'lent' Tagged Posts
Art & Lament
April 2, 2025A Note from Pastor April Dear Friends, As we continue through this season of Lent, I offer you today another lens by which we can engage this practice of lament: art. Artists have an incredible ability, whether through visual, audio, or tactile media, to express and evoke the emotions central to lament, to draw us into experiences of suffering, and invite us to engage it with our whole selves. Last week, it was my privilege to attend a…
Listening to Lament
March 19, 2025A Note from Pastor April Dear Friends, I pray that your Lenten season has been one filled with space for reflection, connection, and community. This season, the practice I chose to add was a Loving Kindness Meditation. I’ve found it even more helpful to visualize and hold space for others if I am also creating space to listen to the real struggles they are holding in their hearts. As we read the laments of our ancestors in the…
Lent at Hilliard UMC
Holy Week, April 13-19 Good Friday worship on April 18 will include ASL interpretation for the deaf and hard of hearing. (We’re hoping to have ASL for Maundy Thursday, too; stay tuned.) The Easter Vigil service at 7pm on Saturday, April 19, will be hosted in partnership with our friends at Resurrection Evangelical Lutheran Church, 3500 Main Street, just down the street from HUMC. Most services will also livestream. Easter On Easter, April 20, there will be Godly Play for…
Blessing the Dust
March 5, 2025A Note from Pastor Jon and Poet Jan Richardson Dear Friends, Blessing the Dust — A Blessing for Ash Wednesday by Jan Richardson All those days you felt like dust,like dirt,as if all you had to dowas turn your facetoward the windand be scatteredto the four corners or swept awayby the smallest breathas insubstantial – did you not knowwhat the Holy Onecan do with dust? This is the daywe freely saywe are scorched. This is the hourwe are…
The Most Wonderful Time of the Year!
February 14, 2024A Note from Pastor Jon Dear Friends, It’s the most wonderful time of the year… One of my favorite songs of the Christmas season is the Andy Williams’s classic, “It’s The Most Wonderful Time of The Year.” I just love that song, and I get all kinds of giddy when I hear the opening notes on the radio. That song took on a different meaning for me in college as I was about to begin my sophomore year…
Gospel of Matthew Recordings
During this holy week, we invite you to take some time to experience the Gospel of Matthew as a whole, read by our pastors and other folks from both Hilliard UMC and Fairmont Presbyterian Church, our partner for The Great Story. Hearing the whole Gospel read straight through, from start to finish, can be a powerful experience! The Readers
Holy Ordinary
April 5, 2023A Note from Jon Esala Dear Friends, On January 18 of this year, one of my dreams came true. My wife Meredith gave birth to our son Emmett at just after 9 in the morning. I became a dad. He’s a little over two months old now, and every morning around 7am I get him out of his bassinet and change his diaper. As I do, he brightly smiles good morning to me. I smile back. We’re both…