Pastor's Ponderings: Monday Bible Study on Paul’s letter, 1 Thessalonians 5:12-22 (May 19, 2025)

May 19, 2025:  Monday Bible Study on Paul’s letter, 1 Thessalonians 5:12-22

Good morning my dear friends and may our LORD'S richest blessing be with you throughout this day and always. Please keep Pastor Ron and Becky in your prayers as they travel to their summer home in Minneapolis. The weather across the plains has been pretty vicious, so let's pray for good travel days filled with renewal and joy for them.  Please also remember to keep Mark and Linda in your prayers. They are now home in Wisconsin for the summer, and they too are in the line of the bad weather that has been brutalizing the mid-west. Please also pray for the families of the victims of the tornados that have been sweeping across our nation nearly every day. Please offer continued prayers for peace in all the places in our world where hatred, greed, and sin have taken nations to war.

This coming Sunday we will honor Logan and Caleb on their graduation from High School. We will have a brief cake reception after service. Congratulations to both of you!

Today we are in the closing part of Paul's first letter. Once again Paul encourages the behavior that identifies who the truly faithful ones are in this fledgling Christian community. Not only are they identified by the words they speak, but also by the joy in Christ that their hearts know in His love, and by their actions. In the Gospels, which are later writings in the New Testament, we hear these very hopes and behaviors that Paul writes to the Thessalonians. (Remember that it was Paul's letters that came first in the New Testament, yes, even before the Gospel writers felt God's call in their lives to record the true record of Christ's life in Israel) Let me say that each one of these suggestions of Paul for the Christians in Thessalonica could be a lengthy sermon.  In this passage Paul speaks for how the teachers of the Good News, who are discerned by the people who listen to them to be teaching and preaching authentic and true representations of the very same truth that Paul brought to them are to be held in esteem for this gift of God in their lives,  Paul talks about this by saying that they should have the highest rank of love.  Paul then moves on to tell the Thessalonians that they should live in peace with one another. We all know that damage that happens when even one person in our midst finds it difficult to be the Love of Christ for their brothers and sisters.

Here, as in the Gospels, we read that the community has a responsibility to lovingly call out that poor behavior which may split the congregation. And this must happen in private when those who guide the community must have "that talk" with a member who is so off the mark. This can only become community information if that change of heart has not filled their life with repentance, forgiveness, and grace. Let us admit that this is tough on both sides when church discipline must intervene to restore the wholeness of Christ to the community of believers. I am thankful that in our congregation this is a rare circumstance.

What we find here is very similar to chapter 5 of the Gospel of Matthew, and its beatitude teachings by Christ, and indeed the failure of the leaders and people of Israel to do this, meant that they would once again find themselves driven from the promised land.  Following is Paul's list of what is right and good and just:

1. Console the downcast.

2. Help the weak.

3. Be sympathetic towards everybody.

4. There should be no revenge between brothers and sisters in Christ.

5. Always find a way to treat everyone you meet with loving kindness and goodness.

6. Always celebrate. (meals, receptions of honor, donut fellowship in Christ)

7. Pray constantly.

8. In everything be thankful. This is God's will for all people, and most especially for we who accept Christ as our Lord and Savior.

9. Don't quench the Spirit, for with Her, all things are possible, even the surprising ones.

10. Don't look down on prophecies, remembering that the only way to discern their truth is to wait to see if they come true. Then you will know.

11. Test everything, holding it up to the glass of Christ's love and forgiveness in all things.

12. If discernment shows Christ's truth and gentle love is present hold it fast in your life and faith journey. However, if in discernment you know Christ's teaching opposes something coming into your life that would seem to be evil, then stay away from it.

This long list is all about what choices and decisions are faced by those who are the children of Jesus Christ. This is how we are called to live, and the journey is Spirit guided, and Redeemer fulfilled through God's only begotten Son, Jesus Christ.

When you have a life question, refer to this list for help.

With the Love of Christ, Pastor Kim

Pastor's Ponderings: Old Testament bible study of Psalm 18:1-24 (May 15, 2025)

May 15, 2025:  Thursday Bible Study on Psalm 18:1-24

Good morning. We finally have a day without wind, though the air was still pretty thick with dust this morning.   It is a hazy day. I suspect that we all need to pray for good rain, steady and not overwhelming. Please pray today for Annette and Steve. Their little Princess died this morning after an extended illness. As you well know, the loss of a long-time pet friend is a pretty rough time, so please keep them in your prayers. I also want to give thanks to God for our sons who continue to live with us at home. Trees and shrubs around the house needed to be trimmed for garbage pickup, for being able to see clearly down Golf Links, and for draping over the sidewalk in one place. Yes, we got the infamous letter to trim from the city, giving us less than 8 days to get it finished. Our sons stepped up to the plate and got the work done. Please also pray for our son Joshua and his wife Shannon as they drive down from Ft Collins, CO next week to be here to support Shannon's dad, Jeff, who is battling a cancer that is similar to Kandice's. He will get his newest test results next week. Pray for good news for Jeff and his family. A reminder that we will have a movie on Saturday afternoon at church. It is an excellent and quite unique story about a young boy who must journey to save his home and comes to accept that his own way in the world, one filled with love, is better than to succumb to the temptations of the people of power around him. 

This morning, we enter the texts of the 18th Psalm.  This one will take a couple of weeks to move through, but it really can speak to each and every one of us as we live lives that are all too often surrounded by troubling experiences that might well take us to death. It could be a car accident, an illness, a big storm of harsh and dangerous weather, or something even worse. David gives us a list of the kinds of things like this that have happened to him, and though we may not know the specifics of everything to which he refers, we do know for ourselves the places which are similar to David's. As I sat in my recliner on my 65th birthday, house full of well wishes, I didn't feel like celebrating. It wasn't that I didn't care, but rather, I really felt sick! A little later I drove myself to St Joseph's Hospital, got into the waiting area for emergency, where I stayed for 18 hours before the staff got to me, and then was told I would be in surgery the next morning bright and early.  I had appendicitis, ready to burst. A few more hours and I would not have come out alive! in the early 70s Melody and I were on our way home in our VW bus camper, when we saw a tornado coming across the farm fields in central Ohio right toward us. VW buses were never fast, but at that time I drove with all the power my foot could nurse out of the pedal and motor. But we made it to safety! 

I also had an abdominal hernia, which I suspect came from working on the White River in western Michigan, where I handled often as many as 100 ninety-pound canoes on a Saturday in the summer. Yet another life-threatening problem that required that abdominal muscle tear, which could entrap my intestines and create a need for massive surgery correction, but a friend, Dr Leland Swenson, encouraged me, and promised to be with me during the surgery. There was another time too, as the current boys and I sat on Campbell near Grant while a massive, large hail and windstorm roared across the city. Once again, our lives were threatened. I was certain that the car would be destroyed, and worse, that all the glass on the east side of the van was going to break out, and the car covered in dents. God really was with us. There was no shattered glass, and not one single hail dent! I know that you have the same kinds of stories, and if we are faithful, trusting in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, we will know His delivery in one way or another. There are, of course, the other kinds of threats, which come into contact with us, and draw us away from our Loving God, we get tempted to choose our own way in opposition to God's way, and discover the great tragedy of faith that just isn't as strong as it needs to be, leaving us open to the evil one. That usually happens when we have not had a strong relationship with God on a regular basis. We must turn to God praying for our faith to be strong enough to resist when that happens. It is here, toward the end of reading for today, that David turns to God proclaiming his love for Him. This word in this Psalm is used only here in the Bible. It translates most easily to "love”, however, it means absolute devotion, and the deep and binding emotional attachment that David has for the father. It almost sounds here like David is the "perfect" believer, who never does anything that God might find troubling as David lives his life on earth. You do remember David's experience with a certain married woman named Bathsheba? So, toward the end of our passage for today, David is proclaiming his faithfulness to God, and his dependence on his Heavenly Father to keep him safe, just as God has always done for him, and just as God does for each one of us through Jesus Christ, our Lord, and Savior.

With love in Christ, Pastor Kim

Pastor's Ponderings: Tuesday Bible Study on Paul’s letter, 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11 (May 13, 2025)

May 13, 2025:  Tuesday Bible Study on Paul’s letter, 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11

Good morning, dear friends in Christ.

Please continue the prayers which I asked for yesterday at the start of the Monday Bible Study. Today is Melody's birthday. We were born 368 days apart, me in 1950, and Melody in 1951. When we were babies our mothers would pass on the downtown street, yes there was only one, so when we started dating in high school, that was early high school, our parents had a pretty good idea about who the person and family were.  Our town only had about 9000 people during the non-summer season. So, we were married this year for 54 years in December, but we had dated steady for 6 years before that including our engagement. That's right we have been together for 60 years! Well, that's enough of my meandering about our lives being well-lived with both great times, and some pretty difficult times too. And that is my way of moving into the letter of Paul to the Thessalonians this Tuesday morning.

In this letter of Paul, and it was one of his earliest, Paul wants to offer guidance to the Thessalonians with regards to the nature of what it means to be a child of the Light of Christ in the face of the world which surrounded them.  The strong possibility existed that these new Christians might face persecution on two fronts, from disgruntled Jews, and from Roman soldiers and their leaders. Of course, there was even more darkness than that. Wars continued to rage, men were pressed into military service in the name of keeping the Roman peace around its domain, and of course I am certain that the upheaval in Israel continued to be a thorn in the side of the Roman occupiers. In addition to all this external darkness that surrounded the lives of these new Christians, there was the one which is most likely the one to which Paul is referring, the darkness of sin, suffering, and death! We may not have all the other ones which were so prevalent in Paul's time, though I think we still do, the last ones have never changed. Sin, suffering, and death continue to be the darkness which surrounds all of humanity from birth to death. The Christians in Thessalonica had questions too. So, Paul talks at length, not unusual for Paul, about what it really means to be living in this broken world as children of the Light of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. First of all, it should mean that in the face of the surprise of destruction, while others are beating their chests with no hope of any kind, Christians must remember that though they might share in that very same suffering, they are, and we are, the people of Christ's Light, and Truth, and Love, learning to always be prepared for whatever comes our way, because we are held in the arms of Christ's forgiveness, life, and Salvation, none of which can be stolen away from us because we live in the steadfast promise of God to always be with us.  This promise of God through Christ is for now, and for the future, whatever it may bring. We can never be separated from the Love of God in Christ Jesus Our Lord! This is the comfort of every faithful Christian, facing the unknowns of the future because we are not, nor will we ever, be left to face even the trouble of our own sin, without the merit of Christ's suffering and death, accomplished so that we can always be right with God, and share in Christ's Resurrection.  In this passage Paul uses several different analogies to talk about the problems of sin and death without hope in Christ. He even says that the Romans uses an evening and sleep statement meant to bring comfort in the Roman peace to all who are under Rome's thumb. Here the words are translated peace and security. But in the face of the world's sin and brokenness, there is no hope in the Roman's peace, and with a few short decades the loss of that peace and security would find their world without any comfort or peace at the hands of Rome. To find peace and comfort, a person must let Christ and the Spirit fill their life with faith, hope, and love. And of course, we know that the greatest of these which draws us to Christ is Love. There is no greater power! In this entire passage Paul is attempting to say that when Christians hold on to the Gospel message and its truth in Christ, then we will always have the comfort and strength that we need in the face of any negative thing that comes our way!

God Bless you today my good friends in Christ, Pastor Kim