All Past Reflections

Tenth Sunday after Pentecost Rev. Brent Gundlah Getting people with different perspectives to come together and agree on anything has never been an easy thing to do. This seems especially true these days, when every single issue that comes up results in us running to...

Eighth Sunday after Pentecost "Sowing Weeds" Rev. Brent Gundlah Well, it’s another day down on the farm with Jesus as our reading from Matthew again uses agricultural imagery to explain what God’s reign is like. In today’s parable, Jesus turns his attention to the...

Seveth Sunday after Pentecost “Sowing Seeds” — Rev. Brent Gundlah Once upon a time, I lived and served a church in a rural community in America’s “Heartland” — a place where agriculture anchors the local economy and where people work hard to raise all sorts of things....

Sixth Sunday after Pentecost"Burdens"Rev. Brent Gundlah When I was in seventh grade, my parents adopted two brown and white baby goats named Annabelle and Phoebe. It seemed like a good idea at the time; we had a barn in the back of our property that already had a...

Fifth Sunday After Pentecost Rev. Brent Gundlah Many years ago, shortly after Valerie and I moved to New York, we were invited to my parents’ house for Thanksgiving dinner. This would be the first time she’d be spending a major holiday with my family, which was...

Fourth Sunday after PentecostHope Springs Eternal Rev. Brent Gundlah In baseball, a player’s “batting average” is calculated by taking the number of hits a player has and dividing it by the number of that player’s at-bats. The result is reported out to three decimal...

Third Sunday After Pentecost Rev. Brent Gundlah Many fathers and father-figures tend to dispense advice — sometimes with complete disregard as to whether it was actually solicited from the recipient in the first place. And I must admit that I am one such father; this...

“Roll With the Changes” — Rev. Brent Gundlah You don’t hear many reflections about the prophet Haggai these days. But since I just went through the trouble of reading names like Zerubbabel and Jehozadak, and since the folks who put the Bible together chose to include...

Trinity SundayRev. Brent Gundlah Happy Trinity Sunday, everybody! Whoa! Try not to get to fired up about it. Seriously, though — today is a big day for the church because it’s when we celebrate one of the things that makes Christianity unique: an understanding of the...

PentecostRev. Brent Gundlah Many years ago, when we were younger and bolder, Valerie and I drove out to the easternmost point in Maine in order to look at a house that was for sale. Sure, it would have been one heck of a commute between there and our jobs in New York...