St. Luke Lutheran Church April 21, 2024 Enews Prayer: Beyond the Basics Few questions can make churchgoers squirm more than “How’s your prayer life?”  The question can be ambiguous.  Is the question asking how diligently you pray, or is the questioner asking how effective are your prayers? If the question asks about our diligence, do…

St. Luke Lutheran Church April 14, 2024 Enews From Broken to Blessed The sermon last Sunday focused on the distinction between guilt and shame.  Our culture concentrates on a person’s guilt to the point of neglecting the impact of shame on our outlook on life.  Guilt is an objective state of our relationship to God’s…

St. Luke Lutheran Church April 7, 2024 Enews Recovery or Rescue Operation? Have you noticed that there is a subtle terminology shift in describing the response to a disaster?  The initial urgent efforts to save the injured are referred to as a “rescue operation.”  In contrast, the long, slow, careful process of locating and removing…

St. Luke Lutheran Church March 29, 2024 Enews The Greatness of the Day One of my little sisters was just learning to talk when the song “Boney Fingers” started playing endlessly on the radio. She loved the song. When the song would come on the radio, she would stand up and belt out at the…

St. Luke Lutheran Church March 24, 2024 Enews What do you see?  A Palm Sunday Meditation The crowds on that first Palm Sunday wanted a Warrior King, but Jesus came as a suffering Messiah, as one who would die on a cross for the sake of humankind. The crowd missed the point. The crowd thought…

St. Luke Lutheran Church February 25, 2024 Enews The Wrath of God If you are reading along with us in our journey through the Bible, you would have read of several events that you might have found disturbing. I’m talking about the times that God’s reactions to something we might call a mistake seemed out…

St. Luke Lutheran Church February 18, 2024 Enews Blessed Beyond Words Our readings this week included Numbers 6:24-26 which contains the familiar words of blessing spoken at the end of most of our worship services.  We call the blessing the Aaronic blessing and it is often spoken with these words:  “The LORD bless you and…

St. Luke Lutheran Church February 11, 2024 Enews Hitting the Wall In virtually every worthy endeavor there is a wall that must be overcome.  It may be a wall that can only be overcome through endurance, it may be a wall that is overcome by brute force.  The book of Leviticus, and to a lesser…

St. Luke Lutheran Church February 4, 2024 Enews A Stiff-Necked People  Exodus 32 I was a young child when I first heard the phrase, “Stiff-Necked People.”  I was confused for some time.  I remembered my grandfather waking from a nap complaining that his neck was stiff.  I remembered my mother complaining one morning that her…

St. Luke Lutheran Church January 26, 2024 Enews Never was Heard a Discouraging Word- Exodus 15:24 When I read about the Israelite’s journey through the wilderness, I can’t help but here that old Western folk song, “Home on the Range.”  Dr. Brewster Higley wrote the lyrics as a poem in 1872 or 1873 titled, “My…