3/30/2020 9:30:24 AM
Pastor Joel Leyrer - The Fifth Sunday in Lent - Sunday, March 29, 2020
Dear Friends in Christ, Do you know where Shunem is? I didn’t. I had to look it up. Here’s what I found. It’s a small town near the plain of Jezreel in the tribal territory of Issachar, approximately 10 miles due south of Nazareth. It was also situated on a major ancient trade route. Today it is called Sulam.
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3/25/2020 3:27:54 PM
Pastor Benjamin Wessel (Woodlawn) - Midweek Lent 5 - Wednesday, March 25, 2020
How does a war begin? Even when there has been the danger of war breaking out for a while, there is always some monumental event which gets the war started. The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand that triggered events leading to the start of WWI. The bombing of Pearl Harbor which led to the US declaring war on the Empire of Japan and the US military involvement in WW2. The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait which triggered events that led to the first Gulf War. And then, of course, there is usually some final event that marks the end of a war – usually a decisive battle that brings an enemy to their knees. In between, there are lots of battles of various sizes, “skirmishes” between enemies who are each trying to gain the upper hand with an eye toward final victory.
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3/23/2020 12:27:51 PM
Pastor Eric Schroeder - The Fourth Sunday in Lent - Sunday, March 22, 2020
I don’t need to say this, but it’s been a wild week for us all. And we don’t know the long-term impact of all this, but what we do know is that for now, things have changed in a big way. We are looking at our days differently. We might be looking at our future differently, especially in the near term. And today especially, we are reminded that we are looking at our families differently.
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3/19/2020 11:42:08 AM
Pastor Tim Wempner (Good Shepherd's) - Midweek Lent 4 - Wednesday, March 18, 2020
I’m going to sound like an snob for a moment. I recently moved here from California. The congregation at which I served was within earshot of Disneyland’s evening fireworks. We went to Disneyland about once a year. We had friends who would sign us into the park — it was free. We could then spend the day at “the happiest place on earth” — which is what Disneyland calls itself.
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3/16/2020 12:48:36 PM
Pastor Kyle Bitter - The Third Sunday in Lent - Sunday, March 15, 2020
In the 1920s, there lived a man named Morris Frank. By the time he reached twenty years of age, his life had already taken him through some unusual challenges. As a child, he had to serve as a guide for his mother who had lost each of her eyes in two separate freak accidents and depended on her son to help her get around safely. But that was only the beginning of Morris’ struggles with blindness. At the young age of six, he too went blind in one of his eyes following a horseback riding accident. Ten years later, at the age of 16, he lost his other eye in a freak boxing accident. His only recourse was to hire a young boy to guide him from place to place as he had done for his mother, but in his own words his young guides “got bored easily” and sometimes left him to fend for himself – and you can probably imagine how that went! Blindness is hard, probably harder than anyone who hasn’t experienced it can imagine, and without help it can be dangerous!
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3/12/2020 10:06:36 AM
Pastor Joel Leyrer - Midweek Lent 3 - Wednesday, March 11, 2020
Dear Friends in Christ, No one needs an explanation of what a war is. Every generation has gone through at least one, and as we age, they start to accumulate. They are such a part of life that in casual conversation you’ll sometimes even hear people personalize them as “my” or “our” war.
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3/9/2020 12:11:38 PM
Pastor Joel Leyrer - The Second Sunday in Lent - Sunday, March 8, 2020
Dear Friends in Christ, Today we will be spending time with a man who, outside of Jesus Christ himself, is arguably the most important individual in Bible history. Abram (better known by his later name, Abraham) is a major figure in the Old Testament, with almost one fourth of the Book of Genesis devoted to his story.
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3/9/2020 12:06:01 PM
Pastor Kyle Bitter - Midweek Lent 2 - Wednesday, March 4, 2020
If you were going to have surgery, would you rather be operated on by the newly hired surgeon who is doing the procedure by himself for the first time or the experienced surgeon who’s carried out the procedure hundreds if not thousands of times over the course of a career? If you were in the military and were about to go into combat, would you rather follow a new recruit, or a combat veteran who’s deployed several times already? If you needed counsel and advice in a hard time in life, would you approach a stranger who everyone says is highly intelligent and wise, or would you talk to a friend who knows you and your situation well? Even though it’s possible that the new surgeon might be more skilled than the veteran, and even though it’s possible that the veteran commander has become burned out by hard experiences, and even though it could be that the complete stranger would have better advice than a friend, I think we all know what we would do. We’d go with the person whose been there before, the person who knows what to do and who understands what you need to get through the situation yourself.
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3/2/2020 9:42:33 AM
Pastor Eric Schroeder - The First Sunday in Lent - Sunday, March 1, 2020
Don’t you wish you had a dollar for every time it’s happened to you? We say things like that when we are in familiar situations. Maybe it’s those household chores that even as are never really done, only redone: putting away clean dishes, folding another load of laundry, picking up after the kids, wiping the kitchen table clean. Don’t you wish you had a dollar for every time you’ve carried out those tasks? Or maybe it’s having that one friend or family member who considers himself an entertainer, and you wish you had a dollar for every time you’ve heard the same story or joke. It could be that part of your job or school life, the one that needs to be done but is pretty much the same every time, but some days you start trying to figure out how many times you have already performed it, and the thought crosses your mind: if I had a dollar for every time I’ve done that, I’d be a wealthy individual.
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