Posted by dwhetter |
When we left off last week, after some convincing, Jesus had offered healing for the daughter of a Canaanite woman. Through this woman’s persistence, Jesus came to realize that God had sent him to bring the Gospel to all people, not just the Jews. From there, Matthew tells us that Jesus went on to heal even more people, and out of compassion for those in need that Jesus fed over 4000 people…
A friend of mine wrote this, and with the eclipse this week, I find it quite relevant. “We’re kind of like the moon. When we put ourselves before God, all we do is get in the way of His light. We can never totally snuff it out, though. God is much too brilliant. Instead, it is a spectacular reminder of how dark we are without Him. Even when we’re in the worst place, His light still pierces…
Posted by dwhetter |
I love Jesus and I love the promise of salvation he brings to this world. But, there are times that his words and actions greatly disappoint me and today’s lesson is one of these times. Reverend David Lose, the senior pastor at Mount Olivet Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, a congregation of over 14000 members, and the most recent president of Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia,…
Matthew 15: 10-28 (MSG)
10-11 He then called the crowd together and said, “Listen, and take this to heart. It’s not what you swallow that pollutes your life, but what you vomit up.” 12 Later his disciples came and told him, “Did you know how upset the Pharisees were when they heard what you said?” 13-14 Jesus shrugged it off. “Every tree that wasn’t planted…
Posted by hlewis |
I was always a really confident kid. I look back at pictures of my childhood and ask my mom why she dressed me that way and pulled my hair into a fountain on top of my head, but at the time it didn’t bother me in the slightest. I fell in love with music early on, and decided when I was in 3rd grade that I would study music in college and be a music teacher. I followed my dream,…
As I mentioned in my last letter, this year marks the 500th anniversary of the start of the Reformation. One of the major reforms that came out of this Reformation was the practice of reading Scripture in one’s own native language. Martin Luther believed that if God’s Word was going to be accessible to God’s people, then it needed to be translated into the people's native…
Posted by dwhetter |
According to the gospel of Matthew, Jesus began his ministry immediately following John the Baptist’s arrest and from the beginning Jesus proclaimed, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near” (Matthew 4:17). From the beginning, Jesus’ ministry was about sharing with the world the need for the people to repent, that is change their ways to God’s ways because God’s kingdom…
Dear Salem Family,
Community is messy. Being in relationship with people is messy. Loving others is messy. If I’ve learned anything from my therapeutic background, and my many jobs of working with people, is that we are messy beings. There isn’t a stock way of dealing with people. We need to get to know people and seek to understand others as we interact with them. There is a clear correlation…
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." "In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Over the past week I had the privilege to journey with 105 students and adult leaders from five congregations on a mystery mission trip. Our mission brought us to the…
Posted by dwhetter |
As our story begins today, Jesus is sitting on the shore of the Sea of Galilee just outside of the town of Capernaum and large crowds are gathering to listen to him. In fact, the crowd got so large that Jesus had to get in a boat to speak while the crowd filled the shore. Jesus was trying to explain about the kingdom of heaven, a complex notion, and so like any good teacher he began using different…