713-528-6665   ---   1805 W ALABAMA, HOUSTON, TX 77098 --- SUNDAY WORSHIP AT 8:30 AM & 10:30 AM    --- info@ststephenshouston.org

Our Blog

 

Weekly reflections, updates, and news about our St. Stephen’s Community.

 

Losing and Finding

Losing and Finding

This year my Lenten discipline took a different turn. I decided that I would feel my feelings and come to name them. This is no small task because I, like many of us, often live noticing only a small band of emotion.  Fear, anger, sadness, happiness come readily....

read more
Lent is a Pilgrimage in Time

Lent is a Pilgrimage in Time

This Sunday St. Stephen's will have the privilege of hosting the Very Reverend Dr. David Monteith, the 40th Dean of Caterbury (post Reformation) Cathedral at our forum in the Havens Center at 9:30 and as our preacher at the 10:30 a.m. Eucharist.  Canterbury...

read more
Silence in the Presence of the Holy

Silence in the Presence of the Holy

One of my joys of coming out of COVID is that I get to go to movie theatres again and see films on the big screen.  I love being enveloped by the darkness, surrounded by the sound.  Films take me out of my world and transport me to another place and...

read more
Prophets Say Words We Don’t Want to Hear

Prophets Say Words We Don’t Want to Hear

See, the Lord GOD comes with might, and his arm rules for him; his reward is with him, and his recompense before him. Isaiah 40:11 There are so many words and concepts that we use in church or Scripture study that we don’t use in other contexts: “redemption,”...

read more
This is the Way the World Ends

This is the Way the World Ends

When I was a young evangelical Christian, I was terrified by prospects of the end of the world. From my Bible reading I heard about Jesus coming like a thief in the night, as a consuming fire. When the Yom Kippur war broke out in Israel in 1973, I was sure Armageddon...

read more
Sobriety As a Practice of Thanksgiving

Sobriety As a Practice of Thanksgiving

But you, beloved, are not in darkness, for that day to surprise you like a thief; for you are all children of light and children of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness. So then let us not fall asleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober; for...

read more
A House for All Sinners and Saints

A House for All Sinners and Saints

While a House for All Sinners and Saints was the name of the parish served by Nadia Bolz-Weber (a public pastor and theologian), it could also serve as the name for every Christian congregation. Churches are not composed of only one type of person. Each and everyone...

read more
What Happens When the Language of Peace Gets Censored?

What Happens When the Language of Peace Gets Censored?

As violence in Israel and Gaza escalates, including the bombing of a hospital which killed hundreds of Palestinians this week, U. S. State Department officials are censoring how their employees describe what is happening. According to a report in the Huffington Post...

read more
Civic Engagement Is An Act of Peacemaking

Civic Engagement Is An Act of Peacemaking

Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that...

read more
You Are Richer Than You Think

You Are Richer Than You Think

The notion of currency was much in the news this week—the fraud trial of former President Trump; the criminal trial of Sam Bankman Fried, the founder of FMX the crypto currency exchange; and the brinksmanship of Congress around funding the government which led to the...

read more