In the story of Jesus feeding the multitude as told in the Gospel of John (6:1-14), Jesus asks Philip a test question: “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” Philip, looks over the crowd, calculates supply and demand, and deems the task economically and logistically impossible.
Andrew tells Jesus about a boy’s lunch. He does not think two fish and five pita breads will go far.
Philip, Andrew and the multitude are about to get schooled in God’s math. Here is the formula:
5 loaves + 2 fish XGod’s blessing = 5,000 lunches with leftovers
God’s math, Jesus teaches, doesn’t add up; it multiplies. God’s math is greater than thesum of its parts. God’s math is abundant, extravagant and generous. With God, the impossible is possible. Continue reading →
This is a story about a Fisher-Price riding horse that survived a going-out-of-business sale, a downsizing-to-a-condo moving sale, and a garage fire. Now, 31 years after purchase, it is a toy passed from one generation to another.
Sometime in 1981, a Kay Bee toy store in a Madison, Wis., went out of business. I picked up several toys on a deep discount, including a Fisher-Price Riding horse. It was wrapped up for Annie’s first Christmas, even though she was a little too young for a riding toy. In a blink of an eye, she was ready. And she loved it.
Horsey was stabled at 701C Eagle Heights, married student housing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Annie’s name and address was branded with magic marker on the bottom of the blue tray. In Eagle Heights, indoor-outdoor toys were often communal property and toys could need help finding a way back home.
Over the next 21 years, Horsey found a spot on the moving van headed to our first home in Middleton, Wis., and four homes in Park Ridge, Ill.
In 2004, Annie was in Houston with Teach for America, and Paul and I were about to move into a condo. It was time for the mother of all moving sales.
My brother, Keith, and sister-in-law Nancy drove from Independence, Wis., to help with the sale. They saw Horsey and its modest price tag and declared, “You can not sell this toy. We will keep it for you.”
At the end of the sale, Horsey was loaded into Keith and Nancy’s van along with other treasures. They unloaded most of the stuff into their three-car garage, complete with attic.
A short time later, the garage burned to the ground (see photo). In the middle of the soot and debris stood Horsey. Unscathed. Its magic-marker brand as clear as the day it was applied.
Horsey moved into Keith and Nancy’s house.
Fast forward eight or nine years. Annie is a married-mommy-pastor. Annie, Sean, baby Walter and Hank the Dog live in Stevens Point, Wis. Paul and I live in Johnson Creek, Wis.
On a recent Saturday, Paul and I drove from Crick to Independence, and Annie, Sean and Walter drove from Point to Independence. We had a fast and fun visit with Keith, Nancy, Teresa, Matt and Kevin.
You have guessed the rest of the story. Keith passed Horsey on to Walter. As it was with Annie, Walter is a little too young for Horsey. Still, he loved it.
I love that Keith and Nancy saved Horsey for such a day as this.
A devotion for July 1, 2012, based on Mark 5:21–43.
O LORD my God, I cried to you for help, and you have healed me. (Psalm 30:2)
There was a woman who bled for 12 years. She had spent all that she had; she had endured all that she could. Defined by her illness and excluded because of it, she was alone and oh, so tired.
There was a 12-year-old girl, next to death. Her parents can’t stand it. If she dies, they wonder, how can we live?
There was Jesus.
Blessed with the courage of nothing left to lose, the woman dared to reach out and touch Jesus’ clothes. She knows she is healed.
Graced with the humility of knowing there was nothing more he could do, the father begs Jesus for help. After the father learns his daughter has died and believes there is no hope, Jesus goes with him. Jesus touches the girl’s hand and restores her life. “Give her something to eat,” says Jesus (Mark 21:43).
The woman, the little girl and the little girl’s parents have their lives back. Now what?
The restored ones know they have received undeserved, amazing grace. They are humbled to be part of a miracle, knowing others more faithful and more deserving who are not cured. And while they resisted the temptation to blame God for illness, they are now compelled to praise and thank God for healing. With fear and trembling, they believe they are alive for a reason.
Gratefully aware of their new life, the restored ones know their remaining days are numbered. They try live each day as though it is their last.
We are all restored ones. We have all received undeserved, amazing grace. We all have been given new life. Our days are numbered, let us live them joyfully and gratefully.
Last week, Paul and I celebrated grandson Walter’s six-month birthday. There was cake.
Walter is an easy going, happy baby, as this video demonstrates. Even with pink eye and soon-to-be ear infections, Walter giggles. Walter is an off-the-chart amazing baby, as his mommy’s blog post verifies.
There was cake for our daughter’s half-year birthday, too. Unlike Walter, Annie was not an easy-going baby. Her middle initial, “C,” could have stood for colic.
Parents of babies nearing their six-month milestone: let there be cake. Celebrate your amazing baby, surviving tough days and nights, and your hope for the months ahead.
On Easter Sunday I won’t be sitting with the choir at St. Luke’s Lutheran in Park Ridge, Ill. This thought makes me sad.
This is just the presenting problem, of course. I won’t be at St. Luke’s on any given Sunday. In January, when we closed on the condo and Paul joined me in Wisconsin, we essentially if not officially closed the book on our 23-year membership at St. Luke’s.
I have resisted visiting congregations in the Johnson Creek area. The easy excuse is we are frequent visitors at Redeemer Lutheran in Stevens Point where Annie is the pastor. The truth is, though, I’m not ready to move on.
We didn’t shop for our first congregation. New college grads and newlyweds, Paul and I joined Our Savior’s Lutheran in Oshkosh, Wis., a small congregation two blocks from our new apartment. It was here that Paul, who grew up Roman Catholic, became a Lutheran. Back then, Our Savior’s still had folding chairs and an electric organ. Everybody knew everybody. If you thought about skipping worship on Sunday, you thought again. It was likely that someone would call around 1 p.m., and ask if everything was O.K. “Are you sick? Do you need anything?”
We decided it wasn’t healthy for newlyweds to be quite so involved in church. So, two years later when we moved back to Madison, we joined Bethel Lutheran, a BIG congregation. That’s where Annie was baptized. If we thought about skipping church on a Sunday morning, we hit the snooze button and went back sleep. No one was going to miss us.
We decided it wasn’t healthy for new parents to be church slackers, so we transferred our membership to Midvale Lutheran, a medium-large size congregation that seemed to be just right for us. This is the community that embraced us during Annie’s surgeries. In Midvale’s parking lot Paul was encouraged to apply for a position in the communication department of the about-to-open churchwide office of the newly formed Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
And so it came to be that we moved to Park Ridge and joined St. Luke’s. It was there that Annie celebrated her first communion, was confirmed, married and ordained. I fell in love with St. Luke’s about 15 years after joining.
Yes, I know. It’s time to get serious about finding a new church home. I need to remember congregations grow on you and grow with you. I shouldn’t expect love at first visit. I can’t expect to find a clone of St. Luke’s–a medium-large size congregation with fabulous music and two traditional services each Sunday–within driving distance of Johnson Creek.
After studying the “Find a Congregation” options at ELCA.org, I discovered that I’m not going to find a nearby congregation that offers traditional-liturgical-organ worship at the “late” service. What’s the deal with contemporary-jubilee-electric guitar worship having a lock on the 11 a.m. service?
I do know this: on Easter Sunday 2012, I will be sitting next to Paul, Sean and baby Walter at Redeemer Lutheran. What a happy thought.
Today, I was delighted to use Join.Me, a free desktop-sharing program. For those of you who use join.me all of the time, blessings on your head, you’re excused. For those of you who think something like this would be too complicated to use, I understand you’re hesitation, but stay with me. It’s easy. Really easy. And, since it’s free, there’s no harm in trying, eh?
Walter recommends trying join.me.
At Paul’s recommendation, I used join.me during a phone meeting which allowed the two of us on a call to be on the same page while editing a document. Join.me let me see what a contract writer was typing, where her mouse was, the edits she typed in, etc.
Combining join.me (the visual) with a phone call (the audio) made a huge difference. We worked through the document easily and efficiently.
It’s as simple to use join.me as this:
THE SHARER
1. Goes to join.me
2. Clicks on the yellow “Share” arrow
3. Might have to install a small browser add-on by clicking run
5. Notes the number at the top of the screen
6. Emails (or otherwise communicates) the nine-digit number with viewer(s)
[Use the telephone for audio]
THE VIEWER(S)
1. Click the link the sharer emails OR goes to join.me and enters the nine-digit code that sharer provided in some other way.
2. That’s it.
AND
There’s a messaging feature; notes can be sent to one or all of the participants.
The sharer can cede control of the screen to a viewer.
The beauty of join.me is its simplicity. There’s no need to plan ahead or schedule. It’s there when you need it.
Join.me can’t pay for this sort of advertising, but if they wanted to try….
Fat Tuesday is the New Year’s Eve of Lent. Many faithful believers are having one last hurrah before “giving up” (chocolate, Facebook) or “adding on” (mid-week worship, devotional walking) during the 40-day journey with Jesus to the cross. Some of the faithful know Sundays are “little Easters” and don’t count; pass the chocolate, please.
I confess that I no longer make Lenten resolutions. Instead of practicing willingness, these commitments tempt me to prove willpower. Instead of embracing the opportunity for deeper discipleship, I am tempted to resent the doing or the not doing. I am tempted to reduce a spiritual discipline to a six-week diet plan.
There’s good news for the likes of me in Mark 1:9-15, the Gospel lesson for February 26, 2012, the first Sunday in Lent. Continue reading →
The last Sunday before the season of Lent begins, many congregations observe the Transfiguration of Our Lord—the mountaintop high for Jesus and three of his disciples—as told in Mark, the 9th chapter.
I love Peter. I love that even when Peter is so terrified he can’t think of anything to say, he still says something. “Rabbi,” Peter says, “It is good for us to be here.”
Peter was right. It was good for Peter, James and John —the executive cabinet of disciples—to be there and witness the exhilarating, terrifying mountaintop events. Continue reading →
It means Paul and I get to live together again. Last weekend, Paul moved into the “Crick” apartment and furnishings moved into storage.
It means a financial weight is lifted off our shoulders. It means we weathered our “up close and personal” economic downturn without missing a payment.
It means I’ve moved for realsies. I won’t be going home for a Park Ridge weekend.
It means that Paul will work remotely on a three-month trial basis, commuting to the churchwide office a couple of times a month. That’s a 4.5 hour round-trip commute.
On December 14, 2010, my Facebook status read, Come on, Christmas cactus, bloom! Pretty please?
Several FB friends responded, including:
Katie: Mine is done already. It was a Veteran’s Day cactus this year.
Kathy: Ours is done, too, after a spectacular showing at Thanksgiving!
Me: I was tempted to walk over to my plants and point out their comparable under-performance. Instead, I just moved them to the afternoon sun spot.
Ann: I see the problem. You are too nice to them. Mine bloomed prolifically for years after spending the summer neglected outside every year. Until I finally killed them.
For months, my two Christmas cactus lived on death row. Every two weeks, when I watered the sad little plants, I think “I should just toss ’em.” Then I’d decide to do the deed in two weeks when they’d be dry again.
In August, I moved from Park Ridge to Johnson Creek. A decision needed to be made. Paul did not want to be responsible for the cactus. He was either going to bring them to “Crick” or he was going to commit planticide.
It turns out my apartment has wide window ledges and blinding afternoon sun. I took the back passageway to Menards, bought two new pots and cactus potting soil and told Paul to bring up the cactus.
Within a week the Christmas cactus started looking happy. You could almost see them grow. One cactus began blooming in October and the other in December.
It’s good to be given another chance to bloom. –Sue Edison-Swift, 12/14/2011
In the story of Jesus feeding the multitude as told in the Gospel of John (6:1-14), Jesus asks Philip a test question: “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” Philip, looks over the crowd, calculates supply and demand, and deems the task economically and logistically impossible.
