First Congregational United Church of Christ

03/15/2026

10/09/2025

We, our book club, had so much fun and learned so much about what the Animal Shelter of Northeast Nebraska does for all sorts of animals and people—and this dog is precious! Well deserving of finding its just right forever home!

09/03/2025

Awake at Home

Matt Laney
[Jesus said to them,] “Stay awake! If the house owner knew when the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and stood guard. You also must be ready, for the Son of Man comes at an unexpected hour.” - Matthew 24:42-44 (adapted)

In Plum Village, the monastery founded by Thich Nhat Hanh, I was taught to wash the dishes or clean the kitchen counter as if caring for a baby.

At first, it felt contrived. Eventually, something shifted. Giving loving attention to a tiny, fragile human can turn most anyone into an awakened being, if only for a moment, which is all we have.

Brother Lawrence, a 17th-century Carmelite monk, spoke of something similar. “The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer. In the noise and clutter of my kitchen…I possess God in tranquility as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament.” He also said, “Great have abandoned all particular forms of devotion, all prayer techniques. My only prayer practice is attention.”

Jesus urged his disciples to remain awake and alert to the arrival of the Holy, because the Eternal is not only present, the Eternal is presence itself. In my experience, the presence of the Eternal becomes available through the practice of loving attention.

If God ever feels out of reach, try going about your day as if carrying a sleeping infant. Few people act heedlessly or recklessly while holding a baby at rest. We naturally move more tranquilly and speak more gently. Our attention becomes more acute; our being is more reverent. In one unexpected moment, holiness arrives.

Stay alert. Love what you do. The Presence is literally at hand.

Prayer
Holy One, today may I strive for attention over perfection.

09/02/2025

Fill the House

Martha Spong
[Speaking in a parable, Jesus said,] “‘Go out into the roads and lanes, and compel people to come in, so that my house may be filled.’” - Luke 14:23b (NRSV)

I’m old enough to have grown up before people set much store by “self-esteem.”

So it’s hard for me to get inside the skin of the characters in Jesus’s parable about the great dinner who are too busy to come to the party. Jesus is at dinner himself, receiving hospitality, so both the context and the conversation revolve around invitations offered, then accepted or rejected. Earlier in the chapter, a parable emphasizes not putting yourself too high at the dinner table; maybe you are not as important or valued as you think you are! Speaking of the great dinner, Jesus describes the people who are caught up in their personal priorities and find reasons not to come. Others will be welcomed to fill the seats they ignored. Be responsive, he says, and be humble.

Now we live in a time where a needed corrective for some is offered. “Put on your own oxygen mask first,” we are advised, both literally and metaphorically. “You can’t pour from an empty cup.” If everyone is a beloved child of God, and all are deserving of care, then giving until there is nothing left seems like we love our neighbors but maybe not ourselves.

I want to think that Jesus is making a related point with a different nuance. Being responsive means being open to possibility, but it also means being discerning about where you put your energy. Being humble doesn’t mean being self-effacing; it means recognizing how to be right-sized about your status.

God is inviting you and me and all y’all and all of everybody else to the table.

Prayer
Loving God, may we hear your call and fill your house. Amen.

09/01/2025

We Are on a Mission
Jesus said to them, "Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men." Then they left their nets and followed him.

-- Mark 1:17-18

09/01/2025

Leave Some Trace

Vince Amlin
[Jesus taught them, saying,] “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit.” – Matthew 7:15-17 (NRSV)

Ichnology is the study of trace fossils. Not the big T-Rex skeleton at your natural history museum. Or even the shark’s teeth you hunt for in the creek behind your house. Not fossils of the thing itself at all, only of the traces it left behind.

Million-year-old footprints frozen in stone. Tunnels and burrows preserved for posterity. Bite marks and claw marks etched into bone. The ichnologist studies not what was there but what it did. Or rather, she studies what was there by studying what it did.

Which Jesus says is also how you’ll know who really speaks for God.

Not by who they are, which can be deceiving. Not by their position, denomination, nationality … not by looking at them at all. But only at what they did, how they lived, what remains:

The tracks they made marching in solidarity with those who were suffering. The tunnels they dug to undermine systems of injustice and oppression. The evidence they left of fighting tooth and nail in the cause of love.

The good that came from it all.

“You will know them by their fruits.” By what they left behind. Their traces. Which live on, long after they are gone.

Prayer
God, thank you for those who have left their mark

08/30/2025

A Singing Heart
Sing to the LORD, bless his name; announce his salvation day after day.

-- Psalm 96:2

08/30/2025

Astonishing

Quinn G. Caldwell
Now the Lord is about to lay waste the earth and make it desolate. And it shall be, as with the people, so with the priest; as with the buyer, so with the seller; as with the lender, so with the borrower; as with the creditor, so with the debtor. - Isaiah 24:1-3, excerpts (NRSV)

Of all the miracles God has promised to work, this would be the most astonishing.

When the flood waters rise, the rich climb into their powerful vehicles and get to higher ground. The poor climb onto the roof, and hope.

When the fires destroy everything, the rich use their money, or their insurance, or their contacts, to rebuild. The poor move in with their relatives, if they’re lucky.

When the accident befalls, the rich go to the private clinic, the lengthy rehab, the plastic surgeon. The poor go to the ER, and then disability.

When the pandemic rages, the rich go to their vacation homes and order in. The poor go to their essential jobs and hope the kids are OK distance-learning at home.

When death comes, the rich have it all set so that the people they care about are taken care of. The poor inherit memories.

Bumps, shocks, reverses are part of every human life. But a pothole feels different in a late-model Esplanade than it does in a 30-year-old Ta**us. From a private jet, you don’t even know it’s there.

So I’m just saying that if God found some way to make both the rich and the poor experience some disaster equally, that would be truly astonishing.

Prayer
God, I’m not quite ready to say that it would be worth it to experience a tragedy big enough to experience this kind of equality. But I’m right on the edge. Help us find another way to achieve a miracle like this before it’s too late. Amen.

08/29/2025

The Way of Wisdom

Kenneth L. Samuel
Listen to me! For I have important things to tell you. My advice is wholesome. My words are plain to anyone with understanding, clear to those with knowledge. I, Wisdom, live together with good judgment, I know where to discover knowledge and discernment. - Proverbs 8:6-12 excerpts (NLT)

In Proverbs 8, Wisdom is depicted like any other street-corner preacher with a megaphone. Wisdom seeks a hearing. Wisdom wants to be heard and received by the masses. So Wisdom shouts for attention.

But unlike many street-corner preachers with megaphones, Wisdom doesn’t just promote itself. Wisdom promotes the virtues of knowledge, judgment, and discernment embedded in every conscientious individual. Wisdom doesn’t talk down to us. Wisdom invites us to bring our knowledge and our judgment with us, as we walk alongside wisdom in discernment.

This open invitation—to seek truth through trusted networks of all the best scientific knowledge and spiritual discernment and historical judgment available to us—is a far cry from the current American sociopolitical climate of religious parochialism and insular thinking.

The banning of books, the whitewashing of history, the discrediting of science, and the frontal assault on public education and intellectualism, all speak to a retrenchment, a narrow frugality in the American mentality. The rejection of Wisdom’s openness is what threatens a return to isolationism and a reconstitution of segregation.

Thank God for the Wisdom of free thought and free expression and free self-determination. May she never give way to the urgings of social coercion and the schemes of spiritual myopia.

Prayer
Lord, in wisdom we apply the knowledge you’ve given us … and in wisdom we seek your discernment as we continue to discover even more of what we don’t know. Amen.

08/29/2025

New Life
"Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD alone! Therefore, you shall love the LORD, your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength."

-- Deuteronomy 6:4-5

08/27/2025

Caring for Creation
God created man in his image; in the divine image he created him; male and female he created them.

-- Genesis 1:27