Today is January 2nd. Notably, many employers will give people the first day of the New Year off. This may be because late nights and some possible over indulging that might not make for the most productive employees on the 1st. Today many people are getting back to work, back “into the grind.” We have…

I was talking to someone today about how he always thought that the “Twelve Days of Christmas” had something to do with Advent. That all of that “partridge in a pear tree” stuff was all a count down to Christmas Day. But he had learned this year that the 12 days of Christmas are the…

Tempest, my middle child, recently celebrated her 8th birthday. One of the things that we do around birthdays is to mark height on a height chart that we have in our house. The chart showed that she had grown almost 3 full inches since her last birthday! I tried to imagine what that would be…

“Nausea, heartburn, indigestion, upset stomach, diarrhea….” If you remember the old “Pepto Bismol” commercials, you may remember those stomach ailments being sung to a little tune. The tune was followed up by something like, “Pepto Bismol coats and soothes so that you can get fast relief when you need it most.” And in some ways,…

Every church has some quirks. University Lutheran is no exception. One of our quirks is this thing we call an “Annual Focus”. It’s sort of a year-long theme for what we’re doing together as a church. We just got done with “A Jesus Centered Community”. That one may have sounded familiar because it starts off…

Since around September the elders, Council, and Pastor Jay have been talking about the idea of a sabbatical for him starting in May and running to July. We recognize, however, that while things have been being sketched out, we have told the congregation a little about these discussions, but haven’t really gotten into many of…

This past Sunday our Council met and continued to develop our vision for the coming years. That vision is, “By the time that 2030 arrives, the people of University Lutheran will have established trusted avenues taken by members to invest in the lives of students living in the housing marketed to the three campuses of…

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…

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…