Posts by University Lutheran (Page 3)

Christianity after an Election

I remember cheering for a turtle race in middle school. There were three or four turtles, each distinguished with a small spot of blue, red, yellow, or green paint. We cheered for the turtles as they “raced” to the finish line. The winners celebrated, the rest of us deflated a little as our champion turtles…

Saints All

This coming Sunday is the celebration of All Saints. The celebration of All Saints dates back to the early days of Christianity. The church father Tertullian once said that “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.” That was certainly the case as Christianity grew with many of the leaders of Christian…

RED-formation

RED. It’s a color that evokes passion, perhaps even danger. Fire trucks, blood, chili peppers, lipstick….and Reformation Sunday. This upcoming Sunday is Reformation Sunday, and this should serve as the reminder that University Lutheran’s tradition is for people to wear red on Reformation Sunday. We do this because it matches the red of the paraments…

Envisioning

This past Sunday our church council met for our regular monthly meeting. One of the things that we have been working on (and will continue to work on) is a vision for what we can do as a church and student center over the next five years. Since this isn’t just a vision for the…

Praying in a Hurricane

I’m writing this on Wednesday morning before Hurricane Milton makes landfall later tonight. When you read it, we will be receiving reports about the impact of Hurricane Milton just as we did from Hurricane Helene. Right now, there are people across my social media feeds sending out requests for prayer as Milton approaches. So it…

Stewards of Jesus

“Steward” is a word that doesn’t get used very often in our current vernacular. Perhaps you understand “steward” by its related word “stewardship,” which unfortunately often gets used as a code word for “church fundraising effort”. And sure, we are indeed called to be stewards of our money – but I think we fail to…

Patience is a virtue

I don’t know about you, but I have clear memories of my mother telling me, “Jay, patience is a virtue.” It was perhaps the first thing that I knew to call a “virtue”. It’s also something that I have to tell myself most times when I find myself standing in line for something. Recently at…

Jumping into John

The Gospel of John is a little….different. Unlike the other three Gospels, John presents things in a different order that doesn’t seem to based on chronology. He doesn’t include some of the same stories that the other Gospels do (e.g. no sermon on the mount), and he gives us stories that we wouldn’t otherwise have…

Catch Phrase

See if you can identify these catch phrases from tv and movie characters: “Stop trying to make ‘fetch’ happen.” “D’oh!” “Winter is coming.” “That’s what she said.” “Say hello to my little friend.” Maybe a few of them stumped you, but you probably connected to at least one of the catch phrases. Perhaps in your…

Spoken so that

John records Jesus as saying “These things I have spoken to you that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.” (John 15) The context of the verse shows that He says this about HIs encouragement to His disciples to follow God’s commandments. And the purpose is not “so you’ll…