In this week’s sermon on the meaning of Gaudete (rejoice) Sunday, Pam encouraged us to eschew despair in times when our hearts are understandably heavy. As we enter into the week before Christmas, she suggested that we look for small instances of joy, in which we find evidence love’s power to redeem.

Howard Thurman, author, minister, civil-rights leader, and educator, inspired many civil-rights advocates in his time and ours. It is said that his well-known work Jesus and the Disinherited was deeply influential on Martin Luther King’s thought and preaching, and that MLK carried a well-worn copy of it during the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas invokes Thurman when she speaks about going beyond charity to engage in changing the conditions that allow inequality and injustice to prevail. Continue reading →