Pastor's Ponderings: Monday Bible Study on Acts of the Apostles 7:17-36 (October 27, 2025)

October 27, 2025:  Monday Bible Study on Acts 7:17-36

Blessings and Peace be with you this morning in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

As I walk out the door on these cool and crisp mornings I give thanks to God for such beauty and comfort. I must admit that I think my teens don't get it. For them it seems to be just another day of commitments and schoolwork, so I comment every day to them about the wonderful quality of the morning and deep blue of the morning sky. Perhaps it will sink in one of these days. So, I will keep it up until they do get it. In prayers today: Melody and I both spoke with Kandice and Lisa last evening. We had a wonderful time, and Kandice was quite aware of her surroundings, her daily life, and the certainty of what is coming for her in a few days as she is now in hospice care at home. Like all of us, she said “I don't know what it is going to be like.”  I told her that since God is the one in charge of our journey through the gate of death, we can know in faith that it will all be OK and wonderful. That is all any of us can know. Please continue prayers for Teri as she is now at home healing and receiving therapy for the use of her new hip. I have a message out to Pastor Ron and Becky, but I have not heard back from them about how testing and progress is going for Becky as she battles periodic weakness. Pray also for Larry for his continuing recovery from his back surgery. He too is at home. There also seems to be a virus moving around with sore throat and congestion and cough. Josiah has been battling it for over a week now, and we received word yesterday of a church member family who now have it in their home. So far, no one else has picked it up from our Josiah.

Today we continue with Stephen's telling of Hebrew/Jewish history as he stands before the Sanhedrin. It is certainly a history that you and I know even though we are the children of the New Covenant with God through Jesus Christ. It is this story which Stephen is reciting which helps us to see the strength and courage of Stephen's faith. As this part of the Old Covenant story unfolds, Stephen brings us to Moses, and how God used him as a servant of setting his elect people free from their difficult work in Egypt, in bonds to the Pharoah to build the massive monuments at which we marvel even today.  Stephen is letting those who judge him know that he is an orthodox believer in the relationship between God and the Hebrew people, and that everyone in this trial Stephen is standing for should know how God intervenes on behalf of his beloved people. But Stephen also knows that when it comes time to tell the rest of this history of his people, that the reception will be anything but warm and understanding. However, that is not a part of what Stephen is doing at this time. The historian, Josephus, gives us more that we get from the Bible as he recounts the great beauty and brilliance of Moses compared to other children. In this historian's telling, Moses became a great Egyptian general, fought, and won a war in Ethiopia, taking a bride for himself after that victorious conflict. When he answered the LORD'S call to serve and bring the Hebrews out of Egypt to freedom in a promised land, Moses gave up an entire kingdom and the comfort of being a royal, perhaps even reigning in Egypt at some point, to become an enemy of the state, as he brought plagues upon the entire nation to force the Pharaoh to set the Hebrews free.  People do indeed give up important things to answer the call of God on their lives. We are told that Stephen was brilliant, energetic, a gifted speaker, and an advocate for fairness with his people. Martin Luther gave up a career as a lawyer when he capitulated to God's lightening intervention in his life. There is little doubt that Stephen knew in his head and heart what was coming for him, but he remained stalwart in his conviction and faith in Christ. Every one of us who accept Christ as our Lord and Savior has had, or will have, a call from God to witness from our hearts and lives, so that others may come to know the Christ who loves and treasures them too. We will find out that Stephen was a man of the same ilk.

You have the love of Christ, and mine too, Pastor Kim

Pastor's Ponderings: Old Testament bible study of Psalm 35 (October 23, 2025)

October 23, 2025:  Thursday Bible Study on Old Testament of Psalm 35

Good morning my dear friends in Christ. Today we will continue our study of Psalms. Please continue to pray for Teri who is home following her hip surgery and several weeks in therapy care. Pray for Becky who is recovering with an unknown cause for extreme weakness. Pray for Larry who had throat cancer treatment yesterday. Pray for a different Larry who is at home recovering from back surgery complications. AND give thanks to God for Jeff Keen who did not have the serious issues a first CT seemed to indicate. He is home too.

Today our Psalm Passage indicates that it is OK to ask God to help take care of your enemies, but those enemies must be threatening faith in the LORD, and His work in the world by their words and deeds. That's different than asking God to take care of a person with whom you are arguing about money, or a perceived insult, or because they have called out your own poor behavior. The threat that David speaks of in this Psalm hymn is that all who follow God must be aware of the danger when a leader like David whose faith is true is in danger from enemies who deride his beliefs, everyone who is a believer and faithful is in the very same kind of danger.  I know folks, how do we know? If a person is pulling you down for your faith expression in the world, and they are only looking for the advantage of greater wealth and power, then you can certainly pray to God for His help. Our nation has become so polarized that there are people who hate for no reason. A couple of days ago, our Jesse who is Indigenous and Black in his heritage was walking to the YMCA on the east side from our house. It is about 1 & 1/2 miles. On his way, for the very first time, he had a woman walker leave the sidewalk to avoid being near him. She did not know him; all she saw was the deep beautiful tones of his skin. But our nation and world are full of people who hate for no reason. Imagine being an LGBTQ+ person today, never knowing who around you feel that you are less than human because of your sexual identity, having nothing to do at all with how you are perceived as a person with value and worth.  Such polarization is harmful to everyone, the people who carry it in their lives every moment, and to the ones who are harmed by those perceptions of valuelessness. The truly sad part of this is that many of the people who carry that hate in their lives are Christians, who somehow feel that God must need their help if the world is to be right by their personal standard, and their limited grasp of God's Grace in Jesus Christ.  This Psalm indicates that we really need to rejoice in God's Love for us, because that is what will set us free from feeling the need to strike back! We always need to remember who the only true judge is, our Savior Jesus Christ. We can certainly turn over to Him the burdens of the evil that is aimed at us and others who have truly done nothing to deserve its wrath. I know that this Psalm seems quite harsh, and judgement driven. But this is the wonderful thing about the Psalms, like David, we find ourselves in many life problems, and joys, and there is a Psalm for every one of them. Over the centuries, Jews and Christians have been able to turn to the Psalms when life circumstances pull us down into the pit where everyone struggles to get out. David has been there just like us, just as every faithful person has been many times. It is in our Advocate Christ, that we can be assured that whether we are threatened socially, in our faith, or at the hands of a person who wants us dead God is with us. The other truth of this Psalm is that the one who petitions God must have worked hard to live with integrity. That doesn't mean perfection. It means always being actively involved in this relationship with God, seeking to grow in faith, and to become an example of God's Grace for everyone's life.

Thanks for being with me this morning. With Love in Christ, Pastor Kim

Pastor's Ponderings: Tuesday Bible Study on Acts of the Apostles 7:8-16 (October 21, 2025)

October 21, 2025:  Tuesday Bible Study on Acts 7:8-16

Good morning my dear friends. 

An urgent matter for prayer today is to keep our parish administrator Debbie, and her husband Jeff in your prayers.  Jeff is about to have a second surgery as he has developed complications from his first surgery.  Please keep them both in your prayers.  Also pray for Becky healing from weakness, and future testing to determine its cause.  Also continue to pray for Teri who is working to regain her mobility after major hip surgery.  She will have several more weeks in rehab before heading home.  Pray for Larry who is having a special throat cancer procedure to give him a better quality of life, and for another Larry who continues at home to heal after many complications with back surgery.  Kandice continues in hospice care and will soon join God's triumphant saints.  Lisa, her wife, and their good friend Alexis continue to need our prayers too.

If you are ever looking for a primer on the story of the Hebrew and Jewish people in the Old Testament, and its follow-up with the birth of Christ, His mission and ministry, and His suffering, death, and resurrection, you have it here in the book of the Acts of the Apostles as told by Stephen as he stands trial before the Sanhedrin.  I am certain that this undertaking by Stephen is not what the members of the ruling class in Jerusalem were expecting.  He takes us from the beginning of the Hebrew people with Abraham, and on to Joseph and his jealous brothers who sell him off to a camel train, the result of which is Joseph eventually ascending in power to become second only to the Pharaoh. But here, for Stephen, what is most important was how Joseph responded to his brothers when they came back to Egypt with his father Abraham.  In Genesis 50:20 Joseph speaks these words to his brothers who feared the potential of Joseph's revenge after Abraham's death.  "As for you, you thought evil against me, but God meant it for good."  These words of Joseph certainly fit Stephen's circumstance before the Sanhedrin, and what's more, Stephen sums up Joseph's character in the following ways:

1. The word grace is a lovely word.  It reveals beauty, outward physical beauty, but more than that it addresses the beauty of Joseph's soul, his heart and head.  This is exactly who we see in Stephen as well.

2. Joseph held wisdom in his very being. This means being able to take the long view of what is happening, and even to have a sense of how it is the work of God whose direction is so often beyond comprehension.  Joseph lived his life with the long view and direction of God in his heart. 

It seems to have already begun here, as Stephen tries to make it clear that the Sanhedrin does not operate as Joseph did.  In next Monday's texts, Stephen will continue to cover the history of his people, revealing the truth of how he found himself in difficult circumstances before the Sanhedrin.

With prayers for your happiness and joy in this life with which God has blessed you. I will be back next Monday to share more of Stephen’s self-defense.

With love in Christ for you and all people, Pastor Kim