When we try to grow and prosper by ourselves, we fail. That’s the simple truth. We are not wired to grow on our own; we need outside forces. And when we think about it, without an outside force driving us, why would we grow? We would have no reason to grow. We would be content…
A Jesus Centered Community of Scripture, Faith, and Grace
Posts from 2015 (Page 4)
Living the Lectionary is a weekly devotional tool intended to give you ideas for living out the Word of God that we encounter on Sundays in worship. About this coming Sunday: 5th Sunday After Pentecost – (un)compassionate – God is compassionate in His nature. That word “compassionate” breaks down to mean “suffering together”. God literally came to our…
I’m going to quote nearly this entire passage from 2nd Corinthians 5 for you. As I do, I want you to keep an eye out for the word that keeps repeating. Got that? Okay, here we go: “For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building…
In the Bible, we are often referred to as plants. Our process of growing is described in detail all over Scripture. However, it’s important to note that nowhere are we compared to sunflowers or zinnias. We aren’t pretty. We aren’t nice. We’re useful. We are trees or vines – plants that bear fruit. Psalm 1…
Living the Lectionary is a weekly devotional tool intended to give you ideas for living out the Word of God that we encounter on Sundays in worship. About this coming Sunday: 4th Sunday After Pentecost – Uncomfortable Answers – Sometimes, God’s answers are uncomfortable to us. That is the case with Job and the disciples…
At University Lutheran, we have what’s called an eternal flame. This is a candle, encased in red, that hangs next to our big stained glass windows. The candle is never out. Every Sunday, the candle is burning. If you came in any other day during the week, it would be burning then, too. But what…
It’s the quiet ones whom we tend to forget. For example, my grandparents live in Colorado. When we go to visit, it’s my grandma who comes to greet us and their dog whose barks fill up the room. My grandpa, the quiet one, is the last person we greet. In a sense, it’s like we’ve…
When I was at Concordia – Wisconsin, I was a part of the “church work crowd.” This included fellow lay ministry students like myself as well as Lutheran education students, theology students, missions students, pre-deaconess students, and pre-seminary students. We thought we knew it all. We were under the impression that we were on a…
Show of hands. Who has ever ruined a relationship? Personally, I’m raising both of my hands. I tend to ruin relationships through assumptions. (And you know what they say about assuming things…) I’ll assume that my roommate remembered it was her turn to clean the bathroom and chose not to do it. I’ll assume that…
In the TV show Once Upon a Time, Regina Mills (aka the Evil Queen) is convinced that she will always be evil. “Always a villain, even when I’m not,” she laments. Snow White tries to change her mind, saying that she can learn to be good and earn her happy ending, but Regina is fixed…