 Black cat! Oh no!
Have you ever been tempted to go home and dive under the bed when a black cat crosses your path? Okay. Maybe that’s too dramatic. But, maybe with that small voice of doubt whispering in your ear, you’ve thought to yourself, “Oh no! I hope I don’t have bad luck today!” Or maybe you just knocked on wood to reassure yourself that good luck was still coming your way. Though cats of all colors throughout history have often been associated with good luck rather than bad, life took a sudden wrong turn for the black ones in the Dark Ages when, in 1232 AD, a papal bull by Pope Gregory IX declared them an “incarnation of Satan.” Things only went downhill from there. Folks in the Middle Ages started burning black cats in bonfires on Holy Days like Shrove Tuesday, the first Sunday of Lent, and even Easter. Much later, Puritans in America connected them to the practice of witchcraft. Maybe, it’s the black cats who should think, “Oh no!” Well, there you have a temptation, with deep theological roots, that holds no water. Or does it! Might there be others? Right in front of our church-loving eyes? During Our Season of Faith 2025, Rev. Jamie Brame will wrestle with temptations, spiritual temptations, not cats, for four Sundays, September 21 through October 12. It should be quite a match! Music will be provided by The Four Temptations, four shows only. Our contest with temptation is only three Sundays away. Don’t succumb to the temptation to skip it. And be kind to black cats.
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Step on a crack and break your mother’s back. How’s that for a crippling thought! Then there’s the horrible disaster of walking under a ladder. Lord, save us! All around us, all sorts of behavior tempt bad luck to rain on our parades. Knock on wood. Do you suppose our faith might have its own set of cracks and ladders – dearly held beliefs, superstitions even – from which we must never stray? Even though theologically, they might not hold much water, we don’t dare set them aside for a moment. We need their certainty to keep us on course and out of trouble. So, we step over them or around them all the time. Why take chances? That’s certainly understandable with personal salvation hanging in the balance. The stakes seem mighty high. Every day. If justification is the wager, it’s comforting to sing a familiar song. Let’s all hum along. Let’s cling to certainty. Let’s not gamble with doubt. Let’s just count the cracks in our spiritual sidewalks and avoid them just to be on the safe side. And move on. Unless there’s an open ladder ahead. So, what happens? If we allow it, our heavenly pilgrimage becomes a tenuous trip along a hazard-filled sidewalk. Rather than raising our eyes upward, seeking the boundless richness of faith in front of us, some of our beliefs push our heads downward as we measure carefully where our steps fall. The 14th edition of Our Season of Faith this month will suggest that maybe there’s a more liberating way to walk for all of us, where our souls can turn toward the divine light as easily as a morning glory turns its purple face toward the sun. Maybe there’s a holy sojourn out there where our entire being rests in God along a sidewalk free of cracks and ladders, where our attention is not cast upon our feet. Over four Sundays, September 21 through October 12, Rev. Jamie Brame will examine four familiar cracks (ladders, if you prefer) in our sidewalks and tempt us, with trepidation, to consider stepping on them (or walking under them). Just to see what happens. He’ll wrestle with certainty and fight with doubt. Our Season of Faith, titled 4 temptations, should be quite a battle. Jamie will offer new wine in new wineskins. Come and see. Come and hear. Come and drink. Music during OSOF will be provided by The Four Temptations, with live performances during worship. Don’t be tempted to miss a single Sunday!   The 14th edition of Our Season of Faith is just ahead, September 21 through October 12. If you're new to First Christian, you probably don't know how OSOF started or what it's all about. If you've been around a while, maybe you've forgotten some of the wonderful details and need a short refresher!
Our Season of Faith A homemade recipe for stewardship Out of steam! Fifteen years ago, First Christian Church finally ran out of steam. Woosh. There must be a better way. We’d completely exhausted our enthusiasm for stewardship consultants who appeared each year with their plans for committees and subcommittees and training sessions and dinners. Surefire ways to raise the annual church budget. Foolproof. There was the stairstep campaign which compared stewardship to climbing stairs. On a diagram, (everybody got their own copy), church families found the step on which their giving stood, and the campaign pressed them to climb their giving just one more gentle step. One more painless percent. Go ahead. Give it a try. It’s easy. And how about the remarkable campaign where saddle bags packed with information and pledge cards traveled among church families, one family delivering the financial mail to the next Those old days were filled with case statements, tailored reports and analytics. Year after year, stewardship was like that iconic 1960’s Coca Cola commercial that promoted Coke as “That refreshing new feeling.” And year after year, with each new feeling, stewardship became an unrefreshing drink despite all the sugar. Pulpit sermons preached it. Pressure and persuasion in equal portions. Well, fifteen years ago a committee convened to find a better way. They searched for a homemade recipe to add faith back into the financial soup. What emerged was Our Season of Faith, a tasty concoction that combined tablespoons of generosity, responsibility and gratitude with heaping helpings of spirituality, self-awareness and compassion. Stir vigorously until a deeper sense of purpose and meaning emerges. Simmer on low and serve. These days the recipe is simple, the ingredients the same. Across four Sundays each fall, OSOF offers an open invitation to embark on a stirring journey to experience uplifting spiritual growth. Each year’s trip finds mountains of inspiration to take travelers from the ordinary to the unforgettable. It’s a buckle-up-and-get-ready adventure. OSOF sounds like a travel guide! Among some great outings, the summer we spent on John Glover’s farm growing an acre of vegetables as a way of growing our own spiritual gardens was maybe our most memorable and rewarding excursion. And in 2023, Brock Lee, a talking member of the cabbage family, led us through Broc-tober. At journey’s end, stewardship is the concluding extension of every trip, a final spiritual expression. Giving becomes a defining, concluding moment of faith. And the results have been glorious. Without talk about goals or budgets or steps or saddlebags, First Christian has transformed sharing our resources – time, talents and money – from a conversation about raising dollars and managing finances into a demonstration about living a life that reflects God's values. Our Season of Faith is home cooking – a recipe for stewardship where the essential ingredient is faith. This September, it will be time to hit the OSOF road again. Watch for details about our itinerary. Your travel guide is coming soon.  Out at the end of our driveway, Linda has planted a garden where before there was only roots and hardscrabble ground. Looks pretty good, if I may say so. Anyway, I was watering the garden one morning last weekend while Linda was in Florida, when a woman who was out walking her dog passed by. She said, Your wife did a lovely job with the garden. I replied, Thank you. She helped me quite a bit. The woman hesitated before resuming her walk, but I heard her say under her breath, Your wife is the only one I ever saw working on it. Yes, some of our neighbors are busybodies.
The next day, I was out at the Glovers’ farm hoeing in our “Season of Faith” garden. I was using my new 2-prong/hoe with a telescoping, 34-inch handle (Lowes, $17.98) when John walked up, examined my work and said, So you actually can do a little farming. I did not like his attitude. I ended up talking to my brother and complaining that my farming prowess has not been garnering the respect I feel I am due. I figured Dale would understand since he has completed all of the coursework and has received the title of “Master Gardener.” He keeps all of the Kansas family stocked throughout the summer with okra, tomatoes, cucumbers, melons, peppers, squash and such. Anyway, Dale says, You know, Gary, I hear that the federal government pays some farmers not to grow crops. His voice trailed off, Maybe you could get in on that. Third child – need I say more? Well, disrespect aside, I think this Season of Faith garden is going to prove to be a blessing – to me, at least. After our Saturday planting session, Linda and I got away to the beach for a couple of days, but on our journey back to Wilson, we traveled on the back roads: NC-50 out of Holly Ridge, staying north on NC-41, then on to NC-111. There are a lot of farms along that stretch. It was near dusk, the end of the work day, and everything seemed quiet. Faint memories floated through my head of some days spent a half century ago at a farmhouse sitting on a couple hundred acres of land between Sherman and Van Alstyne, Texas. Rocking on a porch . . . burning the day’s trash . . . looking out on the fields as darkness fell. Pure nostalgia wrested from no more than a handful of days in my life. The thing is this: City life has made us look at work in different ways. Something to be done . . . something necessary . . . productive even. But not always something to be embraced. Vacations have become about getting away . . . far away. And I cannot tell you how many of my friends and family members talk for years about retiring before they actually can pull the trigger. I know a barrel of folks, who when they were fifty-some-odd years old with a life expectancy of eighty-plus, could not let a day pass without talking about the day they would retire. But there I was, standing with my co-workers in a plowed field with a hoe in my hands as darkness began to envelope me. The half dozen rows that we had worked were pretty with the darker, up-turned soil showing and the nut grass chopped out. I even allowed myself a few minutes to wonder and worry about whether it was going to rain. Someone said we even had a couple of peppers on the plants – eight days of a garden and we already had a harvest on our hands. God is good, I know, but that doesn’t even begin to say it properly. So, I hope you get away for a few days this summer. Away from your work. But I also hope you get to spend a few evenings surveying what you have accomplished here: a mowed yard, a painted fence, a mighty barbeque . . . whatever. And I hope you can taste and see that life is good and work can be holy. And that God blesses all of it. Amen and amen. And remember one more thing – I can hoe with the best of them, and don’t you forget it, John Glover. Blessings and Peace, Gary #fccwilsonnc #ncdisciples #wanderings #revgarywalling #ccdoc #gardening #ourseasonoffaith #faithblog #allarewelcome #taketimeforyourself #icangardentoo |
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UPDATEDJanuary 20, 2026
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ABOUT USFirst Christian Church is a part of the larger protestant denomination Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).
Our denomination emphasizes Christian unity, open communion, and a commitment to justice and inclusion. Disciples value freedom of belief, encouraging individuals to study scripture and follow Christ according to their own conscience. With the motto “A movement for wholeness in a fragmented world,” the denomination seeks to be a welcoming and compassionate presence in both local communities and the wider world. |
CONTACTChurch office: 252-237-4125
Email: [email protected] 207 Tarboro Street North | Wilson, NC Office hours: Monday-Thursday, 9AM-2PM 
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