Pastor's Ponderings: Monday Bible Study on Acts of the Apostles 5:17-32 (September 29, 2025)

September 29, 2025:  Monday Bible Study on Acts 5:17-32

Blessings and Peace on this Autumn morning when the temperature was 66 as we left for school. Please remember that this Sunday is Gospel Music Sunday. I hope that you will come to worship this Sunday to support the Gospel Music group, and take part in the Sacrament of the Altar, and share in the carry-in Mexican meal after worship. We will need some help with breaking down the meal set up in the parish hall, because the boys, Melody, and I will be on our way right after church to start our week’s vacation. I will be back for the following Sundays Bells choir rehearsal at 9AM, worship, and the Church Council meeting after worship. Thanks for your help. Jesse, James, and Jared will get the room set up before service. We are looking for some much colder weather, even if it takes a drive into Estes National Park to get to it. Please pray for Rachel whose husband Jim died on Sunday after an unexpected return of his cancer. Also pray for the Mormon community in Michigan who were attacked during their worship on Sunday morning, and their building set on fire. At least four were killed as recovery work in the building continues. Pray for peace in the Middle East, as Israel seems bent on destroying the Palestinians. So far in this war 66,000 people have been killed. This is an atrocious and horrible way to deal with the lack of harmony that has existed between the Jews and the Moslems. (There are also Christian people who live in these areas who are being killed.)  Pray for Globe, AZ as they deal with aftermath of severe flooding, and at least 4 deaths in their community.

In our reading for today, we discover that Peter and John, and the others are arrested for a second time by the Sanhedrin. I am certain that Peter and John knew what would happen again if they continued to proclaim Jesus as the Messiah, and do healing, and preach the Gospel of the Savior, all the while blaming the Jews, this being rightfully so, for Christ's death and punishment for bringing God's grace to His Jewish children, who then turned to destroy God's only begotten Son, and because the disciples were a threat to the Roman peace, no matter how tenuous it was.  When Peter was taken to jail, the jailer discovered that everyone was already back at the temple doing what they had been called and equipped to do, speak the truth about their Lord and Savior. So out of this passage, and the picture that it gives us of that day, there are three other things which need to be brought to our attention.

We should be ready to acknowledge that the disciples:

1. were really men of courage. This seems a bit contrary to how we saw them in that upper room, hanging on until everything looked safe again. Isn't amazing what change the Spirit of Christ can bring to our lives?

2. Two were really men of principles. They had made promises and commitments to continue the work of the LORD after he ascended into heaven, and even if they were afraid, they did everything and more that they had said they would do.'

3. were men with clarity about Christ's call, and the function which had been set in place for them. The disciples were eyewitnesses to the life, ministry, truth, and resurrection of Jesus. No one else could do what they were doing with such confidence in that work, offering the narrative of their lives experience with Christ.

Thank you for being with me today. I will be back tomorrow morning to share the next passage of Acts. With Christ's Love, Pastor Kim

Pastor's Ponderings: Old Testament bible study of Psalm 32 (September 27, 2025)

September 27, 2025:  Thursday (on Saturday) Bible Study on Old Testament of Psalm 32

Blessings and peace be with you this Saturday morning. It has been one of those kinds of weeks, so here I am doing the Psalm study on a morning on the weekend.

Thursday just got away from me completely. I finally got my certificate of completion for doing the synod required boundary training that all clergy and licensed employees must take once every three years. I finally had to contact our Lutheran Seminary in St Paul Minnesota to get the verification of my completion of the work, and to get a certificate downloaded so that it could be sent to the synod offices in Phoenix. Please offer a prayer of thanksgiving for Larry getting home after a rough time getting better enough to go home. Pray too for Teri Hardy, who will have a new kind of hip replacement surgery on October 1st.  Her recovery will be long. Keep Lisa Kartchner in your prayers too. She is having testing done to tell if she too has cancer, and she is her wife's primary care giver as she battles her own cancer and treatments. So, my intent was to get this Bible Study done on Friday. I spent all morning in the car, had lunch with the Foodies of Faith, and when I got home, Melody told me that the low tire light had come on in her car. We just had one tire repaired about three weeks ago from a puncture, so I took it to Discount Tire and found it was not repairable. Four new tires later (it’s an AWD car, so tires must all be replaced if you lose only one), so I spent nearly three hours getting that done at the garage. It is the second time over the years that I have had to replace all the tires, which seemed OK right before taking a trip in the car we planned to travel in. So, here I am coming to you on Saturday morning.

Today we are in the 32 Psalm. In general this Psalm speaks to David's (and our) relationship with God, and how our covering of our sin, or someone else's sin, really creates a circumstance where God's attempts to bring healing in that situation become skewered because a person hiding sin, either theirs, or as a victim to another's sin, means that people involved in the situation will not cooperate with God's willingness, and desire for taking care of His children.  This is the entire issue of this Psalm. In this passage we have the word for carrying sin, and that can be our own or someone else's sin. Doing so places either, or both people involved in a journey with God that means that it will be much harder to receive the Grace and Love of God's own covering for that sin. Here we really need to understand that it is not just the God of the New Testament who comes into the lives of His children through His Son, and our LORD and Savior, Jesus Christ. This is the very same way that the God of the Old Testament and the Psalms desired to be with His children too, covering their sin with His forgiveness. I know that we always think that somehow God was different about these things on the Old Testament, but He wasn't! The natural consequences for not cooperating with God, which really means, confessing, repenting, and having a contrite heart, will be our separating ourselves from God's desire for setting us free from the burden of our sin and the sin of others. The power of our failure to confess will isolate us from one another, and even more importantly, from God! Another part of this Psalm would have you and me acknowledge that without cooperating with God's grace and forgiveness, especially when we already know that if we are holding back in our cooperation with God, that the burden of the consequences of our sin will get to being overwhelming.  The other part of this is how God acts through all of this. When God forgives sin, it is forgotten, never to be brought up again in the faithful one's life, or in their death. When we confess with a contrite heart on Sunday mornings at church, this is what happens, although very often we don't fully let go of our sin, so that we continue to carry it. All of this is what David is talking about in this Psalm. I hope that this Psalm is an encouragement for our relationship with our God who loves us beyond measure, and who is always devoted to His relationship with us. With Christ's Love, Pastor Kim

Pastor's Ponderings: Tuesday Bible Study on Acts of the Apostles 5:12-16 (September 23, 2025)

September 23, 2025:  Tuesday Bible Study on Acts 5:12-16

Good morning and may the blessings of Jesus Christ hold you in His care today and always.

First and foremost. There was no Bible Study yesterday. I was going to let you know via email yesterday morning, and that got away from me. In my reading of the latest newsletter from the Grand Canyon Synod, I discovered that this year's Boundary training for clergy was on the docket to be done online before I left on vacation. It has often been done in person, but not this year. So, I signed up yesterday and did the workshop online. It took seven hours to complete, and I still must do a zoom meeting with the synod tomorrow morning as a completion of this workshop. Every pastor in the synod must do this before October 8. Please accept my apologies for not getting the notice to you that Bible Study would not happen yesterday.

Prayers continue to be needed for Larry and Joyce. It looks like Larry may be able to get home today after his lengthy recuperative stay after his surgery. Pray for continued healing and rest for them both. Also pray for Sharyn's sister Sonya as she nears her journey to become one of God's triumphant saints.

In our passage today from the Acts of the Apostles we discover that Peter continues to offer healing with confidence in the power of Christ to fill his words, and his touch. It is no wonder that people from Jerusalem and the surrounding communities came bringing their sick and disabled family and friends to experience the miracle of Peter's faith in Jesus Christ. What we may find unusual after Christ's death and Resurrection, is that the new converts to the Church met at the Temple in Jerusalem as had been their custom before coming to know Christ and the power of God's Words through Peter, James, and John.  What we then can learn about the early Church and its members, is that we know where the Church met. At Solomon's colonnade which surrounded the Temple area. The Church was visible to everyone entering the Temple in that area. The second thing we can gather is that the new Church MET! In fact, the people were together constantly in that place, and only went to their homes to share food, probably at the end of the day. The new Church was truly effective. People were presented with God's Word, with Christ being proclaimed as the Messiah and Savior, and miracles were taking place too. According to this text miracles happened just by people being close to Peter.

Our response to all of this might be Wow! What happened to all of that today in the Church? I want to assure you that the presence of the Word, the healing of Christ in our lives, and the change of hearts that comes from claiming Christ as the Savior in our lives, all still happen in Christ's Church on earth today.  And like this time after Christ's death, it all happens when Christ's Body, the Church, (that's you and me) steps up to bring His hope and help to the world of brokenness and sin. Yes, miracles continue to be present in the midst of the Body of Christ, the Church. I watch it all the time in our congregation. When people who are feeling alone and distant from others come, they find that our congregation is the place where loneliness comes to join other's hearts and lives for each other, and for the Christ of God. We have become, and are, a caring community. We pray for one another too. Some days the phone is busy throughout the day letting me know of specific prayers that are needed, but we are also called to regularly pray for one another, to do it every day! I find such strength in the prayers of the members of the congregation when I am told that I am being prayed for every day. You are too. You are on my bedtime prayer list daily. I also know the healing power that you all bring to worship. Laying on of hands is not just church ritual. It is our acknowledgement of the power of Christ to bring His healing to us every day. When people, who are not members, who may be first time visitors come to be with us in fellowship and worship, I know that they leave changed by the powerful presence of the Spirit, because She has guided us to meet these people by offering to them the gentleness of our hearts of faith, by which you and I become the living Christ for their lives too.  I don't know about you, but I am always amazed at the miracle of donuts before church (that's this Sunday), and the carry-in meals that are incredible, and enough to feed way more people than we have attending! Another way in which I see Christ's Spirit presence is in the Gospel Music Group. At our rehearsals, voices sound timid, sometimes uncertain, but when our singers arrive on Gospel Music Sunday, their voices, their very spirituality resounds in their music. For me the presence of Christ is in all these places, and yes, I know that the very same spirit-energy enters my preaching on Sunday mornings too. When we can acknowledge that the living Christ is always present with His children, then we too will be able to see and feel what the people of the earliest congregation saw, new life, new hope, new victory over death, and the comforting presence of God's Son, our Savior.  

Thanks for letting me in your homes and hearts today.

With love in Christ, Pastor Kim