Claimed, gathered and sent

Now it's really started. The last day of internship is Sunday, June 26. The lasts have begun. I've already experienced my last Ministerial Association meeting and last pericope group in this conference. This week was my last Grace Lutheran Church Council meeting. And yesterday was the last internship cluster meeting, which was really good. Actually all the cluster meetings have been very good. But this last cluster meeting hit me harder than the other lasts. It was emotional, for one thing. On the way home, Pr. Larry and I stopped at Castiglia's in Keyser, WV, like we do every month after cluster to pick up something delicious to take home to our spouses for dinner. As we drove home, it struck me that this was the last time we'd be doing this. There is still much to be done before my time of internship is completed. There will be more lasts or endings. But then there are beginnings on the horizon as well. I was reminded of this last week at the WV/W MD Synod Assem

No fear! ELCA Daily Bible Reading

Thanks to Pr. Dave Westphal for a wonderful devotion this morning. Devotion for Wednesday

Amen! A Place for Prayer: Shock of the Spirit

This seems to be quite a busy week for synod assemblies. My home synod, New England, is having theirs in Springfield, MA, where tornadoes ripped through the city. Thankfully, the venues for the assembly were untouched. A number of other seminarians will be participating in the VA, DE-MD, Lower Susquehanna, and other synod assemblies. As for me, I will be at the West Virginia/Western Maryland Synod Assembly, the synod in which I'm doing my internship.  I'm looking forward to gathering with so many for worship, study, prayer, and the business of the church. Many God guide each synod as they gather to do the work of God's church.

Romans 8.26 "Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words."  This prayer is along that line. A Place for Prayer: Sunday Prayer: Easter 6, To Love, Be Love, For Love

  This is the message I'm preaching tomorrow at Grace Lutheran Church.  John 14:15-21 is the text. I received the church newsletter this week from my home church in Rochester, NY where I’m still an associate member. In this newsletter I learned of the death of my friend Ellen’s husband Harry. As Ellen and I talked together on the phone, she told me she’d lost her best friend. She feels like there’s a big hole in her heart that will never go away. Ellen thinks she’ll learn to navigate around that hole, that she will rebuild her life and go on, but that the hole will remain. We cried together. Ellen is a woman of faith who loves the Lord Jesus with all her heart. Because Jesus lives, she can continue to get up every morning and try to create a new life for herself without the human love of her life, Harry. Harry left her through death, but Jesus, will never leave her. Because Jesus lives, Ellen can face tomorrow and all its uncertainty. In today’s gospel, as in las