A SLICE OF LIFE IN THE CLC SNAPSHOTS OF CONGREGATIONS FROM AROUND THE CHURCH OF THE LUTHERAN CONFESSION As I am writing this, Watertown is… Read More »Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church Watertown, South Dakota
Elvis Presley sang “Home is where the heart is.” Computer techies would suggest “home is where your Wi-Fi connects automatically.” Poet Robert Frost said, “Home is where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”
How about you? Where is your “home?”
After being gone from “home” with my wife to the Canadian Rockies recently, I know how great it is to be back “home” in the USA.
“Home” is where we live. It is where we have been, where we can get comfortable, where we are.Read More »Heaven is Our Home!
“And they said to one another, ‘Did not our heart burn within us while He talked with us on the road, and while He opened the Scriptures to us?’” (Luke 24:32).
There are the telltale signs that readily reveal a person’s frame of mind. You watch the youngster out in the winter cold shoveling the sidewalk. From the slouch of his shoulders to the doing-as-little-as-possible attitude, it is easy to conclude that he would rather be anywhere other than where he is. His negative attitude radiates through his lackluster actions.
On the other hand you might witness the retiree out in the summertime flowerbed. You hear her humming, see the hint of a smile playing about the corners of her mouth, while her hands busily make quick work of removing those stubborn and unwelcome weeds among her petunias and roses. You easily surmise that she is happy to be improving the appearance of her property.
Yes, it is usually quite easy to tell. A downcast—perhaps guilty, sad, or disappointed—frame of mind will be as readily obvious as a mindset of joy, happiness, forgiveness, or new life.Read More »The Emmaus Transformation
“Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many. To those who eagerly wait for Him He will appear a second time, apart from sin, for salvation” (Hebrews 9:28).
Our family enjoys disc golfing. Over the years and the courses that we played, we developed the practice of allowing each player one “mulligan” per course—one second chance to replay a tee shot. The benefit, obviously, was that if you had a bad tee shot, you got another try at it; the downside was that you had to accept the result of the second throw, even if it was as bad as (or worse than) the first.Read More »“Seconds” Can Be Good or Bad
I have held my fair share of gym memberships over the years—enough to realize the purpose behind all the machines that you find there. They aren’t there just to get your body into a wide variety of physical positions—sitting, standing, lying down, bending over. Their purpose is to exercise, and thereby strengthen, the various
muscles of your body as you go through the various positions and the ever-increasing amounts of resistance.
It is the same when it comes to worship—it also comes with a purpose!
The word for “worship” in the New Testament Greek carries with it the idea of a person literally lying prostrate before someone else. Picture for yourself, perhaps, the thousands of Muslims at the call to prayer, on their knees with their foreheads to the ground. Better yet, picture Martin Luther in the movies made of his life, where he is lying completely flat on his face on the cold stone floor of the church. That is the word picture behind the idea of “worship.”Read More »Worship—With a Purpose
It must have been in one of the special Sunday cartoon strips that I saw it—because otherwise Bil Keane’s Family Circus cartoons were always in circles. I remember three frames. The first showed Billy (Jeffy?) in tears, running to find his mother. The second frame shows the same boy encountering his dad—tears were gone—“Oh! Hi, Dad.” The third frame, with Dad gone, shows the same son back in tears continuing in his search to find Mom.Read More »A Mother’s Comfort
“O all-embracing Mercy,
O ever-open Door,What should we do without Thee
When heart and eye run o’er?When all things seem against us,
To drive us to despair,We know one gate is open,
One ear will hear our prayer.”TLH 279:4
“Therefore He is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them” (Hebrews 7:25).
There is a commercial that has made the rounds over the last months on both local TV and radio. It begins with a computer voice answering a phone call, and continues with the caller giving the reason for his call, which is usually a request for some kind of help. The computer then “talks” to another computer, wondering what to do, because it is completely unable to give the required help. The caller is then forwarded “for an answer” to a pay phone somewhere that no one ever answers, or he is left with the dial-up modem noise. The commercial is then resolved by the sponsor touting itself as the place to which you can successfully go to get actual help.Read More »“God Is Able—He Always Lives!”
It was December 1941. Two noteworthy things were about to happen within hours of each other. First, there was the kick-off of the first-ever National… Read More »“Bible Sunday” — November 23, 2014
“For this reason I will not be negligent to remind you always of these things, though you know and are established in the present truth. Yes, I think it is right, as long as I am in this tent, to stir you up by reminding you, knowing that shortly I must put off my tent, just as our Lord Jesus Christ showed me. Moreover I will be careful to ensure that you always have a reminder of these things after my decease.” 2 Peter 1:12-15
But then comes summertime when those daily reminders are inclined to turn into a three-month moratorium. And it is going to happen that many things have been forgotten.
So it is that during those first days back at school much time is spent reviewing what was taught at the end of the previous school year.Read More »Restarting of School— a Wonderful Opportunity!
The company where my Dad worked was a union shop, and a strike was called because of a disagreement between management and the union. The strike lasted for at least a year. No doubt the union workers were not 100% satisfied with the fact that non-union workers were allowed in the shop. But the mediators, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), had spoken, and that was it.Read More »“God Our Savior Desires All Men to be Saved!”
