God

Act of God?

/ The Pastor / 24 Comments

A friend of mine posted this link in a Facebook message to a group of us and it sure got the few of us talking.  I post the link here to see what you link of it.

The Tornado, The Lutherans and Homosexuality

It is John Piper’s interpretation of the tornado that struck during the ELCA CWA in Minneapolis last Wednesday.  Was God sending the ELCA a message?  Check the link out and see what Piper has to say and then let me know here.  I am curios what your thoughts are.

I will let you know what my thoughts are later.

-edh-

The greatest miracle

/ The Pastor

I really want to tell you right now what I am doing for my sermon tomorrow, but I won’t.  I know there are a number of Salem/Belmont people who read this and I don’t want to spoil anything.

So why am I even teasing you with something I am not going to share now?  Well…part of it is to give you a heads up on what I am going to write about on Tuesday (I am taking a comp day Monday so I probably won’t post that day, but who knows).

The other part of the reason I am teasing you is that I am really excited about this.  I am still not sure how things will go tomorrow, but God is in control.  My hope is that God is glorified and that hearts are opened (not by my power but by the power of the Holy Spirit) through the greatest miracle of all.

May God be praised tomorrow and always.

-edh-

Out of the storm

/ The Pastor

In Job 38 verse 1 it says, “Then the Lord answered Job out of the storm…“.  And then in chapter 42 Job realized how foolish he was to not trust God.

In Mark 4:35-41 the disciples (with Jesus) are in the midst of a storm.  When called upon Jesus answered out of the storm…and the storm was quieted.  But the disciple are amazed and still have no clue who this Jesus is.

When you are in the midst of a storm, do you expect Jesus to answer you out of the storm; in the midst of a world crashing in all around you?  And when Jesus does answer, what do you expect?  I think people expect God to calm the storm that is raging all around us, but what God wants to do is calm the storm within us.

It is the calm that is within us; the peace that surpasses all understanding, that powers us through the storms raging all around us.  When Jesus died on the cross…FOR YOU…and when Jesus rose from the grave…FOR YOU…Jesus paved the way through the storm.  This is not a scheme to make out lives better now, but rather it is Good News…NOW (which does make our lives better).  But it’s already been done; Jesus has won; the storms have lost their power; and Jesus is already in the boat with you.

What do you need to do?  Nothing…but look behind you…Jesus right there.

-edh-

Here I come

/ The Pastor / 4 Comments

I got elected to the SW MN synod council.

This past weekend the SW MN Synod (ELCA) held it’s annual synod assembly.  This year we were at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, MN.  I was nominated for synod council a couple months ago but didn’t give it a whole lot of thought then.  Now that I got elected to a 3 year term I am beginning to wonder what I got myself into.  Initially it means a few more meetings a year and maybe some more responsibilities at next year’s synod assembly.  There will probably be some additional committee meetings and other work.  Beyond that I am not entirely sure what will happen.

But I am looking forward to this opportunity and honor:
I am looking forward to learning more about the Church.
I am looking forward to playing a more integral part of advancing Christ’s mission with the broader Church.
I am looking forward to growing in greater appreciation of what our synod leadership does (and “no” I am not just saying that because my bishop may be reading this.  Actually he has a RSS feed of my blog…now that is scary).
I am looking forward to getting to know some more of my colleagues.
I am looking forward to getting to know and working with the synod’s new Director of Evangelical Mission.
I am looking forward to growing as a leader.
I am looking forward to something new.

I may be jumping into uncharted territory but whatever happens I don’t go it alone…God goes with me and God will equip me with everything I need to carry out my duties and responsibilities.  As I said during my installation today when asked by the bishop if I will carry out my duties faithfully… “I will and I ask God to HELP and GUIDE me“.  God WILL help and guide me…that I know.

So there you have it…I came…I got elected…and I am installed as a synod council member…

…so watch out SW MN…here I come 🙂

-edh-

The grace of God

/ The Pastor / 2 Comments

I have been slow to update anything here and for that I apologize.   I guess vacation really threw me off my blogging routine.  Let’s see what we can do to change my past habits.

In any case (enough with the excuses)…I am preaching my way through the Acts texts this month.  After Easter the first lesson is from the books of Acts so I thought I would spend some time here with my congregations.  So far it has been a fun journey.  Yesterday (May 10) the text was from Act 8; Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch.  After Philip spends some time sharing the Gospel, the Eunuch sees some water and asks “What is to prevent me from being baptized?”

What a great question…

…but I phrased the question like this yesterday, “What is to prevent me from receiving the grace of God?“ Ultimately…I believe this is what the Eunuch was really asking.  So I turned the question and threw it back at the congregation and asked them: is there anything that can prevent us from receiving the grace of God? Can sin do it?  Can our dark past or embarrassing secrets do it?  Can hardship?  Well…the (very) short answer is…NO!  Nothing can prevent us from receiving the grace of God.  We may be able to turn our backs on God, but God is not going to stop giving us His grace.

The Ethiopian Eunuch is so overjoyed and blown away by this amazing grace that he returns home praising God.  How could he possibly keep this to himself?  This was indeed amazing grace.  But…is it really amazing grace for us…right now?

I believe the problem with the church today is that we have taken grace for granted.  We are so used to hearing about grace.  We are comforted by songs like “Amazing Grace how Sweet the Sound”.  We discuss grace as a good Bible study topic.  But how often do we really contemplate God’s grace…for us…right now.  I mean think about it…each breath we take is an example of God’s grace.  Each time we wake up in the morning we experience God’s grace.  The birth of a brand new baby is an experience of God’s grace.  And…coming up to the table to receive the body and blood of Jesus is an experience of grace.  But yet we take this for granted.  We should be going through our days overjoyed with what God has done for us.

Nothing can prevent us from receiving the grace of God.  Period.  Don’t take it for granted, rather, praise God always and forever…so much so that people think that you are on something.

God’s grace is indeed amazing…what a sweet, sweet sound.

Amen!

-edh-

P.S.  Next Sunday (May 17) is Acts 10…Peter and Cornelius.  I will have some thoughts on this text coming up later.

That time of the year

/ The Pastor

About this time of the year I start feeling a bit overwhelmed.  Holy Week is bearing down on us; there are classes to prepare for; Sunday worship to prepare for; I have a funeral this week and that is all among anything else I usually do doing the week.  I expressed this feeling to my wife this past Saturday.  And…when I started feeling overwhelmed one would think I would turn to God for help, but often times I try to work harder to make sure I handle everything alright, but this week God has had a sense of humor and thus has humbled me.

Later in the day on Saturday (after I expressed my feeling of being overwhelmed) my wife and I discovered we had an unwelcome visitor in our basement.  My suspicion was a chipmunk or squirrel.  On Sunday after worship we went downstairs to check things out.  And there it was…a squirrel.  I chased it around for a while and was getting close to chasing it out the door, but it decided it wanted to stay.  The next few days entailed me searching the basement high and low for the pesky thing. I would see evidence of it once in a while and actually saw it once, but it quickly ran and hid.  I set a rat trap, but it just sprung the trap and took the bait.  Smart little creature.  Eventually, on Thursday, the squirrel let down it’s guard and got caught in the trap.  No more squirrel.  As frustrating as it was, when I look back on the last few days, it was kind of funny.

Now…today…I went over to the church to get the mail.   I dropped off the church mail in the office and brought mine to my office.  As I was walking back to the parsonage I realized my pocket felt a little lighter.  Yup…I locked my keys in my office for the very first time.

“Yes God…I get it.  You are in control.”

Today is my day off and I am enjoying my weird little circumstances from the past week and I am smiling.  And you know something…I am not feeling too overwhelmed right.  God is indeed in control…

…and praise be to God!

But please God…no more squirrels.

-edh-

“I want that”

/ The Pastor

I had a neat thing happen to me while serving Communion this past Sunday.  As people come forward I typically serve the bread and one of my deacons serves the wine.  For those who have not been instructed or for those who choose not to receive the bread and wine, I offer a blessing.  In this case it is typically children younger than 5th grade.

On Sunday I was serving communion as usual and offering a word of blessing for the children.  For the blessing I place my hand on the person’s forehead and say, “The Lord guides you as a sheep of his own pasture.”  And while making the sign of the cross on their forehead I say, “You are a beloved child of God“.  On Sunday I gave this blessing to a child but when the adult behind this certain child approached me to receive the bread she said, “I want that” (referring to the blessing).  She wasn’t refusing the bread…she just wanted both.  So I gave her the bread and then gave her the blessing.  She walked away with a big smile on her face.

I will never forget that phrase…”I want that“…it still makes smile 🙂 …and gives me hope.  There are still people that desire to have God’s blessing on their lives.  There are still people that value the words of promise that Jesus offers us.  There are still people that want God’s guidance.  Watching the news I sometimes wonder if allegiances are shifting from a dependence on God to a dependence on government.  I don’t want to politicize a beautiful moment from worship but these are things that are weighing heavy on my heart recently.

Let’s, as a people of God, announce and proclaim a blessing upon all our leaders, hoping they are faithful to God’s call and responsive to God’s guidance. Let’s announce and proclaim a blessing upon ALL people who are searching for meaning.

I look forward to our next communion service.  I look forward to inviting people to receive a blessing and I look forward to seeing how many people respond.  In the mean time…I hold my hand out and say “The Lord guides YOU as a sheep of his own pasture” <making the sign of the cross> “YOU are a beloved child of God, Amen”

-edh-

Amos and injustice

/ The Pastor / 5 Comments

Today I am making the “bold move” and not preaching on the Gospel text.  Rather I am preaching on Amos.  I don’t think I have ever done that before, but I am looking forward to it.  I think the reason Amos caught my attention this week was the fact that we served at The Banquet (I’ll write more about this experience later) a couple days ago and then I read Amos talking about injustice.  2 + 2 were put together and the answer came back…preach on Amos.  So that is what I am doing.

One of the questions I hear being asked is:  What does God want? The answer comes in verse 24 of Amos 5 where God says through Amos, “But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!”  I think we miss way too many injustices that go on around us.  We get so focused on doing what we think is so supremely important that we can’t see those who truly need to experience God’s love through us.  We try to let ourselves off the hook by falling for Satan’s excuse that injustices only happen in poor countries thousands of miles away and that there is nothing we can do about it.  Well…that’s not true.  We can do something about it AND injustices don’t just happen across the sea…they happen in our own backyard.  It’s funny…we can see injustices in Africa and Central America, but we can’t see them in our own communities.

I think we need to read Amos more often and listen to this prophet speak to us right now…here in this place so we can “…let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!”

Have a very blessed day with our eyes wide open.  Amen

-edh-