I'll Have The Curry.

       “Blank Slate Thinking” Photo by  Gareth David  on  Unsplash 2 Corinthians 5:14-17 A Sermon by Carrie Houston, given on June 13, 2021 at First Baptist Church of Austin, Texas When you walked into this space this morning, you brought something very unique with you. No, it’s not your characteristic laugh, or your flashy fashion style, or the cup of coffee in your hand. Whether you like it or not, you brought in with you a unique worldview that is specific to who you are as a person and the things you’ve experienced in life.     This collection of attitudes, values, expectations and biases go with you everywhere you go, informing your every move, helping you quickly process new information in front of you.   For example, if you believe humans are fundamentally good, your first thought when meeting someone for the first time, wouldn’t jump to the suspicious, but rather, you’d think the best of the person until they prove you otherwise....

A pastoral prayer written for The First Baptist Church of Austin on the occasion of our first worship service back in person inside our building.  The passage of time is uniquely a human experience.  We experience life in stages marked by milestones like birthdays, school graduations, weddings, job promotions, divorce, and death. We come to expect these events to help mark the special from the mundane of the day to day.   Sometimes they are joyful and other times these markers are the hardest things we will ever have to go through. We never expected to add “pandemic” to the list our list of time markers.   The past year and a half has been one that we all experienced in different ways.  Marked by the passing of friends and relatives, the pain of loneliness, or the fear of the unknown, we enter this space changed people this morning.  We are grieving in a new way.  Grieving those we lost.  Grieving the time that passed between visits t...