God

June 22, 2025

On why we are here at Holy Trinity

What would you say if you were asked why you are here at Holy Trinity this morning? For the last six months, several groups of congregation leaders and members have been asking why any of us are here. We’ve been developing a Why Statement to say as realistically and clearly as possible why we are Continue reading

Ruminations

abundant life, christianity, community, faith, family, God, Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, home, Jesus, living abundantly, love, nurturing relationships, peace, quality of life, relationships, sanctuary, togetherness, welcoming, Why Statement
May 25, 2025

If you will

Sometimes the most effective healing Jesus offered was no healing at all. Take the story of the man at the pool of Beth-zatha, for example (John 5:2-9). For thirty-eight years he had been there, most of his life, waiting to be healed of whatever ailed him. And for thirty-eight years he had seen others healed Continue reading

Ruminations

Abba Joseph, Abba Lot, authority, be made well, become all fire, bible, change, dependency, desert fathers, discovery, faith, God, healing, health and wholeness, Jesus, kingdom of God, kingdom of heaven, letting go, new life, paralytic, risking change, risking growth, the pool of Beth-zatha, the unknown, unanswered prayer, unknown world
May 18, 2025

The mark of the Christian

Love is more than a commandment of Jesus (see John 13:31-35). Love is an invitation and a promise. It’s the condition in which we experience the abundant life into which Jesus invites us (John 10:10). It’s the land flowing with milk and honey into which God promises to deliver us (Exod. 3:7f). It’s the house Continue reading

Ruminations

bible, Christian love, christianity, commandment to love, debt of love, God, Jesus, love, promise of God
March 16, 2025

Remember who you are

“How often I have desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing” (Luke 13:34)! Traditionally during Lent, we share vicariously in Jesus’ forty days of being tested in the wilderness to see what he was made of and who he would be. But Continue reading

Ruminations

abundant life, Dorothy, faith, gathered, Gawain, God, Ishmael, Jesus, Joseph Campbell, Lent, Mufasa, my heart’s desire, prodigal son, rapture of being alive, Simba, testing Jesus, The Lion King, the Mariner, Ulysses, what are you living for?, who am I?, wilderness
October 13, 2024

Swimming in life

It may be the question behind every other meaningful question we ask. One nameless man – a John Doe who could have been any one of us – put it this way when he ran up to Jesus and asked, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” (Mark 10:17). How do I Continue reading

Ruminations

abundant life, Anthony de Mello, attitude of gratitude, banquet of heaven, before it’s too late, blessings and burdens, blessings of life, eternal life, faith, give thanks in all circumstances, God, Good Teacher, Gospel of Thomas, hard-knock life, heaven, Jesus, kingdom of God, now or never, Orphan Annie, perfect life, the future, the gospel, the Great Banquet, the ocean, two ocean fish
October 9, 2024

The top eight ways to hear God

I’ve often wanted to have a conversation with my twenty-something-year-old self, to share some wisdom from this end of my lifespan and to offer guidance to make his life not necessarily easier but more fulfilling. Some things I’d share, my younger self could never imagine. So I wonder about the wisdom I cannot imagine today Continue reading

Ruminations

ask and it will be given you, Be still, bible, conscience, David Letterman, Elijah, faith, God, God’s voice, guidance, guides, hearing, hearing God, Isaac the Syrian, Jeremiah, Jesus, ladder to the Kingdom, listen, Listening, living with full attention, new covenant, prayer, silence, sound of sheer silence, spiritual disciplines, St. Benedict, teachers, test what you hear, the ear of your heart, the persistent widow, the set of the sails, Top Ten List, Wesley’s quadrilateral, Will Rogers, wisdom
August 11, 2024

Under the broom tree

It’s an ancient and deeply human question, as relevant today as when the psalmist put it into words three millennia ago. “When the world falls apart, what can the good hope to do” (Ps. 11:3 ICEL)? Or as Eugene Peterson paraphrased it in The Message, “The bottom’s dropped out of the country” and it seems Continue reading

Ruminations

bible, bread of life, broom tree, crisis, dream, Edgar A. Guest, faith, God, God’s whispers, Jeremiah, quietness, renewal, rest, Retreat, returning and rest, sabbath, sacred places, sacred time, sleep, Thoreau, trust, Wendell Berry, When Things Go Wrong, wilderness
July 14, 2024

A plumb line

“Then the Lord said, ‘See, I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people’ (Amos 7:8). The plumb line God set in ancient Israel (Amos 7:7-15) – the reference point or standard that would reveal the values around which their life had been built – revealed a nation skewed so far out Continue reading

Ruminations

Adrienne LaFrance, Amos, another way to live, christianity, Einstein, eternal life, faith, God, good and evil, Jesus, law, law of life, law of love, political structures, social structures, standard of values, Ten Commandments, The New Anarchy
June 17, 2024

Everything has become new

You may have seen artist Charles Allan Gilbert’s depiction of an elegant young woman seated at a vanity, admiring herself in the mirror. With a slight shift of perspective, the image becomes one of a human skull. Gilbert’s art is more than a trick for our eyes or a comment on vanity. It’s also a Continue reading

Ruminations

Alice, Annie Dillard, bible, born again, Charles Allan Gilbert, Cheshire Cat, comprehending, comprehension, God, Jesus, man born blind, new creation, Nicodemus, patience, perception, prayerscaping, seeing, seeing anew, seeing truly, trust in God, understanding, vanity, waiting patiently

About Me

Rich Neal is, in no particular order, a wordsmith and graphic designer; lover of typography, books, and publishing; photographer; contemplative; saunterer; and a retired and still-active pastor. He claims neither special wisdom nor particularly deep insight into life, only occasional glimpses of what lies behind the veil along the way. He shares them here in the hope of connecting the pieces of life’s puzzle that come to him in the journey and would consider it a gift if sharing them also connected him with others who travel an unmarked path toward the same unknown end.