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I’ve been trying to put my finger on why I’ve felt some angst about Ellen Dollar Painter’s post “Why Don’t You Just Adopt?” over on Thin Places.

On Sunday, I went to church.  I know, it's summer, and why would you go to church in the summer? There's no Sunday school, and no choir, and there are plenty of other things to do. At least, that seems to be what several people think. But I am the pastor, and I was presiding, so I went to church.

I am writing a sermon on Matthew 14: 22-33, the passage wherein Jesus invites Peter to get out of the boat and walk on the water with him…in the midst of a storm.  Peter has always seemed to me to be the naïve, overeager, overachiever type.

My last year at Duke Divinity I sat in on a panel discussion between Sam Wells, dean of Duke Chapel, and Abdullah Antepli, Muslim chaplain to Duke University. (Imam Antepli also spoke at Wild Goose this summer.) In the course of their discussion about Islam and Christianity, Imam Antepli said something that disturbed me a great deal about my faith.

As we move into the long season that bids us celebrate the commonplace and to seek the God who dwells within the daily, what sort of blessing might you need?