Newsletter (Page 8)

Lost and Found

Ashley Garner knew it was too late. She had lost her wedding ring in the yard as her family was putting the final touches on the outside preparations for Hurricane Ian that was barreling down on their Ft. Myers home. They looked and looked, but pretty soon it was time to go inside and hunker…

Famous

Scott Andrusz is famous in certain circles. You don’t know Scott? Well, then you don’t run in his circles. You don’t find what he does to be important. But to many people, he is important. Scott is important because he did something crazy and quirky. Because he did something different and a little weird. Scott…

Fidelity

Somebody recently asked me if I knew what “Hi-Fi” stood for. I quickly answered, “high fidelity.” If you haven’t heard the term, it relates to the pursuit of “purer sound” in audio recording and playback – something with less noise and interference, something closer to what it is like to being in the same room…

Winning the Lottery

LaQuedra Edwards gave herself a $40 “lottery allowance” that she could spend on lottery tickets. When she went to the grocery store to spend her allowance, “some rude person” bumped into her, causing her to hit a different button than what she meant to. The result was purchasing a $30 lottery ticket instead of the…

The Speed of the World

Is the world speeding up? In some ways, we would say that the question is preposterous. The Earth continues to spin on its axis at the speed of 460 meters per second (at the equator). But perhaps the speed of the earth is a bigger question than how fast we are spinning or going around…

Grace

“Grace” like “Faith” can be a difficult word for understand. When you look up the definition of the word, you come up with “simple elegance or refinement of movement,” as the first definition. Even the second definition is only “courteous goodwill”. Only in looking at subsequent definitions do you find something more like the theological…

Faith

Charles Blondin was a tightrope walker who made a name for himself stretching a cable over the quarter of a mile between the United States and Canadian sides of Niagra Falls. Blondin impressed many people by easily walking across the tightrope time and time again. He even upped the ante several times, going across in…

“Of”

“Of” is a pretty small word for all of its uses. I’m reminded of when I learned that “Of David” above many of the Psalms (e.g. Psalm 4, 23, 31) can mean different things. Some of the “of David” psalms mean that they are written by him, others mean that they are written according to…

“Community”

If you’ve ever played the Parker Brothers game “Monopoly,” you’ve landed on a space called “Community Chest”. This space has its roots in the history of Atlantic City, NJ, which is the “base city” for the game’s many property names. The “Community Chest” in the early days of Atlantic City was a philanthropic organization which…

Jesus Centered

I call “A Jesus Centered Community of Scripture, Faith, and Grace” our “identity statement” at University Lutheran. In organizational parlance, there are mission statements galore, but this isn’t really a “mission statement” because rather than telling us “what we do” it tells us who we are.  Because of our baptisms, the biggest part of our…