The trials we face

 Are you facing any difficulties or trials today?

At Community Lutheran this week, we are concluding our sermon series that we entitled: What God does when your in a Jam... We have taken time over these last few weeks to look at some of the problems people in the Bible faced, but we are also looking at our own lives. How is God working in your life when things seem to fall apart?

There are a ton of things that I find myself worried about. I worry about my kids not finding their shoes in the morning. I wonder who unplugged my cell phone. I get frustrated the kids dumping their food on the floor when I'm trying to get out of the door. These things are pretty trivial in the grand scheme of things, but the little things can overwhelm us if we aren't careful. There are plenty of other difficulties in our world. There are people who are very sick right now. There are others who are grieving or in pain. There are people stuck in cycles addiction or violence. Of course, there are also all of people facing the awful devastation after the earthquake in Syria and Turkey. 

It can be hard to wrap our minds around all the pain in the world. Instead, we wind up becoming lost in the small stuff. This week, the scripture passage that we will look at shares the story of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus had to let go of his personal desires, and he sacrificed his own needs for all of us. It is because of Jesus that we are forgiven for our imperfections. I hope we can all remember that there is more to the world than just the small stuff we face everyday. I hope we can let go of some of the pain that weighs us down, and I pray that we would be able to reach out in love toward our neighbor.

Blessings,

Pastor Brian

Believing in Love

 Are you in a jam?

Do you ever wonder what God is going to do with the situation that you are in?

Earlier this week, I got a call from my son's preschool. It's rarely a good thing to get this kind of a phone call. I have to wonder if my child has a fever, maybe he is throwing up... Who knows, but they rarely call just to say that everything is great. :) Anyway, this phone call was to inform me that my four year old had run head first into a metal pole. Then, he was knocked backward onto the concrete sidewalk, and he bonked the other side of his head. Not great news...but I can't say it really surprised me. My son is at the age where he wants to try everything, and sometimes his body just can't keep up! However, this was a pretty big hit and he did have quite the lump on his head. Thankfully the staff at Hill and Dale were wonderful, and by the time I got to see him, he was happily running around at full speed playing with all his friends. He wasn't worried at all about the GIANT goose-egg on his forehead. He wanted to tell me how he got to play Spider-man with his teacher!

Kids, like adults, find themselves in jams all the time. I am thankful my child was at a place where he could trust that his teachers were going to solve his problem. Yes, he was in a lot of pain, but he knew there were people there who could make it better. The faith he had in his teachers made him willing to jump right back up and start going again. 

As adults, I think we can be much more suspicious of the world around us. Instead of trusting our neighbors, we often try to fix everything ourselves. If we get into a jam, we may try to hide our pain, which will make things worse. We don't believe that honesty will help us, or we believe other people will take advantage of our trust. 

Our sermon series at CLC is looking at the difficult moments that we face in life. This week we are remembering the Bible Story of King David and Bathsheba. King David had great potential, but when he got into a jam, he doubled down. He tried to hide all his mistakes, and he brought a lot of pain on himself and his people. 

Today I hope we can trust in God. If our world has flipped upside down, I wonder if you have someone you can turn to. I believe the church can be a place of comfort and support. We just need to have the faith of a child.

Blessings!

Brian