weary

Aug

2026

The voice of a prophet

Zechariah’s words for today

by David Sellnow

If a prophet were to arise in our country today, what would you hope he would say?

Maybe you hope for a prophet to speak out against the immorality and lies and corruption that prevail all around us. The powerful call what is evil good, and what is truly good they say is evil. You’d like a prophet who would set the record straight, who speaks up for godly values—for loving our neighbors, for walking in righteousness, for mercy and justice.

Maybe you hope for a prophet who would speak to the sluggishness and indifference that exists even inside God’s church. The people of God seem to have given up in defeat, or given in to worldly concerns, or given out in exhaustion. They just want to sit in their own comfortable homes, live out their lives, stop working so hard for God’s priorities in a world that doesn’t seem ever to align with God’s priorities anyway. You’d like a prophet who would speak to godly people who are tired, who are weak, who are worn, a prophet to the weary and frustrated.

Maybe you hope for a prophet who would speak out against the nations (including our own) that pursue wars and aggression and claim they are doing so with God’s approval—as if God wants war and will bless them for inflicting violence. You wish someone would challenge the bullies and grifters who increase their riches and advantages at the expense of everyday people and then dare to claim that their greater wealth and power is a sign of God’s blessing. You hope for someone to expose the false preachers and misguided philosophies that battle against genuine Christian hope and faith.

You want a prophet who will speak for you because you don’t know what to say, a prophet who reminds you that you have a Savior, that Christ will bring you more life and truth and fullness than this world can offer … and that waiting for him is worthwhile, no matter how long you have to wait. You hope for a prophet who would remind you that you are not forgotten, that the LORD remembers his promises, and he has promised you salvation.

About 2500 years ago, a prophet arose in the nation of Judah and reminded God’s people that God does remember his people and his promises. The prophet Zechariah’s own name was a reminder; his name meant “the LORD remembers.” Zechariah ministered after God’s people had gone through centuries of history, had been carried off into exile and back again, and had returned to a pattern of life in their home country that was nothing special, quite mundane, not at all glorious. It was not the high-powered kingdom of David and Solomon anymore. It was a leftover kingdom, a remnant, an afterthought. They needed to be renewed in hope that God indeed still was remembering his promises. And Zechariah provided that reminder.

Often in our lives under God today, we need the same sort of reminder. We need reminders and promises for our own souls. We are so easily entrapped and enslaved in our own sinfulness. We keep on doing evil, even if we don’t want to or try to avoid it. We keep failing to do good, even as we try to be good (cf. Romans 7:15-20). Our pride gets in the way, because we’re confident that we can do the things God wants us to do… but we really can’t. We do not do the good we want, but the evil we do not want is what we keep on doing (Romans 7:19). We need God’s deliverance and forgiveness through Jesus Christ (Romans 7:25).

We need reminders, too, about our country and world. We get tired, frustrated, discouraged. The world seems to be in chaos. Our country seems to go from one crisis to the next. Our leaders’ supposed solutions seem more often to make things worse. We find ourselves wondering if we’re going to be ok. We wonder if the ultimate kingdom of our LORD will ever come in answer to our hopes. The word of a prophet like Zechariah—indeed the Word of our LORD through all his prophets and apostles and from Jesus himself—is what we need to reawaken our hopes, reinspire our confidence, and spur us on in faith.

Prophetic voices like that of Zechariah remind us that the LORD remembers. No matter how much our hopes are challenged and burdened—by what happens in our history, in our nation, in our world—we can know that God does not renege on any of his promises. The Messiah is real, not imagined. The promises are true. The day of the Lord will come. And when that day comes, the LORD will remember us as his own.

The fact is, we are in the last days, the end times, the final chapter in human history. How do I know that? Because Jesus has appeared on this earth once already. The events of his birth, life, death, and resurrection were the inauguration of “these last days” (as the Bible terms them). Everything that has been happening since the Son of God became a man is a part of the final chapter of the human story.

The history of time essentially consists of two chapters. There was the old testament, the beginning chapter, the ancient time in which people who hoped in God looked forward to the coming of the Anointed One, the Messiah that God had promised. Humanity had no answer to its own sin and problems, to death and isolation from God. Only God himself could solve the human condition. Jesus the Messiah, the Christ, the incarnate God, came and fulfilled the ancient word, living and dying in the place of frail humanity, rising out of death and ascending again to heaven as the hope of our future.

Now we live in the new testament era, the concluding chapter, the days in which we wait for Christ to come again. We know he is the Savior, the King, the Lord of all things. Before he ascended into the clouds, he promised us, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matthew 28:18). Jesus is Lord over all things that happen—even when it appears to us that he couldn’t be further away and this world couldn’t be more of a mess.

Before he ascended into the clouds, Christ also commissioned us: “You will be my witnesses … to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). We have a calling, a purpose, to extend the promise of Christ’s name to others while we can, while this earth still endures in its broken state.

Zechariah spoke of the last days in the way that prophets of old saw the time Christ would come to the world. They saw the arrival of Christ and the end of time like mountain peaks in the distance, appearing as if they were very close together. Zechariah’s prophecy wove images of Christ’s first coming—such as his Palm Sunday entrance into Jerusalem—together with images of Christ’s second coming—his judgment of all nations. Zechariah encouraged the people to rejoice because their true King and Savior was coming to them. When he first arrived, the Messiah would come in humble fashion, yet at the same time triumphant and victorious. The coming of Christ’s kingdom cuts off the horses and chariots and weapons of war. His kingdom extends over all the earth and he calls for peace. He promises to those who have placed their hope in him will be set free from bondage and restored to strength in double measure (Zechariah 9:9-12).

Zachariah’s book of prophecy also includes messages of Judgment Day. At Christ’s second coming, those who have opposed the Lord will be caught in his judgment like persons caught in a lightning storm. They will be destroyed like Goliath was brought down with a stone from David’s slingshot (Zechariah 9:14-14). At the same time, there is peace and hope for God’s people. When Judgment Day comes, Jesus is bringing redemption to those who have struggled and suffered. “On that day the LORD their God will save them, for they are the flock of his people” (Zechariah 9:16).

God gives great beauty and glory forever to his people, who are his in Jesus. They—we—will sparkle like jewels for eternity. No matter how oppressed we may feel in our days of earthly existence, no matter how many enemies we encounter who oppose God and the faith we have in him, God is our rescuer. The kingdom of this world will become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.

And so meanwhile, in these last days, what do we do? We proclaim the message that Christ himself proclaimed. He proclaimed peace to the nations. He breaks the battle bow and takes away chariots and warhorses. He is the King who came to his people in lowly fashion, riding on a donkey—indeed, on a colt the foal of a donkey. The sword our King has given us with which to fight battles in his name is not a weapon of war, but rather the “sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (Ephesians 6:17). “The word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12 NIV).

In these last days, we yearn for and lean on the word of the Lord, which empowers and strengthens us, lifting us up out of hopelessness. In this world of uncertainty and sin and confusion, we rely on our humble, gentle-of-heart Savior to be with us. “Come to me, all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens,” he said, “and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). That’s the word of our Lord on which we rely. And we go forth with his goodness and promises, trusting that he indeed is the Lord and is in control, confident that he, the LORD, remembers his promises and will safeguard his people … all the way to the very last day, all the way into eternity.

Scripture quotations, except where otherwise indicated, are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition. Copyright © 2021 National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Apr

2026

The Lord leads me to life that lasts forever

On the church year calendar, this Sunday is Good Shepherd Sunday. I’ll share here a story that I wrote to illustrate a truth from the Good Shepherd psalm—Psalm 23. If you’d like to read more, you can find additional commentary and other stories in The Lord Cares for Me: Stories and Thoughts about Psalm 23. The book is available in Kindle e-book edition or also paperback.

The LORD is my shepherd. He gives me everything I need. (Psalm 23:1)

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The story of Larry

Larry struggled in school. He had a hard time remembering things. He passed his classes in high school, but his grades were below average. Larry’s parents were in poor health and did not have great jobs. They struggled to make ends meet. Larry could not have afforded university tuition, and he doubted he’d get accepted by most colleges.

Larry ended up at the community college, where classes were cheaper. He got a two-year degree which helped him get a job with a heating and air conditioning company. That went well for a while, but during a slump in the nation’s economy, the company went out of business. Larry found himself out of work. He had a series of odd jobs over the next few years. Most were temporary or seasonal positions. Finally, he landed a full-time job at the local meat-packing plant. The work was a chore, but the pay was good. Larry was able to save up for the down payment on a house.

Larry never got married. He was awkward and shy about talking to people. He lived alone in the small house he had bought … until his father died. Then his mother came to live with him, and Larry cared for her. A year or so later his mother also died. So now, in his forties, Larry was alone and barely keeping ahead of house payments and medical bills that he had taken on for his mother in her last months.

Then the meat-packing plant got new owners. The new owners had new ideas on how to run the plant. They fired a large number of the full-time workers and hired people for part-time and temporary positions instead. The new bosses were great at cutting costs to the company—but this also cost people like Larry their jobs and security. Larry had no success finding another solid job. He collected unemployment checks for as long as he could, but eventually that money ran out.

Larry lost his house. He couldn’t make the monthly payments anymore. He rented a small apartment, but soon couldn’t even afford that. Larry was now 50 years old and homeless. He found a sheltered spot under a railroad bridge where he set up camp for himself. He wondered what he would do when winter came.

An old stray dog kept coming around Larry’s campsite. Though he didn’t have much food, Larry always shared some with the dog, whom he decided to call Rufus. Larry was glad to have the little bit of companionship that Rufus provided. It was about all he had left.

Larry did have one other thing left—something which he’d had with him through all the years, in good times or bad. Larry had his Bible. It was nearly worn out from daily use over the years. Larry treasured the book and kept it wrapped in plastic when not using it, to keep it from getting wet or damaged.

Larry read a chapter in the Bible every day. Lately he’d been reading several chapters a day. He marked verses that really grabbed his heart. He held onto God’s promises with all his heart. He believed the Bible’s promises that God was watching over him no matter how life looked. He knew God was preparing a place in heaven for him and for all those who trust in Jesus.

Sometimes Larry would flip through his Bible and reread favorite verses that he had marked, verses like …

Come to me, all of you who are tired and are carrying heavy loads. I will give you rest (Matthew 11:28).
The LORD gives strength to those who are tired. He gives power to those who are weak (Isaiah 40:29).
Can trouble or hard times or harm or hunger separate us from God’s love? … Nothing at all can ever separate us from God’s love because of what Christ Jesus our Lord has done (Romans 8:35,39).
“Do not let your hearts be troubled,” Jesus said. “There are many rooms in my Father’s house. … I will take you to be with me. Then you will also be where I am” (John 14:1-3).

Larry longed to go and live with Jesus in the Father’s house in heaven. Life on earth was hard.

Winter came, and Larry hadn’t found steady work or a place to live. He slept in homeless shelters at night, but would go back to his campsite during the day to check on Rufus and bring him food that he collected from garbage cans. Larry had built a doghouse for Rufus out of stones and old bricks, lining it with torn blankets.

One afternoon, Larry brought Rufus some steak bones he’d found in the trash behind a restaurant. The temperature that day was in the low 40s, so Larry spent the afternoon with Rufus. While the dog chewed happily on the steak bones, Larry sat reading his Bible and praying for the Lord to see him through, no matter how hard things got. Rufus snuggled up next to Larry. Larry was tired and fell asleep. As night fell, a cold front blew harsh winds. Temperatures dropped into single digits. Rufus crawled into his doghouse to get out of the wind. Larry didn’t wake up. He froze to death that night.

The Lord whom Larry loved had not abandoned him. Larry had prayed for the Lord to see him through life, and that’s just what Jesus did. Jesus carried Larry through all the days of his life, holding him extra close on the hardest days. And he carried Larry on into eternal life when life had worn him out.

Larry’s most favorite Bible verse of all was Psalm 23:6 — I am sure that your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life. And I will live in the house of the LORD forever. Surely God’s goodness and love had been with Larry every step of the way. And now he is living in the heavenly Father’s house. Never again will Larry be homeless. He is forever at home with Jesus.

**********

Additional commentary on the story available in The Lord Cares for Me: Stories and Thoughts about Psalm 23.

Jan

2022

Hidden in Plain Sight

The Quiet Power of God’s Presence

Thoughts for Epiphany (January 6) and for the Baptism of our Lord (Sunday after Epiphany)
David Sellnow

They say that heaven is 10 zillion light years away
But if there is a God, we need him now
“Where is your God”
That’s what my friends ask me
And I say it’s taken him so long
‘Cause we’ve got so far to come

-Stevie Wonder, “Heaven is 10 Zillion Light Years Away,” Fulfillingness’ First Finale (Tamla, 1974)

Some of you might recognize those lyrics from a Stevie Wonder song from 1974. It was the case then–and remains the case always–that human eyes look for evidence of God’s presence in big, obvious ways. We think that if our lives are overflowing with an abundance of wealth and good health, that’s when God is with us. When times are hard, we assume we’ve been abandoned and God isn’t there. There are problems with this point of view. For one thing, having riches and success rarely indicates how close to God a person is. In fact, many powerful, successful persons often achieve such glories by godlessness–not by prioritizing kindness and walking humbly in the ways of God (cf. Micah 6:8). Another thing: The testimony of Scripture shows that God never abandons those who trust in his name, and he is especially with us in the experiences that challenge our faith in him.

Think of Job, who lost all his wealth and lost loved ones and cried out wondering where God was. God knew everything and was, in fact, striving to connect Job’s heart even closer to his own.
Think of the parables Jesus told. It was not the well-to-do Pharisee who was right with God as he bragged proudly of how much he’d done. The social pariah, the tax collector, who prayed, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner” (Luke 9:13)–that’s who Jesus said was exalted in God’s eyes.
It was not the rich man “dressed in purple and fine linen … who feasted sumptuously every day” that ascended into heaven on the day he died (Luke 18:19-31). The beggar who sat in the street outside the rich man’s home, whose only friends were stray dogs that licked his open sores–that’s the person Jesus said was blessed.

When we look at the world through our usual human perspective, we don’t see God in action in the obvious ways we want to see.

The way we see things and the way things really often are out of alignment. As we go about our lives, we focus on physical, material, tangible things that can easily be measured. We are not attuned to sensing spiritual realities–the ways that in God “we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). Psychologists have noticed something called “inattentional blindness” in how we interpret the world. Rather than noticing each detail around us, we tend to concentrate on the things most important to us. We see things in the context of existing mental frameworks that we have adopted (Kendra Cherry, “Inattentional Blindness in Psychology, VeryWellMind, 5/4/2020). If you’ll allow me to apply that principle in a broader way, our earthbound primary focus notices the flow of what’s happening outwardly in our lives, and we miss many details of what God is doing in and through and underneath those events. While “no one has ever seen God” (John 1:18), the hand of God is evident in things that can be seen. “Ever since the creation of the world, God’s eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made” (Romans 1:20). But we tend not to look past outward appearances, and so we miss seeing important truths. “Focusing our attention on one thing can cause us to overlook another” even if the other is right in front of us. (Daniel Nevers, “A Brief History of Hiding in Plain Sight, Mills College Art Museum, 2019). That’s how we tend to be with the manifestations of God that are given to us. God shows himself, but human beings mostly fail to pay attention to these evidences of God. Spiritual realities escape our notice, hidden in plain sight all around us.

Think about the ways God made himself known when Jesus Christ came into our world. There were clear manifestations of the miracle of redemption God was bringing about, but most people’s attention was aimed in other directions. When God chooses to make his presence seen and known, he often does so in what seem like insignificant ways.

When Jesus was born, he arrived in one of the world’s least significant places, the little town of Bethlehem. The King of kings might be expected to be found in a palace, at the center of politics and power. Yet when astronomers from an eastern land came looking for him in Jerusalem, the king in Jerusalem had to consult Jewish religious scholars to ask where the Messiah was to be born (Matthew 2:4).
The woman who had given birth to Jesus was no one of fame or acclaim. She and Joseph, the legal father of the virgin-born child Jesus, both were “descended from the house and family line of David” (Luke 2:4), but otherwise they were pretty much nobodies. Joseph was a carpenter (Matthew 13:55). Mary was his teenage wife, who herself said the Lord had “looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant” when choosing her to bear the Christ child in her womb (Luke 1:48).
When Jesus was anointed to begin his work as Teacher and Savior, there was no grand national ceremony with parades and dignitaries. Rather, John, a cousin of Jesus, served as the prophet to point to Jesus as the Messiah. John lived in the wilderness by the Jordan River, wearing clothing of camel’s hair and subsisting on a diet of locusts and wild honey (Matthew 3:4). John proclaimed “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (Mark 1:4), and people did come to be baptized. Then Jesus requested that John baptize him also–“to fulfill all righteousness,” as Jesus insisted (Matthew 3:15). At Jesus’ baptism, “the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased’” (Luke 3:22). But I wonder if most people who were there when that happened heard and saw things differently. “Look at that, a dove just landed on him,” I imagine many said, not understanding the spiritual significance. And, as happened on another occasion when the Father spoke audibly from heaven, rather than hearing the words “This is my Son, the Beloved,” the crowd standing there may well have thought, “Was that thunder?” (cf. John 12:28-29).

Our eyes and ears aren’t attuned in such a way that we grasp the workings of God, even when they happen right in front of us. Think of baptism itself, the holy act by which God claims us as his own. What do we see? Ordinary water, nothing special. A few simple words, as we are baptized into “the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19). When we have our baptisms, there is no dove that miraculously appears or audible voice speaking from the skies. But with eyes of faith, we confess that “baptism is not simply plain water,” but that “it is water used according to God’s command and connected with God’s word.” We believe beyond what we can see, that baptism “brings about forgiveness of sins, redeems from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe” (Martin Luther’s Small Catechism). So also with communion, the Lord’s Supper. We eat and drink the most basic sorts of things – little bits of bread, small sips of wine. But because such simple actions were directed by Christ himself, whoever believes his words “has what they declare, namely, forgiveness of sin” (Martin Luther’s Small Catechism).

Such is God’s way of making himself known to us, his way of connecting himself to us, of doing the miraculous for us. It’s not typically in the spectacular, but in things that seem everyday and ordinary. Do you remember Naaman, “commander of the army of the king of Aram, a great man and in high favor”–but who suffered from the disease of leprosy (2 Kings 5:1)? Naaman had a slave girl who had been captured from the people of Israel. The slave girl urged her master Naaman to go see the prophet in Israel for healing. Naaman went to Israel, and the prophet Elisha merely sent a messenger to tell him to go wash in the Jordan River seven times and he’d be healed (2 Kings 5:10). Naaman became angry and began to leave, because he was expecting some great and mighty prophet to “come out and stand and call on the name of the Lord” and wave his hand over Naaman in dramatic fashion and cure the disease (2 Kings 5:11). Naaman had to be convinced by others of his servants, who said to him, “If the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it” (2 Kings 5:13)? So, Naaman did the simple thing the prophet had said, and he was healed.

That’s how it often is with God. As Elisha’s teacher, Elijah, had learned, don’t expect God to show up by splitting mountains in half or shaking the earth beneath our feet. God more likely will make his presence known in what Elijah heard as the “sound of sheer silence” (1 Kings 19:12), or “a still, small voice,” as the King James Version of the Bible expressed it. Every day, in all sorts of seemingly ordinary ways, God makes his presence known and shares his grace by the life and witness of people who are acting in his name.

There is the son who visits his elderly mother every weekend, spends time with her, takes care of chores around the house for her, cooks a meal for her. And when she has to go to a nursing home, the son continues to visit, even as his mother becomes more confined, her health diminishes, and her memory fades away.
There is the mother whose toddler is throwing a tantrum and cannot calm down, so she sits down on the floor and gathers the child in her arms and just holds on, closely, securely, through all the kicks and screams, until the toddler finally melts into her embrace and hugs her back and says, “I’m sorry, Momma. I love you, Momma.”
There is the student who sees a schoolmate being picked on by others, avoided and ostracized and gossiped about for being different–and this classmate seeks out and befriends the outcast. They sit together in the cafeteria, spend time together studying and not studying (just hanging out), making it clear to everyone that acceptance and understanding are better than prejudice and pettiness.

Those could be just human actions of kindness, yes. In many cases, though, they are far more than that. They are the acts of God’s people making God’s love known in the ordinary course of events, doing things that are, in fact, extraordinary. God is working to make himself known to others through you–ordinary people in your everyday lives. Nothing spectacular. Nothing dazzling. Just you laboring patiently to serve your family, your neighbors, your community. Just you loving earnestly and committedly, caring for others with hearts that have been invigorated by the Spirit of Christ. That’s your calling as God’s people. God says to each of you, “I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. … You are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you” (Isaiah 43:1,4). He also says, “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior” (Isaiah 43:2). How does that help, that strength, that rescue from the Lord usually show up in your lives when you are hurting or in trouble? Through the actions of people doing simple things, basic, necessary things, in God’s name. The neighbor who shovels your sidewalk or snowblows your driveway–because he knows you are away from home, caring for a sick relative. Fellow church members who take turns dropping off meals at your home–because you are the caregiver for a disabled family member or for your spouse who is going through chemotherapy, and they want to help bear your burdens. Complete strangers who contribute to an online plea for funds to help with extensive medical bills incurred from a major surgery or a lengthy stay in the hospital ICU recovering from disease.

Every now and then, God has intervened in history with supernatural interruptions of natural events. But more often, God does his work through us, his people, in less astonishing ways. Let me remind you again of the experience of God’s prophet Elijah. Elijah had the experience of God making his presence obvious and forceful and explosive. Elijah prevailed over the enemies of God by calling on God to do a miracle, to consume a sacrifice with fire sent from heaven. And God did so, spectacularly. “The fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt offering, the wood, the stones, and the dust, and even licked up the water that was in the trench” around Elijah’s offering (1 Kings 18:38). But the perspective of the world doesn’t readily change when a miracle like that happens. In fact, the enemies of God (and of Elijah) only got more determined against God’s plans and against God’s prophet. Death threats were issued from the royal household against Elijah, and he ran. He ran back to the mountain where God had once revealed himself to Moses, and felt ready to die. “I’ve had enough,” he said to God. “Take away my life” (1 Kings 19:4). Instead, God told him to get up and he would reveal himself to Elijah. God did show himself, but not in expected ways. Not in a mighty, raging wind. Not in a rock-smashing earthquake. God revealed himself In a still, small voice, in the “sound of sheer silence” (I kings 19).

God’s powerful presence is often in the still, small voice–a voice carried out into the world by individuals, one at a time, by people like Elijah, by people like you and me. God’s way of enacting change in the hearts of people, one person at a time, is by the simple testimony of his words on our lips and his love lived out in our lives. He brings about the miracle of salvation by one baptism, then another baptism, then another, sending his Spirit to live in each baptized person’s heart and life. He carries out the actions of salvation in our hearts and lives, as we who have been saved by grace through faith, “created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life” (Ephesians 3:10), go about doing those works on behalf of one another, and for our neighbors, and for our communities.

When you feel like God is 10 zillion light years away, like God is so far distant from your life that you wonder if he’s even there at all, look again. Listen again. Feel again. Take notice of the little things, the inconspicuous ways that God is showing himself. Others’ actions. Your own actions. All the everyday words and actions whereby God makes his presence known and shares his peace among us. The smallest of kind words and actions toward one of the least of those whom Jesus considers his brothers and sisters are gifts to Jesus and blessings from Jesus (cf. Matthew 25:40). As Martin Luther taught, “God is so in control that the good we do is really God’s work. We’re nothing but the hands of Christ …. In the good we do, we are ‘little Christs’ to each other” (Luther’s Works, Vol.34, p.111, Volu.24, p.226, Vol. 31, p.367-368, quoted by Mark Ellingson in Living Lutheran, August 11, 2017). May our lives each day appreciate and extend the Epiphany of Christ in this way.

Scripture quotations, except where otherwise indicated, are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Jul

2021

Time to Have our Hearts Checked

Hearts Full of Faith Beat Boldly in Christ

Ephesians 3:14-21, with reference to 2 Kings 4:42-44 and John 6:1-21; 9th Sunday after Pentecost

by David Sellnow

Ask kids what their favorite foods are. They’ll more likely say hot dogs, candy bars, and chips than tuna, spinach, or brussels sprouts. We don’t always wise up and change our habits when we become adults. I had a roommate one summer after college who, as far as I could tell, ingested nothing all summer long except coffee and cigarettes and occasionally mooched slices of pizza. I wouldn’t say he was the picture of health, but then, with my pizza, neither was I.

Some years ago, a study was done on the blood vessels of presumably healthy young adults (between ages 15 and 34) who died from causes other than illness. Among those in their early 30s, they found that 20% of males and 8% of females already had advanced stages of plaque buildup in their arteries. The American Heart Association has recommendations on cholesterol intake, on what foods to avoid or eat only in moderation. But as a leading doctor on that research team said, “It’s a hard sell [to] teenagers …. I have a grandson who, despite all our family discussions, still orders the double cheeseburger with bacon and fries.”

As you probably can guess, this Electric Gospel post isn’t primarily about your cardiovascular health. Each of us has a spiritual heart in us also, and what goes into our spiritual heart will determine our spiritual well-being. Let’s consider how hearts full of faith beat boldly in Christ; hearts that take in the love and strength of Christ will live in love and strength.

Consider words from this day’s Epistle lesson, Ephesians 3:14-19:

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

When you begin a check-up on your spiritual heart’s condition, you realize that your spiritual heartbeat itself is a gift from God. When Paul said “for this reason” he thanked the Father, the reason is a theme that runs through the whole preceding portion of his Ephesian epistle: God’s saving activity for his people. God gave Christ as the Savior of the world; God raised Christ from death to reign in glory; God brought these Ephesians to trust in Christ rather than in idols; God caused the church at Ephesus to begin and grow; God gave these people a unity of heart and mind to work together for Christ’s kingdom. For all of it, God was responsible and God was to be praised. He is the one from whom the Ephesians received their spiritual heartbeat; he is the one from whom his whole family derives its name.

The same is true for us. We were in a dead, sinful state before God brought our spirits to life in the miracle of baptism. From that moment on God has been the one to strengthen and preserve faith in our hearts. In order for us to stay healthy spiritually, we need a steady, nourishing diet provided by God’s Spirit. Soaking in all the stuff you can absorb from contemporary culture can progressively harm your soul, like junk food impacts our bodies. You can get temporary boosts to your emotions or thoughts with other things, like you can artificially stimulate your body with substances like coffee and cigarettes. But there is just “one thing needful” (Luke 10:42 KJV) that can truly keep our spiritual selves healthy: the good news of love and forgiveness in Jesus.

Admittedly though, our sinful side doesn’t want the good things God gives. When the children of Israel were fed by God with manna in the desert, suited to meet all their nutritional needs, what did they say? “We detest this miserable food” (Numbers 21:5). They wanted other things (cf. Numbers 20:5). They got tired of what the Lord was giving them. We do the same thing spiritually. We look at what God is giving us in the Bible and in church, and we say, “Too much manna all the time!” We gravitate toward video games over Bible reading. We find streaming TV more interesting than sermons. We follow sports events and statistics more diligently than we search the Scriptures.

But it is through the gospel that Christ establishes himself in our hearts. We come to see how wide and long and high and deep the love of Christ is. We get to “know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.” Paul knew the amazing heights and depths of Christ’s love. He once wrote, “I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence. But I received mercy …. The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the foremost” (1 Timothy 1:13-15). Christ died for every sinner, for the worst of sinners. That includes you and me.

Those who by God’s Spirit come to know this wonderful truth about Jesus’ love then overflow with that love. Hearts that are “filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” will result in lives that are healthy, vibrant, and active in joyful service to others.

So, are you feeling healthy, vibrant, and full of love and joy and service? Or are you feeling a little tired, feeling worn down, feeling old? It’s not easy going through the stages of life–whether in our own individual lives or the shared life of a congregation. The Christians at Ephesus were in the first years of their church experience when Paul wrote his Epistle to the Ephesians. Paul had started the ministry in Ephesus in the late 50s. [Not the 1950s — just the 50s, the first century AD.] His letter to the Ephesians was sent back to them around the year 62. Another apostle, John, served in Ephesus later as part of his ministry. Around 95 AD, when persecution exiled John to an island off the coast from the areas he’d served, John had a different sort of letter to send to the Ephesian congregation. Jesus himself spoke these words:

I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance. I know that you cannot tolerate evildoers; you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them to be false. I also know that you are enduring patiently and bearing up for the sake of my name, and that you have not grown weary. But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember then from what you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first (Revelation 2:2-5).

In our individual lives, as we get older, it can be hard to maintain the passion and energy and zest for life that we had when we were younger. We may be stable and solid, but we can also get a bit stodgy, a bit stale, a bit set in our ways. Congregations can be that way, too, as they age. We can lose the love that we had at first. We grow weary. We become more mundane than spiritual, more routine than revitalized, more dreary than dynamic.

We need a reminder of the refrain that Paul put at the end of his prayer for the Ephesian church, the final verses of today’s epistle lesson: To him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever (Ephesians 3:20-21).

Too many times in our churches, we think small thoughts about our ministries. We want our congregation, our little corner of God’s kingdom, to do okay. We focus on scraping together what we’ll need to maintain what we’ve got, fund our budget, populate our programs and committees. Meanwhile, while we’re thinking about earthbound goals of that sort, God is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine. God has plans for our futures that we don’t even envision. Christ says, “My power is at work within you. My gospel is like dynamite for you, exploding with love and truth and joy and will accomplish more than you’d ever think could be done.”

Consider the other experiences which were related in the Bible readings for this Sunday. People didn’t think there was enough food to go around. In Elisha’s day, there was a famine in the land (2 Kings 4:38). Yet by the Lord’s grace, one sack of bread and grain became enough to feed 100 men in ministry training (the school of the prophets). When throngs of people kept following Jesus and had no food other than one boy who had a handful of bread loaves and a couple of fish, Jesus had no difficulty in making sure all were fed (cf. John 6:1-21). Often we think like the servant of Elisha, who looked at the resources they had and the need in front of them and said, “How can I set this before a hundred people?” (2 Kings 4:43). We can be like the disciple of Jesus who saw thousands of mouths to feed and said, “Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little” (John 6:7). When we find ourselves in situations where it seems like our cupboards are empty, or our strength is gone, or storms are swirling and raging, our tendency is to think we are sunk, we will starve, we will wither away. But when we think there are no solutions, Christ creates solutions. The Lord calls on us to start with what we have and do our best. He calls us to use every opportunity and resource and talent we’ve been given and trust Christ to make it enough, to multiply it, to expand our realities beyond anything we ever thought possible.

That’s how it has always been in the history of God’s people. When his people were held in bondage in Egypt, they didn’t imagine they could be rescued. Then plagues pressured a powerful ruler to let them go; God’s miracles enabled an exodus and a return of God’s people to their own land. When the earliest Christians were banned from the temple in Jerusalem and shunned from synagogues, when they had no church buildings of their own and were persecuted as if they were some dangerous cult, they could not have imagined that in time, the Christian faith would become predominant throughout the whole Roman Empire. When the organized church got sidetracked in the centuries that followed and became stuck in its institutionalism, in its rituals and rules, in its laws and legalism, the people didn’t dream there was much hope left in the church. Their hope grew fainter still after a horrible pandemic (the Black Death) had ravaged their communities and killed a third of the population, and the church’s highest-ranking clergy had no answers. (They were more likely to preach fire and brimstone than provide comfort or reassurance.) But then the Spirit of God raised up voices of reformation, voices such as John Wycliffe, Jan Hus, Martin Luther. The good news of Jesus and the riches of his mercy were proclaimed again with eagerness and energy and grace and renewal for everyone.

You may be at a time in your life right now where you are starving for sustenance and don’t know where it will come from. You may be at a time in your congregation right now where you have mostly questions and no clear picture of what’s on the horizon for your future. But be assured of this. Our God is “able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine” (Ephesians 3:20). The love of Christ is wider and longer and higher and deeper than you could ever measure (cf. Ephesians 3:18). Keep feeding on the Bread of Life, the spiritual food that Christ gives us, the life and truth that is Christ. He will fill your heart’s need, and he will revive your strength.

Lift up your eyes on high and see: .. [God] is great in strength, mighty in power ….
Why do you say … “My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God”?
Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable.
He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless.
Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted;
but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,
they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint (Isaiah 40:26-31).

—

Scripture quotations, except where indicated otherwise, are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Dec

2019

Are you tired?

Originally published on the Electric Gospel on September 24, 2016.

Are you tired?

by Mary Meyer

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened,
and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).

So often, I’m so tired. Between school and work, I chase from one task to another and get worn out. Have you ever been so tired that you couldn’t keep your eyes open, no matter how hard you tried? Doctors say that kids anywhere from the ages of 6-13 need about 9-11 hours of sleep. Teenagers need 8-10 hours, and adults need 7-9 hours (Mayo Clinic). When we don’t get that amount of sleep in a night, our bodies feel weak and tired. When we are overtired, we turn to our beds, cuddle up with a blanket and drift into dreamy sleep.

There’s another kind of tired, though, that sleep alone can’t cure. When Jesus said, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened” (Matthew 11:28), he wasn’t talking so much about being physically tired, but about being mentally, emotionally and spiritually exhausted. That happens to us because of how sin-burdened our whole world is (cf. Romans 8:22-24). When life in this world is wearing us down, Jesus calls out to us, inviting us into his open arms. “I will give you rest,” he said (Matthew 11:28). When a nap isn’t enough, Jesus wraps us up in his love. We don’t need to worry about the big science test coming up, or be frustrated by obstacles in life that make us feel overwhelmed. We have God’s constant promises. We have his powerful hand reassuring us that he will always take care of us. “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things” (Romans 8:32)? When we are sick, when we have committed a sin, when we are just plain tired of our busy lives, Jesus is there as our spiritual resting place. He tells us that he loves us, he forgives us, and that he will have his hand on our shoulders in every time of need.

The next time you feel that things are getting too hard or that your body aches with tiredness, fold your hands, bow your head, and rely on Christ’s all-encompassing love to comfort you. Jesus cares for you. In him always you will find the rest that you need.

Prayer:
Dear Savior, lift us up when we feel weak, give us comfort when we feel burdened, and give us rest when we feel tired. We know that you care about us and our needs, because you died under the weight of all our sins and rose again to bring us back to life. Help us to feel awake and free, so that we may sing your praise forever. Amen.

Zechariah’s words for today

The Quiet Power of God’s Presence

Hearts Full of Faith Beat Boldly in Christ

Are you tired?

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