Every Sunday, we start out our service with Confession and Forgiveness. It usually goes something like this. We recognize that we have sinned against God and against each other. We confess that we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves. Then, a miracle happens. The pastor proclaims forgiveness to us. This past Sunday,…
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Posts by University Lutheran (Page 56)
I’m sure you have all heard this song. I was not nearly as familiar with it until one of my students this year insisted on playing it every time I rode in his car. The chorus goes like this: “Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna run around and desert…
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…
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…