There is a particular moment in ministry — and, if we’re honest, in life — when someone begins to share a problem and you can feel it rise up within you like a reflex.
A tightening of the shoulders.
A sharpening of the mind.
A quiet internal voice saying, “Ah yes, I know exactly how to fix this.”

This voice is persuasive. It has diagrams. It has bullet points. It has, occasionally, a laminated flow chart.

And yet, one of the quiet spiritual disciplines I have been learning — slowly, imperfectly, and with much backsliding — is the holy art of not fixing everything.

This is deeply counter-cultural. We live in a world that rewards solutions, celebrates efficiency, and applauds those who can swoop in with a wrench, a spreadsheet, or a seven-step plan before the kettle has finished boiling. Even in the Church, we can confuse faithfulness with productivity, and compassion with problem-solving.

But Scripture, inconveniently, keeps telling a different story.

God, it seems, is less interested in being our divine handyman and more interested in being present. When Moses panics at the burning bush, God does not hand him a comprehensive leadership manual. When Elijah collapses under the weight of despair, God does not offer motivational slogans — only sleep, bread, and the sound of sheer silence. When Jesus meets people in pain, he often begins not with solutions, but with questions: What do you want? Do you see this? Will you stay?

Sometimes the most faithful thing we can do is resist the urge to fix, manage, tidy, or resolve — and instead remain present. To sit. To listen. To pray quietly. To trust that God is already at work in ways that exceed our competence and bypass our best intentions.

Stephen Leacock always delighted in pointing out how seriously we take ourselves while making a terrible mess of things. I suspect he would have enjoyed the spectacle of clergy and laity alike rushing about with theological duct tape, earnestly patching situations God never asked us to repair.

There is, after all, a difference between loving care and anxious control. One grows out of trust; the other out of fear. One leaves room for grace; the other crowds it out entirely.

Not fixing everything does not mean indifference. It means humility. It means remembering that salvation is, mercifully, above our pay grade. It means stepping back just far enough to let God be God — and discovering, to our surprise, that the world does not collapse without our constant intervention.

Sometimes the greatest gift we offer is not an answer, but our presence. Not a solution, but a prayer. Not a fix, but faith.

And occasionally, the bravest thing we can say is:
“I don’t know. But God does.”

A Prayer

Gracious God,
Save us from the anxious need to fix what we do not fully understand.
Teach us the patience of presence,
the courage to trust,
and the humility to step aside when you are already at work.
Help us to listen more than we speak,
to love more than we manage,
and to rest in the truth that the world is held — securely and lovingly — in your hands, not ours.
Amen.

There was a time when I believed that walking was primarily about getting somewhere. Preferably quickly. With purpose. Possibly with a fitness tracker judging me from my wrist like a tiny digital Pharisee.

Then life, ministry, and a few stubborn joints suggested otherwise. As I’ve endured a very long recovery from the infection that has plagued me since returning from my walk along the Camino, I’ve had to learn some very new lessons about walking.

These days, many of my walks happen along the Humber River Trail. It is not a place that rewards haste. The path bends without apology. Tree roots rise up like small theological objections. The river itself moves at a pace that would never survive a performance review in modern society. And yet, it gets exactly where it needs to go.

Walking slowly, I have discovered, is not the absence of purpose. It is the presence of attention.

When I rush, I miss things. The flash of a cardinal in the underbrush. The quiet heroism of someone picking up litter with a grocery bag and a sense of civic righteousness. The sound of water moving over stones, preaching its one-sermon sermon: You don’t have to force this.

Faith, I am learning, behaves much the same way.

We often imagine faith as decisive, efficient, and brisk — preferably with clear milestones and measurable outcomes. But much of the life of faith looks suspiciously like a slow walk with no particular urgency and plenty of pauses. It looks like stopping to listen. Like circling back. Like admitting you don’t quite know where the path goes next, but trusting that it goes on.

The Humber River has taught me that progress is not always dramatic. Sometimes it is simply faithful movement — step by step, breath by breath — held within a larger grace that does not panic.

Pilgrims know this. Not the glossy brochure pilgrims with perfect backpacks and inspirational quotes, but the real ones. The ones who blister, backtrack, and occasionally stop for snacks that feel spiritually necessary. Pilgrimage is not about speed. It is about showing up, staying present, and letting the road do some of the teaching.

Walking slowly has also reminded me that God is rarely in a hurry. Scripture gives us burning bushes and parting seas, yes — but also long deserts, extended waits, and conversations that unfold over miles of road. God seems deeply committed to processes that take time, and strangely uninterested in our obsession with efficiency.

Along the Humber, I walk slower than I used to. I notice more. I pray less urgently and more honestly. I trust that if I keep walking — gently, attentively — I will arrive where I need to be, even if I can’t yet name it.

And if not, well… the river will still be there tomorrow, flowing patiently past all my very important plans.

A Prayer for the Slow Path

Gracious God,
You who walk with us at a human pace,
teach us to loosen our grip on urgency.
Slow our steps when we rush past grace,
and open our eyes to the holiness
hidden in ordinary paths.

When we are tempted to measure faith by speed or certainty,
remind us that love takes time,
and trust grows one step at a time.

Keep us faithful on the road,
attentive to your presence,
and content to walk with you —
slowly, honestly, and in hope.

Amen.

There is a particular moment in parish life that is not mentioned in any rubric, canon, or vestry minutes, but which every priest, warden, and long-suffering volunteer knows intimately.

It is the moment when you are standing outside the church — often in weather that can only be described as “biblical” — holding a key that you know is the correct key, attempting to persuade the lock to agree with you.

It never does.
Not on the first try.
Rarely on the second.
Almost never while someone is watching.

The key will slide in smoothly, with confidence, as if everything is going according to plan. And then — nothing. No turn. No click. Just quiet resistance. A spiritual standoff.

You jiggle.
You rotate the key ninety degrees the wrong way, then back again.
You remove it entirely, inspect it (as though it may have changed shape out of spite), and try once more — this time with prayerful seriousness.

Still nothing.

At this point, most of us begin negotiating with God.

“Lord,” we say, “I am only trying to open your church.”

And the lock, unmoved, offers its own silent theology: Yes. And?

Eventually — usually after the third or fourth attempt, and sometimes after you have muttered something that would not look good embroidered on an altar frontal — the key turns. The door opens. The Kingdom is revealed. Or at least the narthex.

I have come to believe this is not accidental.

Church keys are not broken. They are formational.

They teach us perseverance in small, humbling doses. They remind us that faith is not a swipe card, that ministry does not run on efficiency, and that God is not impressed by our confidence but seems rather fond of our patience.

The lock resists not because it is angry, but because it insists that we slow down, pay attention, and remember that even holy work begins with waiting.

And perhaps that is the deeper lesson: that the Church itself is not opened by force, certainty, or speed. It opens — slowly, stubbornly — through persistence, humility, and the willingness to try again without giving up or storming off to find another door.

So if you find yourself outside the church someday, key in hand, feeling mildly foolish and strangely reflective, take heart.

You are not failing.
You are being taught.
And the door will open.

Eventually.

A Prayer

Patient God,
you meet us at locked doors and jangling keys.
When our first try fails, and our second try humbles us,
teach us not to hurry past the lesson.

Give us perseverance without frustration,
faith without force,
and trust that your doors open in their time.

Form us in the waiting,
shape us in the trying,
and remind us that grace often turns the lock
only after we have stopped rushing.

Amen.

There is a particular chair in every parish office that deserves to be canonized.

It is never the newest chair. It is never the matching chair. It is almost always the chair that wasn’t thrown out during the last office clean-up because “it still mostly works.” This chair has opinions. It announces those opinions audibly. It groans when you sit. It sighs when you lean back. It squeaks during moments of deep pastoral reflection, usually right as someone is sharing something tender and important.

The parish office chair is not designed for comfort. It is designed for endurance.

It has borne the weight of stewardship meetings that ran long, council agendas that ran longer, and conversations that began with, “I don’t want to complain, but…” It has supported countless cups of coffee, several theological crises, and at least one emergency biscuit retrieved from a desk drawer in the name of self-care.

The chair remembers everything.

It remembers sermons drafted and redrafted. It remembers emails written, deleted, rewritten, and wisely left unsent. It remembers the meeting that could have been an email, and the email that somehow turned into a meeting anyway. It has listened patiently to phone calls that began cheerfully and ended with, “Well, we’ll keep that in prayer.”

And through it all, the chair has creaked faithfully.

There is something almost sacramental about that sound. A holy reminder that ministry is not always sleek or ergonomic. Much of it happens sitting slightly crooked, adjusting your weight, learning not to lean that way again, and discovering — usually too late — which squeak echoes loudest during silence.

The parish office chair teaches us that faithfulness is rarely glamorous. It is persistent. It shows up. It holds steady even when one bolt is clearly questionable. Like much of parish life, it functions not because it is perfect, but because it is present.

And perhaps that is why the Gospel feels so at home there.

God’s work is often done in unremarkable places: at desks cluttered with papers, in meetings where patience is the primary spiritual discipline, and on chairs that have seen better days but still bear the weight of love, listening, and care.

The chair does not complain. It squeaks — but it stays. And in that quiet, creaky faithfulness, it preaches a sermon of its own.

Sometimes, the Good News sounds like a well-timed creak reminding us to shift our posture, stretch our patience, and trust that grace does its work even in long meetings.

Especially in long meetings.

A Prayer

Gracious God,
who meets us not only in sanctuaries but in offices and committee rooms,
we thank you for the ordinary places where your work unfolds.

Bless the chairs that hold us,
the desks that gather our labour,
and the meetings where patience is practiced as prayer.

Teach us to endure with grace,
to listen with love,
and to find holiness even when things squeak.

May our work — however unglamorous —
be offered faithfully,
and may your Spirit sustain us,
bolt by bolt, creak by creak,
for the sake of the Gospel.

Amen.

There is a particular moment in the church year — usually somewhere between the last stray Christmas cookie and the sudden appearance of Ordinary Time green — when someone looks around the sanctuary and says, with genuine concern, “So… is that it?”

The Magi have gone home by another road.
The star has been carefully packed away in the same box as the Advent wreath candles (one of which is mysteriously shorter than the others).
The poinsettias have either been bravely composted or quietly adopted by the Altar Guild.

Epiphany, it seems, is over.

And now what?

Now we discover the awkward truth: Epiphany was never meant to be a seasonal light show. It was a training exercise.

Epiphany teaches us how to see. Not how to stare reverently at a star — anyone can do that — but how to notice God once the star has disappeared. It prepares us for the real work of faith: finding light when there is no spotlight, no soundtrack, and no angelic choir humming obligingly in the background.

This is where the Magi are quietly helpful. Scripture tells us they went home “by another road,” which is the Bible’s polite way of saying, life did not return to normal. Once you have encountered Christ, “normal” is no longer an available option. You don’t stop being a stargazer; you just learn to look lower — to kitchens and crosswalks, hospital corridors and parish halls, to lives that need mercy more than spectacle.

Epiphany ends not with fireworks, but with instructions:
Go home.
Pay attention.
Look for light in smaller places.

Which is unfortunate for those of us who prefer our holiness with glitter.

The trouble with post-Epiphany life is that it is stubbornly ordinary. There are lunches to make, emails to answer, sidewalks to shovel, and meetings that could have been emails but weren’t. And yet — this is precisely where the light has gone ahead of us. Not vanished. Not dimmed. Just relocated.

God, having revealed himself to the nations, now seems content to be found in quieter ways:
In faithfulness that doesn’t trend.
In kindness that isn’t announced.
In prayer that feels dry but keeps showing up anyway.

This is the season when the Church says, gently but firmly, “Right then. Back to work.”

And it turns out that work — this patient, ordinary, unspectacular work — is where Epiphany finally makes sense. The light revealed to the Magi is not meant to be admired like a museum exhibit. It is meant to be carried, reflected, occasionally smudged, and shared — especially when the decorations are gone and no one is watching.

So if you find yourself wondering where the light has gone, the answer is inconvenient but hopeful:

It has gone exactly where you are.

A Prayer

Holy God,
when the stars have faded
and the songs have quieted,
teach us not to stop looking.

Give us eyes to see your light
in ordinary days,
steady courage for faithful living,
and hearts willing to carry what we have received.

When the season feels plain,
remind us that your glory
has not ended —
it has simply moved closer.

Amen.

There is a particular sound that belongs to the Church, and it is not the organ, the choir, or even the boiler coughing into life at precisely the wrong moment. It is the unmistakable scrape of folding chairs being dragged across a parish hall floor.

That sound is theology.

It usually begins just after someone has confidently said, “I think we have enough chairs.” Within minutes, more people arrive — friends of friends, cousins passing through town, neighbours who heard there might be pie. Suddenly the tables look smaller, the room looks fuller, and someone says the holiest phrase in parish life:
“We’ll make it work.”

This, I am convinced, is how the Kingdom of God actually arrives — not trumpeted from the clouds, but quietly ushered in by someone unfolding an extra chair and squeezing it between the cranberry salad and the mysterious casserole.

Jesus spoke often about banquets and feasts, about guests invited from highways and hedges, about tables where the expected seating plan collapses entirely. He never once mentioned matching place settings or colour-coordinated napkins. The miracle was never the menu. The miracle was the room.

Potluck meals are, in this way, deeply sacramental. No one arrives knowing exactly what will be served. Some dishes are beloved classics; others require a leap of faith and a very small first helping. Everything is offered, nothing is ranked, and all of it somehow becomes enough.

At a potluck table, hierarchy dissolves. The CEO sits beside the retiree. The child with sticky fingers negotiates space next to the elder with careful hands. Everyone eats the same bread, even if some of it is gluten-free and slightly perplexing. This is not chaos. This is communion with elbows.

Making room is not always elegant. It involves lifting, shifting, counting plates again, and occasionally realizing that someone has taken your chair and you are now standing awkwardly with a fork in your hand. But it is holy work nonetheless.

Because the gospel does not ask us to curate perfect tables. It asks us to open them.

The Kingdom of God looks suspiciously like a parish hall where no one is turned away, where there is always one more chair to unfold, and where the question is never, “Do you belong here?” but rather, “Have you eaten yet?”

And if we run out of chairs? Well. Someone can always sit on the edge of the table. We’ll make it work.

A Companion Prayer

Gracious God,
you who set tables in the wilderness
and welcome saints and sinners alike,
teach us the ministry of making room.

Give us generous hearts,
strong hands for folding chairs,
and joyful patience when plans overflow.

May our tables be wide,
our welcome sincere,
and our trust deep enough to believe
there is always enough when love is shared.

Through Christ,
who invites us all to sit and be fed.
Amen.

There is something reassuring about the front door of a church. It is large, dignified, and often heavy enough to make a theological point all by itself. Front doors announce intention. You arrive there knowing precisely what you are doing — or at least pretending convincingly. You have come to worship. You have come on purpose. You have come at a respectable hour.

Which is precisely why God so often ignores the front door entirely.

If Scripture and parish life have taught us anything, it is this: God has a fondness — some might say a holy weakness — for side doors. Back entrances. Service corridors. The small, poorly lit doorway marked Staff Only that nobody reads properly.

Think of Bethlehem. Not the palace entrance, but the stable out back. Think of Easter. Not the triumphant front gate of empire, but a borrowed tomb tucked away like an afterthought. Think of Pentecost. Not a scheduled press conference, but a group of bewildered disciples upstairs, minding their own business and possibly arguing about lunch.

Even in parish life, grace rarely comes through the main doors at 10:30 sharp. It slips in sideways:

• during coffee hour conversations that were supposed to last two minutes and stretched into healing,
• in the sacristy while hunting for a missing stole,
• through a quiet visit when no one knew quite what to say and said it anyway.

Side doors are where we arrive unprepared. We are not polished. We are not entirely sure we belong. We have not rehearsed our prayers. We may not even be convinced this is the right building.

And God seems to delight in that.

Side doors bypass our expectations. They duck under our certainty. They avoid the carefully managed entrances where we control who gets in and how. At a side door, grace does not wait for us to be ready. It simply opens the latch and steps inside.

There is also something merciful about side doors: they are accessible. They are closer to the kitchen, nearer the boiler room, more forgiving to those who arrive late, weary, or carrying more than they meant to bring. Side doors understand real life.

Perhaps that is why Jesus so often meets people at the edges — on roads, by wells, at tables, on the margins of crowds. He does not demand a ceremonial entrance. He simply shows up, as if to say, This will do nicely.

Which is good news for most of us, because we are rarely entering life through the front door with confidence and poise. More often we are slipping in sideways, hoping no one noticed, carrying questions, regrets, grocery bags, and the vague sense that we might be lost.

And there God is. Waiting. Smiling. Holding the door.

A Prayer

God of unexpected entrances,
you meet us not only in grand moments
but in quiet corners and overlooked places.
When we arrive unsure, unprepared, or late,
open for us the side doors of grace.
Help us to notice your presence
in the ordinary, the awkward, and the unnoticed.
Teach us to welcome others as generously as you welcome us,
through every door we open.
Amen.

There are days when ministry feels like it ought to come with a trumpet fanfare. One imagines the heavens parting, the right words arriving fully formed, and at least one hymn being sung in tune. In reality, ministry usually looks more like this: showing up on a Tuesday afternoon, discovering that the kettle has been emptied but not refilled, and quietly deciding that making tea is the most theological thing you can do in the moment.

We are rarely trained for this. Seminary syllabi are suspiciously light on courses entitled Advanced Kettle Refill (Practicum) or Pastoral Care: When You Have Nothing Profound to Say. And yet, if I were to assemble an honest portfolio of ministry moments that mattered, many of them would involve a mug, a chair pulled a little closer, and the holy ministry of being present without fixing anything at all.

Ministry, it turns out, is mostly about showing up. Showing up when the words fail. Showing up when the grief is too fresh to be tidy. Showing up when faith feels more like muscle memory than emotional certainty. It is about standing at the edge of someone else’s life and resisting the urge to sprint in with answers, clipboards, or a brisk theological explanation that solves nothing.

Sometimes showing up looks terribly unimpressive. It looks like sitting in silence that stretches longer than is polite. It looks like listening to a story you’ve already heard, because it still needs to be told. It looks like making tea — not because tea solves the problem, but because warmth, care, and a small shared ritual remind us that we are not alone.

The Gospels are remarkably full of this sort of thing. Jesus shows up at tables, on roads, by wells, and in borrowed boats. He listens. He notices. He asks questions he already knows the answers to. He feeds people before lecturing them. He attends to bodies as much as souls. The Kingdom of God, if we are honest, often arrives without fanfare — accompanied instead by bread, water, and someone who stays.

Quiet faithfulness does not trend well on social media. It does not photograph easily. It does not shout. But it endures. It is the volunteer who unlocks the door every week. The parishioner who notices who is missing. The priest who keeps showing up when the spreadsheet says “burnout” but the Gospel says “abide.”

So if today your ministry feels small, ordinary, or suspiciously kettle-shaped, take heart. You are in good company. God has always done remarkable things with people who simply stayed, listened, and loved — and who occasionally remembered to put the kettle back on.

A Prayer

Faithful God,
you meet us not only in grand moments,
but in kitchens, hospital rooms, and quiet afternoons.
Give us the grace to show up when it matters,
the humility to listen more than we speak,
and the wisdom to know when making tea
is holier than making a point.
Bless all quiet acts of care,
and remind us that your presence
often arrives gently,
carried in ordinary faithfulness.
Amen.

I have noticed that crosswalks are designed to test the spiritual maturity of otherwise reasonable adults.

You press the button — sometimes once, sometimes with the firm conviction that pressing it again will hurry the Almighty along — and then you wait. The little white walking figure does not immediately appear. Cars continue to roar past as if the laws of physics and courtesy were optional. Somewhere, a driver makes eye contact that says, You go ahead. I dare you.

This, I have come to believe, is where God likes to meet us.

The crosswalk is not a place of dramatic miracles. No burning bushes. No booming voice from heaven. Just a red hand, blinking patiently, as if to say, Not yet.

We live in a world trained to sprint. We jog through emails, skim conversations, and hurry even our prayers, offering God a theological version of fast food: “Bless this, fix that, thank you very much.” Waiting feels inefficient. Waiting feels unproductive. Waiting feels suspiciously like doing nothing.

But the crosswalk insists on trust.

You can step out early, of course. Many do. There is a brief rush, a flutter of adrenaline, and the faint awareness that your guardian angel has just rolled their eyes. Or you can wait — hands in pockets, heart slowed, eyes lifted — until the light changes. When it does, the street opens not because you seized it, but because it was given.

Faith often works this way. God rarely shouts, “Go now!” More often, God stands beside us in the pause, teaching us that timing is not the enemy of faith but its companion. The red light is not a refusal; it is a preparation.

Scripture is full of people at crosswalks: Abraham waiting for a promise, Israel waiting in the wilderness, Mary waiting for clarity, the disciples waiting in an upper room. None of them got a timetable. All of them learned that God’s presence was not delayed simply because the answer was.

The spiritual life, it turns out, is less about sprinting through intersections and more about learning to stand still without panic. About trusting that the light will change. About believing that when it does, it will be safe — not because there is no traffic, but because God has already stepped into the road ahead of us.

So the next time you are standing at a crosswalk, finger hovering over the button as if one more press might hurry eternity along, take a breath. God is already there. Waiting with you. Unrushed. Unanxious. Perfectly on time.

And when the light changes, walk. Don’t run. Grace keeps pace.

Companion Prayer

Holy God,
You meet us not only in motion, but in stillness;
not only in answers, but in waiting.
Teach us to trust the red lights of our lives
as places of preparation rather than frustration.
Slow our anxious hearts, steady our hurried steps,
and help us to move forward when the time is right —
not in fear, but in faith.
Amen.

There is a small but persistent mystery at work every Sunday morning, and it has nothing to do with the Trinity (which, frankly, is complicated enough). I speak of the church bulletin: confidently received at the door, firmly held while greeting neighbours, and then — by the time one reaches the pew — gone.

Not misplaced. Not politely set aside. Simply gone.

It vanishes somewhere between the narthex and the pew, that liminal holy space where coats are shrugged off, children are herded, hymns are discussed in advance (“I think it’s the long tune”), and the soul quietly shifts from coffee to contemplation. The bulletin, brave little document that it is, rarely survives the journey intact.

Some are last seen folded carefully into fourths, as though preparing for liturgical origami. Others are discovered later tucked into hymnals, pew racks, or winter coats — emerging weeks later like time-travelers from Ordinary Time. A few, we must assume, ascend directly into heaven, joining the socks and pens that disappear in the laundry.

And yet.

The bulletin is meant to tell us where we are, what we are doing, and — most importantly — what page we are on. Its disappearance should cause panic. Without it, how will we know when to sit, stand, kneel, or hum quietly while pretending to know the tune?

But grace, it turns out, does not rely on paper.

Somehow, worship continues. People follow along anyway. Neighbours lean over and whisper helpful stage directions. The choir sings. The prayers are prayed. The Word is proclaimed. The Table is set. The Spirit does not check for bulletins at the door.

Perhaps this is the theology of the lost bulletin: that while structure is helpful, grace is not fragile. God is not thwarted by missing information. Worship is not cancelled because we do not know what comes next. In fact, there may be something quietly holy about being slightly lost together.

After all, faith itself often feels like walking from the narthex to the pew — carrying good intentions, dropping certainty along the way, and arriving with open hands. We do not always know the order of things. We forget the words. We lose track of the plan. And still, God meets us.

So if your bulletin disappears this Sunday, take heart. You are not failing at church. You are simply participating in a long and honoured tradition of trusting that God knows where we are — even when we don’t know where the paper went.

And who knows? You may just discover that the most important part of worship was never printed in the first place.

A Companion Prayer

Gracious God,
when our plans go missing
and our papers fail us,
teach us to trust your presence.
When we forget the order,
remind us of love.
When we feel lost,
help us notice that you are already here.
Gather us in grace,
steady us in worship,
and lead us deeper than any bulletin ever could.
Amen.