The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.” Helen Keller observed that “faith is the strength by which a shattered world shall emerge into the light.” And John Calvin wrote faith is “the firm knowledge of God’s benevolence toward us.” While none of these definitions are fully complete, each gives us a glimpse of this Christian cornerstone, much like the beginning of Hebrews 11, which affirms that “faith is the assurance of things hoped for.”
To set the stage for her “Circles of faith, Circle of Empowerment” message from Hebrews 11:23-28, the Rev. Dr. Lis Valle-Ruiz proclaimed during the recently renamed Association of Partners in Christian Education conference that attendees were going to experience the Holy Spirit throughout their whole body.
To set the stage for her “Circles of faith, Circle of Empowerment” message from Hebrews 11:23-28 on Friday, the Rev. Dr. Lis Valle-Ruiz proclaimed during the recently renamed Association of Partners in Christian Education conference that attendees were going to experience the Holy Spirit throughout their whole body.
During opening worship at the Association of Presbyterian Church Educators annual gathering, the Rev. Shannon Johnson Kershner asked some 500 participants gathered in person and 200 joining online to put on “their glasses of Imagination.”
Whoever wrote the book of Hebrews — especially the 11th chapter, which the Presbyterian Association of Musicians was studying as part of its online 50th anniversary celebration — wasn’t a very careful reader of the biblical account of humankind’s first murder, told in Genesis 4:10-10.
