Claimed, gathered and sent

Here are some thoughts about this Sunday's second lesson that I shared with the St. Timothy Lutheran Church family. Second Reading: Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5 10 And in the spirit [one of the angels] carried me away to a great, high mountain and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God.   22 I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. 23 And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. 24 The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. 25 Its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. 26 People will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. 27 But nothing unclean will enter it, nor anyone who practices abomination or falsehood, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.   22:1 Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright a...

This is the message I preached last Sunday, May 19 at St. Timothy Lutheran Church . The text is Revelation 21:1-6 . We know we have problems in our county. Perhaps the most debilitating one is addiction, whether it’s to opioids, alcohol or any other substance. The affects of addiction traumatize not only the addict, but their families and communities. The Addiction Response Ministry is one organization working to fight this epidemic. Our focus is on uniting God’s church together in response to this issue. To help us better understand the issue, the work of the Addiction Response Ministry and what God is doing in our community is what One Voice, One County, One Hope Sunday is about. In apocalyptic literature, like Revelation, the present situation is so indomitable that God will have to intervene to destroy evil and establish a new and just world order. Here at the end of Revelation, when God has destroyed all evil and the final judgment is complete, God recreates. The God ...