Hello everyone! This Sunday is a day of unexpected
blessings and miracles, signs of how God is active and alive
and present in our world and in our lives when we are open
and receptive to the possibilities. We hear, read about, and
experience healing. Fragile relationships are restored. Hope
is experienced in profound ways. Naaman, a commander
and mighty warrior, suffers from leprosy, and even though
he first denies the cure, Naaman accepts the advice of his
servant, and by God’s action his skin and its disease is
washed clean. Also afflicted with leprosy, ten lepers implore
God’s mercy and are made clean. But the outsider—the
foreigner—is the only one who returns to give thanks. Today
many of us encounter other hardships of all sorts, and our
reading in 2 Timothy makes the stark point that we all suffer.
But our God joins us in our sufferings and in our hardships,
making us whole through our spiritual cleansing of baptism
and filled with God’s Spirit. Blessings everyone.
Hello everybody! Once again this Sunday we will read a
teaching of Jesus that appears only in the Gospel of
Luke. A little faith goes a long way is Jesus’ point in the
gospel. A mustard seed’s-worth of faith has miraculous
potential. The patience, tenacity, and endurance required for
the life of faith are the blessings received in holy baptism,
holy communion, and the word read and proclaimed in this
assembly. Anticipate them. Receive them with
thanksgiving. Blessings to all!
May God continue to bless us all! Consideration of and
care for those in need (especially those “at our gate,” visible
to us, of whom we are aware) is an essential component of
good stewardship. It is in the sharing of wealth that we avoid
the snare of wealth. It is the one whom death could not hold
—who comes to us risen from the dead—
who can free us from the death grip of greed. May God be
with you all.