All rights reserved
© Rosalind C Hughes and over the water, 2011-2026. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Rosalind C Hughes and over the water, with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
A Family Like Mine: Biblical Stories of Love, Loss, and Longing
https://bookstore.upperroom.org/Products/1921/a-family-like-mine.aspxWhom Shall I Fear: Urgent Questions for Christians in an Age of Violence
https://www.amazon.com/Whom-Shall-Fear-Questions-Christians/dp/0835819671-
Recent Posts
Archives
Categories
RevGalBlogPals
Meta
Author Archives: Rosalind C Hughes
Our hope is in Jesus
We are a house full of sinners. We are hurt and hurting, hurt-full people.
So when Matthew describes how the church is to be, in matters of discipline, order, and offence, it is no surprise that he anticipates that it will not always be easy to repair the breach. But it is telling, I think, that he ends with this promise from Jesus, that where two or three are gathered in his name, he is with us. Continue reading
Two or three
Two or three: Jesus why are you afraid to be too alone with me? ______________ #preparingforSundaywithpoetry. This Sunday’s Gospel is full of numbers – no, not of numbers, of people, unalone. Matthew 18:15-20
Who I am
It’s strange that Jesus tells Peter that his mind is stuck on human things rather than the divine. In some ways, it seems as though the opposite applies: Peter is looking for a miracle, a theophany, a deus ex machina to usher in the Messianic age; he doesn’t want Jesus to take the very human road of suffering in body and in spirit that is the symptom of our mortality. Peter wants to skip straight to heaven. Continue reading
Savour
This week’s #preparingforSundaywithpoetry perhaps bears more relation to the stories of Jesus’ original temptation than to his twin command to Peter to, “Get behind me, Satan!” But between those threads, and the idea that one could follow Jesus, taking up … Continue reading
Don’t we?
It has been a horrible weekend for gun violence in America. I cannot keep my heart from going out to the family of the teenager gunned down at a high school football game, while I was listening to the strains … Continue reading
Posted in current events, gun violence, prayer
Tagged gun violence, Jacksonville, prayer, racism, school shootings
Leave a comment
Who do you say that I am?
It is an apt place for new beginnings. Named and renamed, with Simon Peter’s words the Baals, the gods of Pan and of Rome, the idolatry of empire, all were buried beneath the cataracts, and the name of the living God was spoken over the water, like a baptism. Continue reading
Posted in lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged Banias, church, Confession of Christ, names, naming
Leave a comment
On this rock
They set a boulder to blot life
from the garden, light from the tomb.
When it was rolled away you spoke
her name into the morning like dew. Continue reading
Posted in poetry, prayer
Tagged #preparingforSundaywithpoetry, faith, rock, Stonehenge, Year A Proper 16
Leave a comment
Silent prayer
Nothing is silent. The breath of God is not absent. The wheeze of trees in full leaf hefting their branches in dance. The sigh of waves that fall before they reach the shore. The call of an ant six whispery feet one side of a blade of grass. The sun raging with … Continue reading
On forgiveness
Let me ask it plainly: Would Joseph have forgiven his brothers so completely if they had not been completely beholden to him? Would he have been so magnanimous if he were not dressed in magnificent robes? Continue reading
Posted in lectionary reflection, sermon
Tagged forgiveness, Genesis 45:1-15, Joseph, Matthew 15:10-28, Romans 11:29-32, Year A Proper 15
Leave a comment
First and last
Do you remember how,in the parable, he paid them, last and first?To the first he was fair, but to the last he was magnificent. Neither knew whether to laugh or shout or fall to their knees; so we, too, swayed between the thirsty and the relieved, envying and blaming each in … Continue reading
over the water 