St. Paul-Reformation Lutheran Church, St. Paul, Minn. Reading for the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost: Matthew 10:40-42 Holy God, holy and mighty, holy and immortal, have mercy on us. Dear brothers and sisters in Christ. It is oftentimes the task of a pastor to spend a
Love Cover Stories But I Love You! By Cindy Davis Love is the very nature of God. And since His love is spread abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit we should also have the same love nature of God in us to love
Sisters and brothers, you have decided that I was disobedient “to the Order and Discipline of the United Methodist Church.” I know many of you struggled with that because I know you. Now you must impose a penalty which you believe is appropriate and responds
Walking down the street, I see them: three young upper-middle-class people loudly talking on their way to a fancy dinner up the block. I am furious with them almost instantly: for their fine tailored clothes, for their trés chic dining plans, for the way they
The back cover of my Living New Testament reads: Love is very patient and kind, never jealous or envious, never boastful or proud, Never haughty or selfish or rude. Love does not demand its own way. It is not irritable or touchy. It does not
… put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Thessalonians 5:8-9) A critic of Whosoever wrote to me recently
I remember a sermon my pastor delivered one Sunday when I was in high school. The subject was God and love. For the first time, I heard that the Bible, in its original languages, uses several words to describe love. Our pastor gave us examples
Where there is love, Where mercy abounds, Where justice prevails, There surely is God, found in our midst, Where there is Love. (Bob Hurd) Those beautiful lines are the chorus to a hymn that I sang for the opening of the Valentine’s Day service of
Legalism is an idolatrous religion. Legalistic judgmental religion is based on absolute commitment to biblical literalism, which is the conviction that every word of the Bible is literally true and every statement in the Bible has equal authority as the word of God. This approach
At one time I was alone and thought I was the only one with feelings that didn’t go along with my birth biology. Then I met my Sisters and found I was simply one of thousands around the world with feeling similar to mine. That