Home

Weekly Devotional

August 10, 2009

God’s Peace be with you all.

Psalm 133  <A Song of Ascents.>

How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity! 

² It is like the precious oil on the head, running down upon the beard, on the beard of Aaron, running down over the collar of his robes. 

³ It is like the dew of Hermon, which falls on the mountains of Zion. For there the LORD ordained his blessing, life forevermore.

            Carrie, Addison and I had the opportunity to visit another Lutheran Congregation yesterday.  It is a small church in North Carolina where a classmate of mine from seminary serves as the pastor.  It was fun watching him lose his place during announcements when he looked up and saw that we were there.  It was also good to spend a little time with him and his wife yesterday afternoon, and to just catch up on how things in the congregation are going.

            One of the things we talked about yesterday was division in the church.  As many of you know, we are in a little “series” in the lectionary cycle where we get the “Jesus is the bread of life” discourse from John’s Gospel for five weeks straight (this was week three).  This pastor preached yesterday basically on Holy Communion, and what that looked like on a weekly basis.  The congregation had recently moved to receiving communion weekly rather than once per month.  As you can imagine, this was a big division in the church.  One person even said having communion more often made it “not special.”  That same person came up to the pastor after church yesterday and said “I heard you loud and clear, and now I understand.”

            While I know divisions like this do happen in the church, I am thankful that we do not have any major divisions.  As a congregation, we are very healthy.  When we do have divisions, I know that we can also work them all out, and I give thanks for that.  I also know that we can never predict when divisions might come.  However, knowing that we are living together in unity in a healthy way can help those (future) divisions be less painful.  In the mean time, let’s give thanks to God for the unity we have and that we are able to live faithfully together!

In our prayers this week:

Ann, Doris, Mary Netta, Jane, Irene, Joseph, Michael (serving in Iraq), St. John’s Lutheran Church.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Judson