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

Pastor's Ponderings: Old Testament bible study of Psalm 9:19-10:18 (March 13, 2025)

March 13, 2025:  Thursday Bible Study on Psalm 9:19-10:18

Good morning, dear friends in Christ. I hope that you are preparing for some pretty high winds later this morning and through the afternoon today. Even though it brings much needed rain, few of us relish that high wind warning time when it comes. Today we must remember all who are being affected by the radical changes in the nature and size of the United States Government. There is a great deal of uncertainty for people who have received benefits which make it possible for them to be in low-cost subsidized housing, which may soon be unavailable. This affects every one of us, our families, our congregation, and a lot more. Prayers now should be for smooth transitions to alternative sources of aid in order that low-cost housing will still be available through the work of people of goodwill who are willing to fill in the gaps which may be coming.

Our world is full of all kinds of problems, all of which appear to be made by people, and our Psalm for today presents for us a means by which we can see how it is that God, in the face of it all, must be praised.  This part of these connected Psalms fills in the end, but at the start of this passage today we have how irresponsible people are. In fact, this Psalm sees every problem which David may have been facing as a result of the unfaithful. There is a real connection here to Christ's Beatitudes in the Gospel of Matthew. Christ's reminder for what is holy and right and good, in the way that His children live compassionate lives in word and deed, identifying with the needs of those who are certainly less fortunate in so many parts of their lives.  This Psalm indicates that those responsible for suppressing others, those who live with a great deal of power and authority, who see everyone else as inferior, are not acting out of their faith in God, or a desire to help out, but only out of their personal need to care only for themselves.  If you have encountered this kind of person in your life, or know of circumstances in our world where so many are suffering because of the lack of any faith in God on the part of the people who are in "charge", who have no relationship with God or God's authority, and see no reason to seek any guidance outside of their own creation, then appeal as the Psalmist does.  With all that is going on in the world using this Psalm passage as a way of praying, appealing, and praising, and accepting God's seeming inaction in the light of the appeals of faithful for the LORD of heaven and earth to fix what needs to be fixed and changed, and yet, the Psalmist makes it clear that God still must be praised even when we think that He is being indifferent to our request to take care of some awful situation we have encountered.  We must always remember that God is for ever and ever, and that He has an eternal plan for His creation, of which we only see a tiny bit during our short lives. Even the kingdoms of our world will be gone as God continues to move His creation to the fulfillment of His plan. This Psalm is not an appeal to God, but it is a challenge to God by His faithful ones, that He should be intervening. And if God doesn't do what our appeal is asking, then we must still praise His power, glory, and abiding love for all of us, such praise is what our God is always due from His children.  Please remember to let God be God in all the places of your lives, and to give Him praise because He is God! We must know that God will, at some time, in some way, act. Give thanks for what He will choose to do! It will be because of His love for us!

Consider what God has already done!

With Love in Christ, Pastor Kim