Pastor's Ponderings: Tuesday Bible Study on Acts of the Apostles 9:32-43 (December 16, 2025)

December 16, 2025:  Tuesday Bible Study on Acts 9:32-43

The sounds of Advent songs in church, and the neighborhood yard and house decorations all lend to this very important season of preparation and waiting. Once again, the gathering light of God's Truth and Love for all people is shining more brightly on our home Advent Wreaths, and on the one on the altar at church on Sunday mornings. We are now just a few days away from the fullness and light of the birthday of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. I hope that it shines in your hearts ever more brightly throughout the coming year. Please continue your prayers for changes that happen in every family. Sometimes they are most difficult, like the death of a much-loved family member, or economies that ebb and flow throughout our lives, but often are the cause of distress, or our lives are changed by a diagnosis of a health issue. This time of the year can be particularly stressful with the pressures of gifting and special food treats that all take time to get ready, that's when our relationship of faith in Jesus Christ enters our living, thinking, and acting. Our Savior calls us to live well lighted by His Love for us as we move through all that may be happening for us, some good and wonderful, and others that can be terrible.

In our study we have been busy discovering how it was that Saul became Paul, and how his life change was received with joy, or with anger and hostility. We left Paul on his journey to Tarsus, as he is protected by the disciples and other new Christians, and flees from the desire of his own people to murder him. Today we are starting another important part of the telling of the beginning of the new Christian communities, and how Peter played a role in all of that happening as he guided the disciples and the new church in Jerusalem and the surrounding area. This part of the story of the new church begins with Peter traveling to Lydda, where he finds a man who has had years of being bedridden. Peter commands him to get up and take care of his bedding, and this miracle of healing is witnessed by the people of Lydda. Their belief in this Jesus who Peter is confessing, becomes firm, and they turn to the Lord. Then in Joppa, some new disciples hear of Peter's deed, and appeal to him to come to Joppa to be with them as they prepare to bury Tabitha (Dorcas) who has been a gracious, hospitable, and generous person in their community. Her body has been prepared for burial, but Peter comes at the request of believers, and prays for her, commanding her to rise, and she is raised from the dead at his request and prayers. There are also many who become convicted in their faith and believe in Christ. Unlike Paul who is forced to flee from the places in which he was attempting to preach the Gospel, Peter chooses to remain in Joppa to fill the Christian mission there with new members while he stays with Simon, a tanner.

It is interesting that we see two very different receptions to the work of Paul with the Jews in Damascus and Jerusalem, while Peter reaches out to Gentiles with much greater success. The irony here is that there will be change in all of this. It will be Paul who has great successes throughout Asia Minor, Greece, and even in Rome, while Peter's mission in Jerusalem fails to even be able to support itself. That is when Paul received an offer to support Peter's and the other disciple's work there. We will have good opportunities in Acts to find out about how all of this went, but that is yet to be a part of our reading.

Note please. There will be no Acts study for the next two weeks until after Epiphany, January 6, and no Psalm study for those two weeks either. I must make homebound communion calls, and continue to work with the Gospel Group, the Bell Choir, soloists, and my own music for Christmas Eve worship, and I will be on vacation between Christmas and New Year’s. I will be present for the Sundays in between. I am praying that you choose to join me and our congregation on Christmas Eve. We will truly be celebrating the Good News of the Birthday of our King, Jesus Christ!

With love and hope and Light in Christ, Pastor Kim

Pastor's Ponderings: Monday Bible Study on Acts of the Apostles 9:26-31 (December 15, 2025)

December 15, 2025:  Monday Bible Study on Acts 9:26-31

Blessings and peace, be with you on this third week of Advent. Though this study may reach you before tomorrow morning, I am working in the evening on Sunday. Not only is the red of our new tablecloth on the dining room table with poinsettia and an ornament and surrounded by goats. Yes, that is right, goats. In my family heritage from Sweden goats have always been a decoration for Christmas. They are generally constructed out of straw, or wheat stalks. We have three 8-inch ones, and one that is nearly two feet tall as well. They are either wrapped in red ribbon or are dyed red after they are put together. I also have a Swedish wooden 7 candle (now electrified) in the dining room window, and a Moravian star like the one at church that burns 24/7 in our home, and one that is seasonal in our dining room. In our home, the joy of Christmas is filled with color, ornaments, and special treats and customs, like my sour cream coffee cake made for Christmas breakfast, or for whenever you can get to it all the rest of Christmas day. Next Sunday after church we will complete the decorations in our worship space (nave), the Altar, and the Narthex. We have to yet unpack our Nativity, or to get the wreaths and garland for the balcony, or the luminaria for the patio for Christmas Eve. Worship and hang the festive banners of the Christmas season. There is still plenty to get done next week, but it is work filled with joy, just like unwrapping 54 years of collecting ornaments for the tree at home. Every one of those is a special memory and gift, and our tree topper is 53 years old, an Italian glass angel, who over sees our home during all the time of this most joyful season. At church we will light the Moravian night star above the Altar on Christmas, and it will remain lit throughout Epiphany shining the light of Christ for our very lives, a light which fills our hearts with thanksgiving for His birth, His ministry, and His Sacrifice, and the wonder of His Resurrection.

As we begin our study for this morning, I want to offer you a statement that I have heard many times, and I have had to fall back to it to understand why some proposed calls over the last 35 years were not God's call, but the call of people who are looking for comfortable familiarity.  That statement, "You can never go back in your ministry to take a call in a familiar place."  There have been several opportunities to interview over the years. What is not realized is that in the years of ministry, a familiar pastor may very well no longer be a familiar person after the intervening years. Imagine Paul trying to go home to Jerusalem carrying in his heart and soul the burning need to proclaim the Messiah sent by God to save His Elect People, but who was summarily rejected and murdered. As a former Pharisee, he was most accustomed to arguing the Law with others, and now in his new life in Christ, he brings that gift to his Gospel preaching, where he used to be a vicious enemy of the new Christians, and now he returns as a converted leader who can out debate anyone, not just because of his former position as Pharisee, but because he is filled with joy and energy for Christ's call on his life.  To begin with Paul is not trusted by the new Christians or the disciples who are leading them. Remember? You can't go home as the same person after years of experience. Paul was new in every way! So were Peter and the other disciples! Paul had to convince them just like he had to convince Ananias in Damascus that he was no longer an enemy of Christ. It was inevitable that Paul would be threatened with death, and it reached the point where he had to be moved by the leaders of the new church to Caesarea where it was much less likely for him to have problems in that mostly Roman city.  Ultimately Paul would be shipped out from there to sail to Tarsus to the north. In his absence from Jerusalem, Galilee, or Samaria, the new Christian church found peace, and through their proclamations and miraculous healings, the church grew and grew. The change that becomes a part of all our lives is a change bringing joy and confidence, because the last enemy of people has been defeated by the Savior. It is only a few more days until we are together to celebrate Christ's birthday once again. Won't you come, lift your voices to sing with joy for this incredible gift of God for all people. Please always be mindful that our relationship with God is a two-way agreement, a contract, a testament of our own faithfulness in response to the faithfulness of God for each of us. Come celebrate, receive the living presence of Christ again and again, for our God has broken into our world of sin, and brought the healing which only He can give. We will hear more about Paul, but on Tuesday we will begin to read about Peter, who was also most active, and considered the leader of the disciples. In a different way Peter carries the Gospel in the Jerusalem community, and beyond, but with less success than Paul was having.

As we come to this week of study we need to know that we have received an outpouring, a veritable flood of God's Grace and Love, meant to help us know that God is always holding us in His care, in the good times, and the bad.

May the Love of Christ transform your whole life! Pastor Kim

Pastor's Ponderings: Old Testament bible study of Psalm 40:1-12 (December 11, 2025)

December 11, 2025:  Thursday Bible Study on Psalm 41:1-12

Good evening (it’s about 10pm on the 10th), and good morning if you are not seeing this until the 11th of December. Thursday morning, I have a great deal of practice to get my feel for the organ together tomorrow in the sanctuary. I am hopeful that I will be able to play more than just the three opening carols on the organ. I am really looking forward to the Christmas Eve worship. I get to be together with our church members and visitors who join us for what is going to be a special service as we celebrate the birthday of our Savior in Bethlehem. Since His birth, the world has been torn by war and brokenness too many times. There has never been any doubt about the need for the Grace of our God to fill all His creation, and the Christ child was sent to do exactly that. I hope that your heart is filled with all that grace in the days ahead as we approach His birthday. Every one of our lives had been impacted by the consequences of our choices, some great, some awful, or by the way that others impact our lives by their breaking in to create issues that are very difficult for us to handle, and sometimes it is simply that the whole of our world can be tough for us to handle, some of for which we may bear responsibility in some way, or in which others have caused God's Creation to shudder at the lack of the call to stewarding which some people completely ignore.  I hope to see you on Sunday at worship. Remember we have a special movie opportunity at 9AM on the big screen in the Sanctuary, and then after church we will be decorating the tree, hanging garland, placing candles, getting a start on the luminaria, and more. Bell choir will practice after these things are all done.

Our Psalm for today 41:1-12 has a great deal to say about how people deal with faithfulness when their lives have been deeply impacted by personal choice, the impact of others, or difficulties with Creation itself. Recently the city moved about 50 long-time camps out of the hundred-acre wood bicycle park along Golf Links Road. We all have a variety of thoughts about how these folks got to where they were in their lives. Yes, some were drug dealers. Three were arrested for that activity in the camp and beyond in the community. But some were there due to health issues like PTSD or having lost their homes and shelters because they could no longer cover their health and the cost of housing too. Others made choices that placed them there, and yet others were there because of the choices of other people who took their livelihoods and money away from them, and there may well be many other reasons. The point of our Psalm for today is that it is possible for the witness of people of faith who themselves have been in dire times, and whose faith called to God through Christ to sustain them, protect them, and extract them from the awful time that they are having.  For you and me to tell an unsheltered person to trust in Christ for every answer would, likely, get us rejected, or maybe even accosted. But I can speak to folk about how difficult it was to move our young family to a city of 5 million people, all strangers, who live in an old, dilapidated apartment, having little to no income, unable for some weeks to provide for our children for milk and other food they needed.  During that time, we trusted Christ to help us make it through, and we continued to give the meager 10% of our available resources every week at church. Our experience was tough, and frightening. Yet the LORD answered our need in some amazing ways time and again. There would be an unexpected gift from our home church, or a total stranger who felt compelled to support a seminarian and their family. Our car was old, with no air, standard transmission, and it had plenty of problems like breaking a timing belt on a Sunday morning on the 16 lanes of the Dan Ryan freeway on the way to our teaching parish, where we were to learn and grow in our understanding of parish life.  Again, no money, but God provides. In my service at the Children's hospital, I had offered to do funeral services for a teenager who had died at the hospital after sustaining terrible injuries in an accident. His dad was a mechanic who then chose to care for our old Mercury Zephyr. He did our work on our old car and got it running again as a way of thanking me for being there for his son and him in a very tough time. We really were poor and unable to provide for all our needs. The only good thing is that the seminary would not unhouse us over rent being late, but it was clear that payment was expected. I could write about the many times that the LORD carried us when we couldn't carry ourselves. This Psalm shows how important it is to trust God, even when things are difficult or downright too much to handle. And when we are down there are aways plenty of people who want to take advantage of us, but in these situations the Psalmist says "Trust God". Enemies will fail to overcome us when we trust the promise of God's love in Jesus Christ, and for David when he was down, or for a person in his time who was faced with the loss of property and wealth, and forced to struggle in what becomes darkness and hopelessness, because our God upholds us with the light of His Grace and Love through His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.  Remember, there are people who need to hear about our own stories, who need to know that there is hope in Christ in the worst of times and troubles. HE will never desert His faithful ones, you, me, and others, who believe in Him, offering that hope to others who seem to not be able to find it on their own.

In this Advent season of the Church Year, we are constantly reminded that this is a time of preparation, and joy. a time to get ready for the birth of our Savior, to allow our hearts to be filled with His Love, and to acknowledge the LORD'S faithfulness to us too. We will be upheld in all things that hold the integrity of our faith, in all things that uphold the Love of our Savior, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God bless you tonight, or if it is the case, tomorrow morning.

With Love in the Savior, Pastor Kim.