The Lutheran

Showing the love of Christ

/ The Pastor

On August 22, 2011 I wrote a post about a “mission activity” that the council of Salem Lutheran Church did on the first day of school last year.  The post is called Doughnut holes. Click on the link to read about what we did.

Anyway…

The Lutheran magazine did a little story about this mission activity in their “Two Month out” section in the June issue.  Very exciting.  When we planned this mission activity we never thought it would get so much attention.

PRAISE BE TO GOD!

All we wanted to do was welcome kids and parents back to school by showing the love of Christ in a very practical way.

We weren’t trying to recruit.
We weren’t standing on boxes preaching “Repent!”.
We were doing nothing but welcoming people with a smile while serving doughnut holes, juice and coffee (and tissues for parents).

The idea was simple and practical…and a lot of fun.  It was something anyone could do.  We saw many smiles that morning and made our day.  Will we do this again?  Absolutely!  Will we continue to show the love of Christ in a practical way?  I sincerely hope so.

How is God calling you to show His love in a practical way?

edh -|—

Really?

/ The Pastor

I recently read a little blurb in the March issue of The Lutheran.  Check this out:

A British university study suggests that people of strong faith can spread
religion through a “believers’ gene” that is part of their DNA.
The Proceedings of the Royal Society B, a prestigious journal
of Britain’s Royal Society of scientists, theorizes a “predisposition
toward religion.” Author Robert Rowthorn suggests that people with
strong religious beliefs tend to have more children and this, combined
with a genetic predisposition to believe, can explain the expansion of religion.

Wow…I think someone needs to tell these people that they have too much time on their hands but more importantly about the work of the Holy Spirit.  Then again…maybe they have figured out how the Holy Spirit “really” works.  Who knew that God programs us at the DNA level to believe.  The next thing you know is that on CSI, while they are doing a DNA profile, you will hear them say, “Hey look…we have a Christian.”

But seriously…this is just another sad example of how people just can not leave some mysteries up to God.  There is this insatiable desire to try to figure God out.  We can’t just leave things up to faith.  I mean…there are some things we can not fully explain.  I think this is just another attempt to remove God from the picture and become gods ourselves.  Surprise, surprise.

For me…the wonder of creation is that I don’t totally understand it.  I love being surprised.  If everything was calculated, figured out and predetermined ahead of time life would be incredibly boring.

“Believers’ gene”…nope.  It’s just good ole fashioned parenting.  No mystery there.

-edh-