Saint Andrew's Episcopal Church Families

In my family, we tell the story that my sister's first words were a loud and firm, “Me! Mine!” I think that her language must have had something to do with living with a bossy older brother. Given our innate human drive to possess, though, I imagine that she is not the only child who learns the word “mine” early on in life. To covet is “the need to have, possess, or acquire in order to secure being and worth.” (1) It is the pervasive, human “desiring disease,” and it is a ste

Often, when we think of the biblical commandment to “keep the Sabbath,” our imaginations are full of the movies and novels that portray the dull Sundays of the past, where hours were spent sitting on hard benches in church and then in boring conversations about the weather, as people squirmed in their corsets in stuffy parlors. Other times, we might listen to the intricate lists of things that our orthodox Jewish brothers and sisters must avoid on the Sabbath (which, of cours