just Beginning…
By: Shawn Fisher - Starting With ScriptureThere is a light that calls us forward – out of our comfort zones and into something new but important – ...
01/09/2023 - What Are You Looking For?
By: Timothy Haut - Starting With Scripture'What are you looking for?' is a question all of us confront sometime in our life. And here, at the ...
01/02/2023 - Belovedness Over Coffee
By: Laura Fitzpatrick-Nager - Starting With ScriptureThere’s something in the eye contact and conversations between “us” and “them” that spontaneously pops up...
.jpg?width=515&height=433&mode=crop&enlarge=true)
12/29/2022 - Starting With Scripture: CALL FOR AUTHORS
By: Marlene Gasdia-Cochrane - Starting With ScriptureWe are looking to schedule the authors for the 2023 Starting With Scripture devotional.
12/26/2022 - Oneness
By: Heather Arcovitch - Starting With ScriptureThe spiritual path is to reawaken to, to remember, what has always been true, though most of us do not ...
12/19/2022 - Joyous Wonder
By: Shannan Hudgins - Starting With ScriptureWhen did you last feel the joyous wonder of this day?
12/12/2022 - The Love of a Father
By: Ruth Shaver - Starting With ScriptureFrom before his birth until the time he took his last breath, Jesus had the love of a father to guide and...
12/04/2022 - The Third Sunday of Advent—Joy
By: Ron Brown - Starting With ScriptureJoy is the faith, the hope that the wilderness will not have the last word, and that our God will show us...
11/28/2022 - Tree Stumps of Hope
By: Dawn Adams - Starting With ScriptureHope persists in unexpected ways in unexpected places and at unexpected times, even in tree stumps.
11/20/2022 - In the Days to Come: Naming New Life
By: Laura Fitzpatrick-Nager - Starting With ScriptureOn the first Sunday of Advent, we’ll imagine again a world where swords, spears and bullets are no longer...
11/14/2022 - A Sacred Pause
By: Dana Allen Walsh - Starting With ScriptureWhen there is shakiness, we can choose stillness. When there is uncertainty, we can hold space and ...
11/06/2022 - A Wild Imagining of Liberation
By: Helen Rebecca Lockwood - Starting With ScriptureFor it will require the dissolution of the old world, the dismantling of oppressive and imperialistic ...
10/31/2022 - Stirred, Not Shaken
By: Raymond Medeiros - Starting With ScriptureWhen confronted by the Bad News of our times, may we respond by being stirred to acts of love, peace, and...
10/23/2022 - Who Deserves to be a Child a God?
By: Rochelle Stackhouse - Starting With ScriptureAre we truly willing to believe those we see as even worse than a first century tax collector might find ...
10/17/2022 - An Updated Look at a Parable
By: Jan Gregory-Charpentier - Starting With ScriptureSometimes it takes falling flat on our faces before we ever get to that holy place of knowing our ...
10/07/2022 - Blessed Persistence
By: Jonathan Chapman - Starting With ScripturePersistence can be taxing, and yet we can find ourselves blessed in the process.
10/03/2022 - Blooming Where We Are Planted
By: Nina Barlow Schmid - Starting With ScriptureI had to learn to lean-in to that perceived wilderness, make it my home, planting gardens, reaping the ...
09/25/2022 - Bringing Tears to God
By: Richard Maxwell Grant - Starting With ScriptureWhile time may evaporate tears, our work under God is to dry them. First of all, by bringing them to God.
09/19/2022 - Into the Heartbeat
By: Lindsey Peterson - Starting With ScriptureTo say we are in Christ, is then to say we are in the compassionate heartbeat of creation.
09/12/2022 - The Ownership of Blessings
By: Amelia Nugent Edson - Starting With ScriptureIt is easy to forget that we did not acquire our blessings on our own; we had families, and networks, and...
09/05/2022 - Living In Grace
By: Matthew Crebbin - Starting With ScriptureFar too often we human beings seem more inclined to give in to the way of fear rather than living in ...
08/29/2022 - Starting, Ending, Remembering, and Continuing
By: Frances Bogle - Starting With ScriptureLabor Day is a holiday to celebrate that when workers stood together for justice, acted with kindness, ...
08/22/2022 - The Last Shall Be First
By: Frank Basler - Starting With ScriptureWhat if we stretched our imaginations as to what could be possible if we intentionally moved down the ...
08/15/2022 - What Happened Before the Then?
By: Shawn Fisher - Starting With ScripturePassages that start with “Then” are intriguing because what happened before that word makes all the ...
08/03/2022 - Faith: Inspiration and Consolation
By: Dawn Adams - Starting With ScriptureFaith is not an immunization to the cruelties of the world: instead it is a balm that soothes the soul in...
08/01/2022 - Beyond Biblical Literalism
By: Shawn Fisher - Starting With ScriptureI am tired and weary of people using scripture to support those false narratives that turn a beautiful ...
07/21/2022 - Big Barns and Big Voids
By: Elizabeth Chandler Felts - Starting With ScriptureWhat if we consecrated our inner voids to God, and consecrated ourselves to a spirituality, not of ...
07/18/2022 - Persistence in Praying
By: Kevin Williams - Starting With ScriptureIf we are to follow the path to peace we are shown, we must invest our energy in asking, in seeking, in ...
07/11/2022 - Practicing Hospitality as Jesus’ Disciples
By: Shepard Parsons - Starting With ScriptureListening to and caring for others, and ourselves, is to be a Disciple of Christ.
06/30/2022 - Keeping our Walls Plumb
By: John Nelson - Starting With Scripture"God won’t abide religious practices that downplay righteousness or leave out the demand for justice." — ...
.jpg?width=515&height=433&mode=crop&enlarge=true)
06/24/2022 - Who Has the Wisdom?
By: Sue Foster - Starting With Scripture"It was the lowly, the overlooked, the undervalued, the unnamed people in the story who contained ...
06/20/2022 - Many Somebodies
By: Brenda Pelc-Faszcza - Starting With Scripture"...fear of failing is responsible for unused gifts, for unlived lives, and for gaps in the race." — Rev....
06/13/2022 - Noticings
By: Laura Kisthardt - Starting With Scripture"When we allow time and space to pay attention, we might be inviting God to meet us in prayer." — Rev. ...
06/06/2022 - Keep On Moving Forward
By: Elizabeth Magill - Starting With Scripture"It is not that unusual for hope to disappoint us." — Rev. Dr. Elizabeth Mae Magill
05/27/2022 - The Revival of Pentecost
By: Richard Maxwell Grant - Starting With Scripture"It isn’t about filling the lifeboats with people just like us." — Rev. Max Grant
05/23/2022 - Hate The Evil
By: John Zehring - Starting With Scripture"You have the capacity to hate the evil, while still loving the person." — Rev. John Zehring
05/16/2022 - Made Well
By: Jocelyn Gardner Spencer - Starting With Scripture"Now as then, Jesus asks, 'Do you want to be made well?'" — Rev. Jocelyn B. Gardner Spencer
05/09/2022 - Love Lives Here!
By: Kate VanDerzee-Glidden - Starting With Scripture"In a world where hardship, intolerance and despair are everywhere, we need more signs of God’s love and ...
05/02/2022 - Revelation of Hope
By: Robert LaRochelle - Starting With Scripture"Revelation is a pretty complicated Biblical book." — Rev. Dr. Robert LaRochelle
04/25/2022 - Tragedy, Trauma, and Change
By: Johanna Hattendorf - Starting With Scripture"We are in a time of tragedy, trauma, and change." — Rev. Johanna Hattendorf