Your nature is a hard thing to change; it takes time…. I have heard of people who have life-changing, miraculous turnarounds, people set free from addiction after a single prayer, relationships saved where both parties “let go, and let God.” But it was not like that for me. For all that “I was lost, I am found,” it is probably more accurate to say, “I was really lost. I’m a little less so at the moment.” And then a little less and a little less again. That to me is the spiritual life. The slow reworking and rebooting the computer at regular intervals, reading the small print of the service manual. It has slowly rebuilt me in a better image. It has taken years, though, and it is not over yet.

—Bono, lead singer of U2

An eight-year-old boy with a younger sister dying of leukemia was told that without a blood transfusion, she would die. His parents explained if his blood was compatible, he could be the donor.

They asked to test his blood. He said OK. It was a match. Then they asked if he would give his sister a pint of his blood — that it could be her only chance at life.

He said he’d have to think about it overnight.

The next day he told his parents he was willing to donate his blood. At the hospital he was put on a gurney beside his six-year-old sister. Both were hooked up to IVs. A nurse withdrew a pint of his blood, and put it in the girl’s IV.

The boy lay on his gurney in silence as the blood dripped into his sister, until the doctor stopped to check on him.

Then he looked up and said, “How soon ‘til I start to die?”

— From Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott

Martin Rinkert was a minister in the little town of Eilenburg in Germany some 350 years ago. He was the son of a poor coppersmith, but somehow, he managed to work his way through an education. Finally, in the year 1617, he was offered the post of Archdeacon in his hometown parish. A year later, what has come to be known as the Thirty-Years-War broke out. His town was caught right in the middle. In 1637, the massive plague that swept across the continent hit Eilenburg… people died at the rate of fifty a day and the man called upon to bury most of them was Martin Rinkert. In all, over 8,000 people died, including Martin’s own wife. His labors finally came to an end about 11 years later, just one year after the conclusion of the war. His ministry spanned 32 years, all but the first and the last overwhelmed by the great conflict that engulfed his town. Tough circumstances in which to be thankful. But he managed. And he wrote these words:

Now thank we all our God

With heart and hands and voices;

Who wondrous things hath done,

In whom his world rejoices.

It takes a magnificent spirit to come through such hardship and express gratitude. Here is a great lesson. Surrounded by tremendous adversity, thanksgiving will deliver you…with heart and hand and voices.

The Greek philosophers were the ones who talked most about the immortality of the soul, and they used a beautiful analogy to explain it. They saw the soul like a homing pigeon taking to a far land and when it is release, it always instinctively and unerringly returns to its true home. The soul they say is like that bird. In this life, we’re living in a foreign land or in a cage, death, therefore, in this view is a release – freeing the soul to return instinctively and unerringly to its true home. Now that’s beautiful, but it’s not Christian. It’s in much of our poetry and in much of our hymnody, you get some hints of it in the Bible, but that’s not primarily the teaching of the Bible. The primary teaching of scripture is not the immortality of the soul, but the resurrection of the body and eternal life. The Bible does not affirm that immortality is part and parcel of what it means to be human, but the Bible rather talks about eternal life as gifts – the gift of God in Jesus Christ to those who respond in faith to him.

If you’re going to live beyond death, the Bible says, there must be a resurrection of the body. A resurrection of who we are as we are as persons, yet made new by Christ himself, who even now sitting upon the throne, keeps saying, behold I am making all things new. When Paul was confronted with what people felt to be the preposterousness of this idea of the resurrection of the body, when you consider what happens to the body in death – he said, we will have a resurrected new body. And just as the Greeks had an analogy to talk about the immortality of the soul, so Paul had an analogy to talk about the resurrection of the body. He said it’s like a farmer, planting a seed in the ground, and the shell of the husk falls away and new life appears. So we die, to be born again into new life.

Maxie Dunnam, All This and Heaven, Too

“The love for equals is a human thing–of friend for friend, brother for
brother. It is to love what is loving and lovely. The world smiles.

The love for the less fortunate is a beautiful thing–the love for those who
suffer, for those who are poor, the sick, the failures, the unlovely. This
is compassion, and it touches the heart of the world.

The love for the more fortunate is a rare thing–to love those who succeed
where we fail, to rejoice without envy with those who rejoice, the love of
the poor for the rich, of the black man for the white man. The world is
always bewildered by its saints.

And then there is the love for the enemy–love for the one who does not love
you but mocks, threatens, and inflicts pain. The love of the tortured for
the torturer. This is God’s love. It conquers the world.”

Frederick Buechner in his book, The Magnificent Defeat.

The Reformation came to Norway mainly as a result of the conversion of King Christian III of Denmark-Norway, following the example of many of the North German princes. In 1537 he established the Evangelical-Lutheran faith as the official religion of Norway and Denmark.

The ideas of the Renaissance and Reformation had at this time only reached a very small segment of Norwegian society. The Lutheran Reformation had been initiated some decades earlier by Martin Luther, the German reformer.
The King’s decision was based on political as well as personal grounds. A central political reason was his need to reinforce the already existing union between Denmark and Norway.

The Archbishop of Nidaros at the time, Olav Engelbrektsson, who had become a spokesman for national independence, fled the country in April 1537. His flight marked a turning point in Norwegian church history, and reinforced Norway’s political dependence on Denmark.

Of the three other Norwegian bishops at the time two were imprisoned, while one chose to become Lutheran superintendent (later, the office reverted to bishop). The majority of priests gradually conformed to the new situation, performing their pastoral duties according to the new ritual and doctrine.

Monasteries and convents were dissolved. Apart from cases of violence, when individuals refused to abandon their religious customs, the transition was peaceful.
A central part of the new confession was a simpler liturgy, more concentration on the preaching of the Christian message in the vernacular, in this case to a large degree Danish, and the singing of hymns. Religious symbols, ways of thinking and customs of Roman Catholic origin were forbidden.

By 1600 Lutheranism was formally established, and had taken over the church structure of the whole country. In the course of the 17th century the change was carried out at the popular level. However, in some areas people continued to express their belief in more or less Roman Catholic terms until the 19th century.

Dr. David McKechnie is pastor of a Presbyterian church in Houston. One Sunday afternoon, he and his wife Linda were late for a luncheon, so he started pressing the pedal to the metal, as the saying goes. Soon he heard a siren behind him, and he pulled off to the side of the road.

“Are you familiar with the speed limit in this area?” the officer said through the window.

“Yes, sir, I am,” replied McKechnie.

“What is it?” the officer demanded.

“Thirty miles per hour.”

The officer said, “May I see your driver’s license?”

McKechnie reached into his billfold and pulled out the driver’s license and the insurance certificate for good measure. Since the car was leased for Dr. McKechnie by his church, the owner’s name on the insurance papers was Grace Presbyterian Church.

Seeing this, the officer asked, “What do you do for a living?”

“Normally, I’m delighted to answer that question. But in this case, I’m embarrassed to say I’m the pastor of Grace Presbyterian Church.”

The officer quickly answered: “Reverend, there must be a parable here somewhere.”

McKechnie answered: “I’m sure there is.”

To that the officer said, “How about ‘we can’t have the shepherd outrunning the flock?’”

This is curious news…

Bishops in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America requested more time to review ministry policy revisions that will formally open the ordination process to practicing homosexuals. The ministry policy revisions were voted on in August at the Churchwide Assembly. The ELCA’s chief legislative body approved a resolution allowing gays and lesbians in “life-long, monogamous, same gender relationships” to be ordained.

The assembly’s actions have prompted dozens of churches to reconsider their membership in the nation’s largest Lutheran denomination. Community Church of Joy, a megachurch in Glendale, Ariz., voted unanimously last month to cut ties with the ELCA, arguing that the denomination was heading in a direction that was not consistent to where God had called them.

Other conservative congregations are choosing to hold off on hasty actions, at least until next year.  More here.

In the city of Sheboygan there are three ELCA churches.  I wonder where they stand on the proposed changes for ordination? I had attended conferences three times at the ELCA mega church mentioned above.

And why are the Bishops slowing down the policy changes?  Perhaps, they may have heard from many upset congregations.  And congregations are slow in breaking away as well until they see if the bishops really implement the change. Zion waited 30 years before finally leaving after the denomination ordained people who questioned the Apostle Creed’s affirmation about Jesus, “he rose again from the dead.”

It is sad to see another historic denomination leave their biblical roots and let the world set their agenda.

This is sad:

Wausau – A judge has sentenced a Wisconsin couple to 10 years probation and 30 days a year in jail for the next six years for praying instead of seeking medical care for their dying 11-year-old daughter. STORY

Prayer is powerful.  But how about praying and also using the God-given gifts of modern medicine for diabetics?  These parents were not in the middle of the Sudan with no modern medical, life saving and life prolonging resources.  They wanted a miracle and a miracle was one insulin shot away!

What they had was what I call BLIND FAITH.  They were blind to how God had answered their prayer with the modern advances of medicine. We are not living in the 15th century for God’s sake!

In my opinion these parents were sincere.  Sincerely wrong and takers of bad theology and members of a toxic, brain dead religion.

They remind me of this old story: A religious man is on top of a roof during a great flood. A man comes by in a boat and says “get in, get in!” The religious man replies, ” No I have faith in God, he will grant me a miracle.”

Later the water is up to his waist and another boat comes by and the guy tells him to get in again. He responds that he has faith in God and God will give him a miracle. With the water at about chest high, another boat comes to rescue him, but he turns down the offer again cause “God will grant him a miracle.”

With the water at chin high, a helicopter throws down a ladder and they tell him to get in, mumbling with the water in his mouth, he again turns down the request for help for the faith of God. He arrives at the gates of heaven with broken faith and says to Peter, I thought God would grand me a miracle and my prayers were never answered.”

St. Peter chuckles and responds, “I don’t know what you’re complaining about, we sent you three boats and a helicopter.”