Blog
True inspirational stories to warm your heart and kindle the spirit
What Is Lent?
Lent is a season of the church when Christians are encouraged to focus more seriously on our faith. Fasting, reading scripture, prayer and examining our ethical life are regular practices we focus on more during Lent.
Feeding the Multitudes
The Lenten Season at Pendleton Center UMC is truly a joyous one. People come from far across several towns for our fish fries. Every Friday during lent, our church fellowship hall is transformed into a dining room for hundreds of people.
Why Ashes? Connecting To Who We Are And Who We Can Be
One Wednesday a year, sometime in February or March, you notice someone at work, school, or elsewhere with a smudge on her forehead. It looks as if she missed a spot when washing. Then you see another who looks as though he needs to glance in the mirror. By the time you see the third, you realize it is Ash Wednesday and these passersby must have received the imposition of ashes.
A Child of God
Looking in awe at the old woman’s beautiful paintings, each picture depicted a story about Jesus. Her pictures were of a different God than I had ever witnessed in my life.
Goldfinches Take Flight, Reflecting a Mother's Love
Two days after Elaine’s passing, the kids were swimming in the next-door neighbor’s pool and something odd happened.
A Winter’s Day
It’s one of the most beautiful sights a person can see. In the midst of the darkness and cold of winter, we wake up after a nighttime snowfall and behold, everything is white!
Bringing a freshness, a sustained strength, a joy, and continual blessing from the inside out. God gives us a pure heart. Breaking through our dark and dreary thoughts and desires, He returns us to purity - a new start.
A New Beginning
We often consider January 1st as a time of new beginnings. A new year, a fresh start, with resolutions to live a different life. But January 1st is just a date on the Gregorian calendar. Nothing really changes January 1st.
But we have an opportunity for real change every day, and we share that opportunity together every week.
What is Our Worth?
The Advent season is a time when we prepare for the coming of Christ, in the world and in our hearts. For believers, it is a time of reflection, expectation, anticipation, and celebration. Even as we celebrate the birth of Jesus in a humble stable in Bethlehem, we also anticipate the second coming of Christ, in hope for the establishment of God’s kingdom.