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“BREAD OF LIFE” READINGS NOvember 2016

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TLH = The Lutheran Hymnal, 1941; WS = Worship Supplement 2000; [ ] = Biblical Events Noted

Date Verse Reading Comments [Festivals of the Church Year]

Nov 1 TLH 190 Isaiah 35:1-10 Jesus brings redemption, peace, and joy to His people. Sorrow and sighing flee away!

Nov 2 TLH 503 Isaiah 37:14-20 Hezekiah prays that the name of the Lord would be held high and known among the nations.

Nov 3 WS 749 Micah 4:1-5 Christ’s kingdom would be established in the hearts of many, and they would walk in His ways and approach Him in worship.

Nov 4 WS 750 John 3:1-21 Jesus taught Nicodemus that His kingdom is a matter of the Spirit’s work in the heart, of faith in God’s Son.

All Saints’ Day A Minor Festival With Major Comfort

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“I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened
in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you,
the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints” 

(Ephesians 1:18, NIV).

As you read this article, there’s a festival fast approaching on the church year calendar. It’s a festival that doesn’t receive much attention these days. It is “All Saints’ Day.” It falls each year on the first day of November.

How and when did the Festival of All Saints originate, and what is its significance? In the days of the early church, when Christianity was an outlawed religion, followers of Jesus were subjected to bitter persecution. Many were killed for refusing to knuckle under to the authorities and renounce their religious beliefs. It was during this period of open hostility toward Christians that the church chose a day of the year on which to remember those who had been martyred, and to praise God for His mercy in preserving them in faith amidst the fiery trials they faced. The name they ascribed to the day was All Saints Day. Later, all who died while anchoring their hopes in Jesus were remembered on this day, with thanksgiving to God.

Heaven is Our Home!

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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.

Hymn 463 “For All the Saints, Who from Their Labors Rest”

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If William Walsham How, the author of this hymn, saw it in The Lutheran Hymnal, I think he might not entirely approve. The words in our hymnal are his, but the order is not; and three of the original stanzas have been left out.

In this long hymn, How develops the theme of the Church Militant1 looking to the Church Triumphant2 as an example and encouragement to us in our daily battles, finally culminating in the glorious return of Christ on Judgment Day. That’s a multi-part theme, which How developed in a logical and chronologically progressive manner. Unfortunately, that careful development has been somewhat weakened in our version due to the omission of three verses and a change in the placement of one verse.

The Real Thing

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“Therefore it was necessary that the copies of the things in the heavens should be purified with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ has not entered the holy… 

Carl Monrad “C. M.” Gullerud (1908-1995)

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As we approach the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, we take a brief look at the lives of influential and important Lutheran leaders and theologians. Carl Monrad Gullerud was born into the Norwegian Synod in… 

Good News Transportation!

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In this series, thoseinvolved with CLC foreign missions profile one aspect of our overseas endeavors. When Jesus said; “Go into all  the world and preach the gospel to every creature,” He did not say how… 

St. John’s Lutheran Church Okabena, Minnesota

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Snapshots of Congregations from Around the Church of the Lutheran Confession St. John’s Lutheran Church was founded in May of 1895 by German immigrant farmers in West Heron Lake Township, Jackson County, Minnesota. It started…