Pastor’s Study

Here is a blog space where I would love to invite dialogue about the upcoming Sunday’s message as it is taking shape.  The Old Testament lesson for this Sunday, Joshua 3:7-17, Is about Joshua taking the lead of God’s people as they finally enter the promised land following the death of Moses. Since this weekend we will observe, “All Saints Day,” otherwise known as “Totenfest” in our German tradition Joshua leading the people across the River Jordan may well have a deep double meaning.  Crossing Jordan over into the land of promise has long been a metaphor to the faithful of crossing death into heaven.  This weekend, as we honor the memory of all of our own congregation members who have made this ‘crossing’ in the past year I would like to invite you to share a memory about someone we have lost on this blog, or to include a tribute to your own loved one who may or may not have been a member or our church.

As I plan and study for Sunday messages for the upcoming Christmas holidays I have been impressed with a series of books by Joan Wester Anderson about the activity of real ANGELS in our lives. Anderson says in her book, “Where Angels Walk,” that she made a post similar to the one you are now reading about the intervention into her life of a real angel and invited others to respond to her with their own angel stories. The result was four books full of sharing the stories she heard! As we look to the holidays, in this world so full of bad news about economics, politics, war and violence, it occured to me that we could use some good news about the activity of angels to bring peace in the midst of it all. Have you got a story to share about a  ”brush with an angel”? Share your stories here and together we can celebrate the “good news of glad tidings” that the angels first brought to the shepherds in their fields that unto us a child is born…

Hello Scott and Brittany. Our class is very small this year but that should make it even more special for the two of you, and it should make it possible for us to develop an even better relationship with one another - especially if we can use this new BLOG to stay in touch between classes! I hope other members of the congregation will chime in with their supportive posts to this site as well. Maybe others, not just from our congregation, will find this neat new spot and chime in as well as we have an ongoing conversation about our faith journey. Sooo, here we go:

At or last class we spoke all about ‘covenants’. A covenant is basically a promise from God which we are blessed by and to which we commit ourselves with promises to be faithful.  Spend some time sharing in this space some of the promises that you have made, or others have made to you and how important it is to keep promises.  This being an election year, if you listen to the news at all, you are hearing a lot of promises being given. Do you trust the promise maker or not. God always keeps God’s promises!