So, this past Sunday we heard one of the accounts of Jesus’ baptism from the gospels, the episode as told by Luke. Baptism is one of the great hallmarks of Christianity and the Church, back to our earliest days. (Side note: if you feel like you need some exciting biblical exploration in your life, feel free to check out and compare the various versions of Jesus’ baptism across the gospels, Matt. 3:13-17, Mark 1:9-11, Luke 3:21-22, and John 1:29-34—although Jesus technically is not baptized in John’s gospel if you read the text closely enough.) But anyway, baptism.
 

What a year 2018 has been! There is so much the world went through. The year was filled with excellent experiences and complicated challenges, but all of them contributed to make us who we are, and for that I am grateful! As a church, our experiences were not different. We experienced successes and challenges. In the past year we...

Well, once again another year has come and gone, and a new year has begun unfolding. Maybe your family has a tradition for ushering in the start of the next calendar. I know my family does. In Alabama, you’re supposed to eat greens, black-eyed peas, and hog jowl (this last one is both a soul food southern delicacy as well as a vegan nightmare). You eat these things in the hopes that they will bring you money, luck, and health in the coming year. I haven’t the faintest idea why, or why the South holds such a tradition. Nor do I know how the tradition started. But you can bet your boots that I was eating greens (not my favorite), black-eyed peas (okay, these I love, I’ll admit), and hog jowl (which is a bit too crunchy for me) on New Year’s Day. And maybe it really is a silly practice, but had I not been able to partake in it, I would have felt like something was missing.