Pastor's Ponderings: Old Testament bible study of Psalm 11 (March 20, 2025)

March 20, 2025:  Thursday Bible Study on Psalm 11

Good morning to you all on this beautiful Thursday in Tucson. I pray for you that God's richest blessings will abound in your life, and more, that your faith will remain as the greatest strength of your life.

Please continue to pray for our members and friends who are battling health issues. Hold Tricia. Kandice, me, Maddison's father, Jeff, and anyone else who you may know who is battling cancer. Pray for Regina who has some complicated eye issues, and for Della who has regular care for her eyes as well. Give thanks for all of the little ones who have come into our congregation with their parents and grandparents. "Yo-yo", Oliver, Oakley and her parents, Alice's other grands, twins and a toddler of Christian's and Elody’s, Jesus tells us they are a great treasure in the Church. Pray for the disarray of job losses with the government, that the people who have lost their jobs will soon be able to find employment and good jobs that fit their skills. Pray that with this downsizing, the work of these departments will still be able to serve the citizens of our nation. Pray for Pastor Ron and Becky who are flying today to attend the funeral of a good friend and be with Mark and Linda as they prepare to begin their journey home after visiting their son. There are always enough circumstances which need our prayers, both the difficult ones, and the ones that bring joy and comfort.

Today we are in Psalm 11. This is another Psalm which is believed to have been written by David. Its themes remain similar to the ones which came before it. We must always remember that the times in which David was shepherd and king were extraordinarily difficult. There was inter-tribal conflict (war) always going on, or just on the horizon, and the nations of the East were constantly faced with nation-to-nation war too! There were certainly plenty of good reasons for David to hold the themes steady in these early Psalms. This one is no exception. For David there is the threat of many enemies, and we see his desire to be able to depend on the LORD. (This word is used instead of the attempt to verbalize God's name, YHWH, which was, and still is today, to holy to be pronounced. To do so is to claim understanding of the Holy One of the Heavens and the whole universe.) Today we use LORD instead out of respect for people of faith in the LORD who are not Christian. If there was one thing that David did not do, it was to become too familiar with God. Throughout the Psalms that we have covered so far, David tells those who will hear, or read, these song-poems that God chooses to do things in His own way, and in His own time, and sometimes David, along with us, wonders why God chooses to not respond in the way, or in the time frame, that we would like Him too.  With David we have to allow God to be God yet have faith with thanksgiving for all of the ways that the LORD has acted before, and will act again in the future, and that occasionally God will act now, in just the way that our prayers have asked. 

David speaks the truth of God in this first part of Psalm 11 that his enemies are not known, they lurk in the shadows, out of sight, and attack without warning. Perhaps you have someone in your family or "friends?" who is trying behind your back to take advantage of you in your life.  We often find these things out when it comes time for a will to be read, or a loved one’s belongings to be divided. Sometimes we encounter this reality in the church too. It often happens when a group of people who we have believed to be faithful brothers and sisters to everyone in the community begin to gossip and quietly complain about something which they have a problem over. It is probably one of the greatest reasons why a pastor chooses to leave a congregation after only a few short years.   It seems too often like Pastors leave before we really get to know them as people and understand the power of the Gospel's presence in their lives. David makes it clear that those who work against the members who follow the LORD'S path, will be destroyed by God at some point in their lives, or perhaps at their Judgement before our Savior.  According to David's song-poem 11, God will act against those who are the enemies of the faithful people, whose hearts have never really been transformed by the Spirit's work in their lives, while those who are faithful can depend on the judgement of the LORD in all things.  God is steadfast in His promise to hold all of us faithful ones in His care. We all just need to trust in His promise all of the time. Thanks for spending time with me today.

With trust in the power of the LORD'S Love for all of us in Jesus Christ, Pastor Kim

Pastor's Ponderings: Bible Study on Paul’s letter to the Galatians 6:6-10 (March 18, 2025)

March 18, 2025:  Tuesday Bible Study on Paul’s letter to the Galatians 6:6-10

Blessing and Peace be with you this morning. Every day you and I get into the texts of Scripture, we discover the Truth of our God who wants us to live lives of lovingkindness, forgiveness, grace, and confidence in the promise of Salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Please continue to pray for the prayer requests that you received on Monday in my online study of Galatians.

In this brief passage from chapter six of Galatians, Paul continues to be a truth teller for God with the Galatian Christians. Once again how a community lives together is at the center of this passage, and Paul takes the reader of this letter right back to the issue surrounding putting faith in Jewish Law if one chooses to be circumcised. Paul tells us that such an action when a person has faith in Christ is a conflict. Paul uses that very familiar phrase, "You will reap what you sow"! When it comes to those actions under the law, at their end, they bring death. Remember that Paul understands the Law of the Jews as an interim provision of God for His people, so that they might be prepared for the Son of God who comes to move everyone beyond obedience to the law, to faith in the Savior and the gifts that sharing life with the Son will move the faithful beyond the limits of the law, to a life which not only completes the law through the Messiah, but brings even more, Eternal Life!  So if we reap what we sow, if the church is to move forward throughout its history, then her members must sow lovingkindness, forgiveness, generosity with those who have brought them to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and with fellow Christians and with those outside of the Christian Community, compassion, and the promise of life now with God, and faith and hope in the promise of Jesus for always being with His children, even in the face of death.  For all of us who live by faith there are times when we snub our noses at God, when we fail in any of these people of faith responsibilities. I know that we all have forgiveness for doing that to God, but if we are persistent and unrepentant, that is telling God a great deal about our real trust in this relationship of covenant that we share with Him. If you find yourself in one of these situations where you just can't deal with someone in the faith community, then, by all means, confess and pray for the Spirit to be your guide, to bring you back into the righteousness which is Christ's promise for all of us.  It really can become an afterthought about our words and deeds being sourced out of our real joy and love for God, and when that happens the work of the Kingdom doesn't get done very well.  When a new person comes into the midst of the Christian Community, we must ask ourselves what it is that Christ hopes they will see. Will it be that all-consuming joy, and the peace which passes all understanding, and will hospitality be seen and experienced, or will that new person see gossip, a lack of caring, or hear anger and frustration in our voices? It only takes a small amount of that before a new person gets the sense that the church is not the place they ever want to be. Instead, the Voice of God's Grace should be in every word spoken, and in every deed offered. I must admit that American Lutheran does a pretty good job at this most of the time, but there is always room for work as we try to be the living presence of God's Grace in the lives of others. We are, just as the Galatians were, members of God's Team,

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Good (Tuesday) afternoon. This morning, I was having issues with intermittent internet at home. Apparently, it cut off the completion of the last sentence.  I have searched for the last complete copy but am unable to find it. The first part of the sentence is the subject of the incomplete sentence followed by my closing and name. Sorry. I hope that it works better on Thursday.

Pastor's Ponderings: Bible Study on Paul’s letter to the Galatians 6:1-5 (March 17, 2025)

March 17, 2025:  Monday Bible Study on Paul’s letter to the Galatians 6:1-5

Good morning. I am so glad that you are here to study Paul's letter to the Galatian church. Prayers this week for all of the people who are seeking employment. Our son Jesse has gotten a part time job working at Park Place Mall before Easter. He has been hired to play the Easter Bunny who will greet the children and be with them for photos. He is pretty excited about this first job. We know that he will be great at this work. Please include the people in the government who are being laid off in the downsizing that is taking place right now. Pray too for peace in the east. Israel, the Gaza, the West Bank, people in Syria, and both the people in the Ukraine and Russia who continue to be at war after Russia's imperialistic attacks on this nation.  Please pray for the confessing church as we celebrate the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicea at which the confessional creed by the same name was established as the standard of faith for all Christians. Please pray for Pastor Ron and Becky as they travel back to Minnesota for the celebration of life for a pastor who Ron knew as a friend and a preacher and teacher of the Gospel. Please continue prayers for the victims of cancer, as well as Teri, who is faced with troubling mobility concerns as she has decisions to make about how to fund the necessary surgery and implant to restore her mobility. Pray too for our middle school-aged children, Jared, Levi, Cora, Patience, and Marc, as well as High School Senior Logan, and HS students James, and Fiona, so that these last two months of school will be productive for all of them. I thank God for your prayers, and for you as my Bible Study Community.

Today we move into chapter 6 of Paul's Galatian Letter. Lately I have been watching quite a bit of basketball on TV. I have some teams I am interested in, especially the Lakers, the Suns, and the U of A men's and women's teams. I guess it all started with James, my son, who plays HS Basketball for a small downtown school.  I am very proud of how he conducts himself as he plays. Logan Burt is also a teammate of James. As I have watched these teams play, I have noticed that even big names like Lebron James and Luca Doncic are the power duo on the Lakers, but I see in both of them something that I don't always expect from these big name, high scoring, older men.  Though both are basketball STARS in their own right, neither of them could win a championship on their own merit without using the high-level play of their teammates, and for both of them to really be an integral part of that five-man team that is on the competition floor. When people who are really great at doing something, and are filled with their own aura of superiority, forget that they are part of a very talented group of players, who are all team members, then the team suffers in its play. Competition and success are not about having a few overpowering, ego-centered, greats on a team who play only for themselves. It is every player remembering that they each have an important contribution to make, and then the team play is greatly improved. and makes it possible for the gifts of every player to be used. Gosh, I bet you never thought that you would hear a sports analogy from me. I never played, basically because of a birth defect in the muscles attached to the lenses of my eyes. I can see small things that are coming rapidly toward me, which includes catching balls, and quickly judging distances for shooting and throwing too. It is still a problem today when I play piano and must look from my music to my fingering and back quickly. So how does this basketball analogy fit into the passage for today?

When we live together in the church, every member is called to keep the "law" of Christ's example for living. Every member without exception, with all of their eccentricities, are called through Baptism to interact with one another, with a sense of equality. A great ego about oneself does not fit. If the wealthy try to control everything, which was the case at American when I first arrived 34 years ago, where is the sense of equality with a person's brothers and sisters in Christ? When we talk about the gifts of the Spirit, all of which are present in members of the Body of Christ, the Church, then we can begin to understand that for the sake of the Gospel, all the gifts are necessary. It is true even for pastors called to serve the Gospel in a congregation, I only know of one pastor who had all of the gifts of the Spirit, but he died on the cross over 2000 years ago.  Though we might try to place a pastor on a pedestal, it is best if we all know, that like us, the pastor only has some of the gifts and certainly needs their flock of believers to share their own gifts for the sake of the Gospel.  Every one of us, just like the Galatians, must learn that the loving kindness of Christ is always to be our guide. The Galatians kind of lost their way in Paul's absence when others tried to lead without Paul's sense of the equality we have in Christ.  We can always see this kind of leadership in the world. But for the work of God's Kingdom to succeed on earth, every Christian Community must know the equality in which we all stand before our Savior Jesus Christ, and the equality of love will shine as a beacon to God's world. We must always be ready to bear the burdens of our sisters and brothers in Christ, but we must also be ready to bear the burdens of our lives, those burdens that Christ has told us we can give to Him and then move forward carrying the burden of His love for all of His children, as well as for ourselves. 

With Grace and Peace in Christ, Pastor Kim