8-14-2026

Good Morning!

     2 Corinthians 9:7; “Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.”

      God loves a cheerful giver; makes you want to grab your wallet and run sometimes, doesn’t it.  That is ok, you can feel that way.  For far too often this verse is used to “encourage” a bigger check in the offering plate.  This verse sometimes gets used because when people see the offering plate coming and they look in their wallet and they see a $20 bill, a $5 bill and a $1bill, they at least go past the single.  It is no wonder this verse causes us to clench up when we hear it or read it; it strikes us with guilt and usually that is the intent.

     I am not suggesting that you abandon the financial support of your church.  It costs a lot of money to operate a church, especially if you have an ongoing mission commitment either locally or nationally.  So be as generous as you can, however; that is between you and God.  This verse actually speaks to much more than just the monetary side of the church; it actually applies to how you live your Christian faith in the world around you.

    We know that God has given us everything and has given it to us beyond our need and even beyond our wants.  He has poured upon us his loving kindness far above what we deserve.  He has generously given us his grace.  He has restored us to the full standing within his family by redeeming us from sin.  We are all then co-heirs with Christ.  We are blessed with the gifts of the Spirit.  We have a lot to be cheerful about but are we cheerful when we share and use these gifts or are we stingy?

   The Apostle Paul lists those gifts as love, peace, joy, patience, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness; elsewhere he writes of humility, compassion, bearing one another’s burdens.  God gives you these; are you stingy in giving of these gifts to those around you?  Are you grumpy and demanding?  Do you look the other way when you see someone in need?  Are we cheerful, generous believers or are we stingy with God’s gifts?

    God gives us these gifts so that we might be blessed and that we might be a blessing to others.  He desires that we use these gifts to offer healing and comfort in a world that is broken and in pain.  He gives us these gifts so that we might relieve the suffering of the world and to be a bright spot in the lives of so many around us.  It might be your spouse or neighbor or someone who works in the store where you shop.  It might be the single parent across the street or the lonely elderly person who sits next to you in church.  There are many people who need you to be a cheerful giver; go and be one today.

Gracious and loving Father, give me the will to do your will and to be a cheerful giver.  Lead us to those who are suffering and in pain.  Lead us to shine brightly in this dark world.  Lead us to those who are missing the joy of life.  Guide us by your grace to bring healing.  In the precious name of Jesus we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret

8-13-2026

Good Morning!

      Daniel 9:9; “To the Lord our God belong mercy and forgiveness, for we have rebelled against him.”

      There was once a class of school children who loved to go outside and have recess. Their teacher was very generous. If the class had been good and finished their work, the teacher would let them go outside for a few extra minutes. Usually, the class was very good. They always finished their homework, always tried to be good, and always looked forward to their reward. But one day the class was a bit unruly. Paper airplanes were flying. Hair was being pulled. Talking was nonstop, and homework was simply not getting done.

    All of a sudden, the teacher called everyone to attention and said, “Time to go out.” All of a sudden, the students’ eyes fixed on their teacher, their mouths dropped a bit, and almost in unison said, “But why? We don’t deserve to go out. We’ve been terrible. We haven’t listened. We haven’t finished our homework. We don’t deserve to go out.” “I know,” said the teacher, “but I want to show you that sometimes in this world things are given to you even when you don’t deserve them. Sometimes things are given to us especially when we haven’t earned them.” And with that, the students slowly stood up and walked outside, still a bit confused and unsure about the new world they had just stepped into. For the first time, some of these students experienced what grace, what a gift, truly was. They were given something that wasn’t earned or deserved.

    This is the story of our life.  If we received what we deserved, we would die.  We would suffer horribly for all that we have done.  We never really behave well enough to deserve any blessings.  We are always misbehaving, even worse than the children in the story.  Ours are not childhood inappropriateness; ours are acts of anger, hatred, selfishness, and greed.  Our actions destroy life.

    Yet, incredibly, God has chosen to forgive you.  His love for you surpasses all else.  He made a way for our salvation.  All of our punishment was poured out upon Jesus; because of this, when God looks at us, he only sees the righteousness of Jesus.  Because of this, he pours his love out upon us.  We receive the good things which we do not deserve; we receive the wonderful blessings of salvation, the comfort of today, the healing of now, the restoration which we seek and need.  We receive, undeserved as they are, all these gifts and more from God because of his love, because of his nature.  God blesses us every day even though we do not deserve it.

Father of all mercy, in you we have eternal hope.  We go through life never deserving the wonderful gifts ad blessings which you pour out upon us.  We give you thanks for this and all the love that you graciously give us.  Move us to share this love with those around us.  In the precious name of Jesus we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret  

8-12-2026

Good Morning!

      Isaiah 35:8; “And a highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Way of Holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it.  It shall belong to those who walk on the way; even if they are fools, they shall not go astray.”

     I was never the world’s greatest bowler.  I could keep it in my lane but only because the gutters stopped the bowling ball from going into the other lanes.  I seldom get more than 75 or so.  I am not much of a bowler but I did see a way to improve my score; there are blow up bumpers that they place in the gutters.  When you roll the ball, if it heads to the gutter, it bounces back into the alley and eventually has to knock some pins down.  I figure I could double my score if I bowled like that.

    There are times when it would be nice to have “bumpers” in life.  Maybe you are having a rough day and you snap at your spouse or children.  You regret it but it is out there.  It would be nice to bounce back into the regular lane.  Maybe you did something years ago and it just continues to fester.  Perhaps you have lived a life where you didn’t make the best choices; you want to get back; at times you think you are back but every once in a while, the thoughts creep back and put us in the gutter.  It would be nice to avoid this.  If only we had a bumper to put us back on track.

    As Christians, we do have a bumper.  God has made the “Way of Holiness.”  He did this through the death and resurrection of Jesus.  This cleared the path to God; it gave us the way to go.  God placed us on this path through the gift of Baptism.  At that time, he gave us the bumpers that we would need for life.  No matter what we did or do; God mercy keeps us on the path; he keeps us on the Way.  His grace brings us back.  Even when we, foolishly, try to go a different trail; God keeps calling us back to the right trail.  Our sins are forgiven and God gives to us the desire to follow and to do his will.

    So now our desire is to stay on this path.  Our desire is to stay on the Way of Holiness.  We don’t seek to hurt or destroy.  We seek to love and to honor God with our life.  We do not have to let the past pull us back into the gutter.  God looks at us and at our future.   His desire is that we are all brought to salvation, to life eternal with him.  We only need to trust in this great promise; we only need to know that God has placed us on the Way of Holiness and that it is his desire to keep us there.  Trust that God only looks to your future.  He looks to it with love and gives you hope to see his grace.

 Wonderful Father, as we wait for Jesus to return, keep us safe, keep us holy.  Purify us by your mercy.  Lead us to love only you.  Help us to leave the past behind us.  Keep us from falling into the pain and sorrow that the devil wants us to live.  Lift us up and put us back on the Way.  Be with those who feel as though they are off the path and cannot return.  Give them the peace to know that your love conquers all.  In the precious name of Jesus we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret

8-11-2026

Good Morning!

        Ephesians 4:24; “and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”

      One time, as I was coaching high school age kids in baseball; I talked with a fellow coach who faced a unique situation.  He had a young man come up who could throw the ball pretty well.  He had decent speed and was fairly accurate.  The problem was that the way he threw the ball made it an illegal pitch.  If a runner was on base it would have been called a balk.  So, he had to set about to completely change.  He had to get rid of the old style of pitching and bring in a new style of pitching.

     This was harder than it sounds.  One of the first problems was that he wasn’t convinced that he had to change.  He had been successful at the younger level and no one had made him change.  His coach kept telling him that he was wrong but neither he nor his parents believed him.  He asked me what he should do.  I told him to go ahead and let the kid pitch.  The other coach asked, “what about a balk?”  I said, “so what?  He doesn’t believe you; let him believe the umpire.  The only thing I would do would be to talk to the umpire before the game and let him know that you know it is a balk and that he should call them, vigorously if needed.”  Needless to say, the young man’s first pitching appearance wasn’t what he or his parents expected.

    So, the young man swallowed his pride and worked to change his pitching style.  He was never as dominant as he was when he was younger but he was a competent pitcher.  In a way, our life is like that.  Sometimes change is needed but change is hard.  That is what has to happen in a Christian’s life; we need to change.

   When God calls us to faith, he makes us “a new creation.”  This means that we need to shed the old life and live the new life that God gives us.  This can be difficult because part of change is to recognize that the old life was bad.  It takes humility to admit that past failures have caused pain.  It takes humility to confess our sins.  Yet this is an important part of faith.  We humble ourselves before God.  When we truly recognize and confess our sin, God creates us as new creations.  It is out with the old and in with the new, the new that God creates in us.  We need to embrace it and to live it.  We need to shed the old.  We need to, through faith, embrace the new life, trust in God’s mercy and his will for our life.  This is the new life to trust in God over our own skill and knowledge.  Trust in God to provide and protect us.

Father of all that is good and gracious.  We give you thanks for the new life that you give us.  Strengthen us by your Spirit.  Give us the humble heart to live according to your divine will. Guard us from all evil and keep us safe within your loving arms.  Be with those who are struggling with the cares of life and give them the certainty of hope in you.  Save them by your mercy.  In the precious name of Jesus we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret          

8-10-2026

Good Morning!

       Genesis 2:7; “then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.”

      When I was a kid, I got a box of clay one time.  It had four different colors blocks of clay.  It kind of looked like sticks of butter.  You could take it and then you had to “warm it up” that was to roll it in your hands until it became pliable.  Once it was pliable, then you could form it into different shapes.  It was fun to work with but my actual shapes were not quite as good as my imagination.  I had visions of being a Michelangelo but I ended up more like the turtle than the artist.

    It takes talent, patience, an artistic flair, and a passion to be a good sculptor.  It takes an eye that sees what this blob of clay can be.  Michelangelo once said that “he saw an angel in the block of stone and chiseled til I set him free” That is quite the skill and it displays a little of what God does for us through his creative process.

   In this process we see two things about God.  First, we see him as the God who is willing to get his hands dirty in our life and secondly, we can see this creative process as an ongoing event.

   In the creation of the rest of God’s works; he spoke and it was.  Yet here we see God taking his time to mold and shape you to be the creature that he wants us to be.  With the creation of Adam, he had the perfect creature.  It was shaped right and it filled its role in creation perfectly.  Then Adam sinned and he began to add extra clay to his existence.  He padded this perfect creation with excess selfishness, excess jealousy, excess greed, with excess hatred.  All of this excess went to block his vision of God and Adam lost sight of all that God had done for him. 

    So, God sent Jesus to return us to the creative process.  We see when Jesus told his disciples that he would “make them fishers of men.”  Here, “make” can be thought of as molding or shaping or fabricating.  It is taking a lump of clay and shaping it into a piece of art.  We can see God doing this when we think of times when the excesses of our lives are stripped away until we see that our only source of hope and security is God.  All of that padded on excess sin needs to be shed.  We need to stop clinging to our old sins, our old sinful desires and to our old sinful hurts to be the creation that God desires us to be.

   Yet we sin and we sin daily so God must continue to shape us and mold us daily.  He does this through the forgiveness of sins which he tells us to remember.  We call this the confession and absolution cycle.  Through this process God continually molds and shapes us.  He gets his hands dirty because he loves us.

Gracious Father, you have wondrously made me and you continue to mold me into the disciple that you want me to be.  Lead me to trust in your loving arm.  Lead me to be your holy child.  Lead me to be the light in this dark ad lonely world.  In the precious name of Jesus we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret      

8-9-2026

Good Morning!

      John 1:14; “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

      The young wife was crying, almost inconsolably.  Her husband, wanting to ease her pain and be the hero, began the process.  She had taken her wedding ring off while washing some glasses in the sink.  As she pulled the plug and the water went down the drain; she reached for her ring to put it back on.  Her hands were still wet and slippery so the ring slipped and fell into the sink and went down the drain.  She put the plug back in and screamed and cried.  Her husband came and they did want most newlyweds do; they called dad.

    Dad told them to get a bucket and take the trap beneath the sink loose and drain it into the bucket.  As the mixture of grease, food bits, hair, and soap poured into the bucket, the couple hoped that the ring was in it.  So, the husband reached into the gooey mess and felt around until he retrieved the ring.  He gave it to his wife and all was well.

     In the past, we looked at how God “got his hands dirty” by forming man out of the clay of the earth.  Today we read where God does even more.  When the Apostle John first wrote this verse in the original Greek, he was making a play on the words.  Where we write “Word” he wrote “logos.”  This conveys the thought of pure logic, pure thought, total reason.  So, we see God on the purest form possible.  At the creation, God spoke and all occurred.  Where we use the word “flesh” John used the word “sarx.”  Here we can think of the dirty and grimy part of human existence, the sweat, the smell, the grittiness of human existence.  You can think of the “gunk” in your sink trap. 

    Yet rather than just immerse his hand into this gunk, God sent his Son to completely immerse himself, his entire body and existence, into the cesspool like world of humanity.  God did not choose the easy way or the simple way and certainly not the clean way.  He did it this way because of his love for you.

   He hears your cry, he knows your pain and he brings about healing.  He doesn’t avoid the mess.  He doesn’t expect you to be “mostly clean.” He picks you up out of this muck and grime in order to give you live, in order to bring you to the purity in which we were created.  This is what the birth of Jesus really means to us; God, in his purity, enters into the depravity and sadness that makes up the human existence.  Into this pain and sorrow, Jesus brings healing and hope.  He brings God’s mercy and his love and comfort.  He enters into our existence and heals it and takes us into his existence.  He came as a child to grow and to live a human life in order to die for your sins.  He comes to us today, in his Word and sacrament, to bring you healing and strength; to bring you new life.

Gracious Lord, you give us new life.  You lift us up and take us from the dredge of sinful existence to holy life with you.  Help us to know your love and mercy.  Help us to trust in your promise.  Be with those who are in pain and sorrow at this time.  Lift them up by your grace.  In your precious name we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret   

8-8-2026

Good Morning!

        Matthew 2:18; “A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be comforted, because they are no more.”

    This is a verse that refers to what the Church calls “The Slaughter of the Innocents.”  This is where Herod, in a fit of anger and rage, tried to kill the king that the Magi sought.  When King Herod realized that the Magi weren’t going to return to tell him where Jesus was, he thought he would solve the question by killing all the male children 2 years and younger.  This event is commemorated on the first Sunday after Christmas as the day of the “Holy Innocents.”

    Much lore has been built around this event.  Scholars have no real clue as to the number of children who were killed, most guess 20 or less not the hundreds or even thousands that some legends portend.  Many also read this story and assume that Jesus was about 2 years old when the Magi came to visit.  This is possible but not for sure; the fact that he had the male children who were 2 and under, may have simply showed how cruel King Herod truly was.  We don’t know a lot about this event but it serves a purpose.

    First this story points to the very clear fact that Jesus laid aside his power and glory to live the humblest of lives.  He was endangered from hatred of others from his birth on.  We also see God’s protective and loving arm keeping Jesus and his parents safe from harm.  We also see an event that shows just how painful and evil some events in this sinful and broken world can be.  What can be crueler than to yank a baby from a mother’s arms and run them through with a sword?  Is this right or fair? No, but our life in a sinful world is rarely fair but often painful.

    It becomes very clear here that we cannot ever understand everything in life.  In fact, we actually understand very little.  Yet God does not call us to know everything; God calls us to have faith, to live in faith.  We can never fully understand all that occurs or how it interacts; only God can fully comprehend life.  We can only trust that God, who is by nature loving, to provide for us.  God works to good for all those who love him and whom he has called for his purpose.  This ultimate good is our salvation.  Even if the world takes all of our earthly goods, even if we surrender our life, God has promised to save his children and then to keep us comforted with this knowledge that nothing will ever separate us from God’s love.  We are always safe in God’s protective arms.

Father of all mercy, there are so many things that we do not understand.  Help us to keep them from hurting our faith. Keep us steadfast in our desire to trust you.  Guide us by your light and strengthen us by your Spirit that we may remain faithful to you.  Help us to always trust your promises.  Be with those who are like Rachel and weeping without hope.  Bring them the certainty of their salvation which is Jesus.  In his precious name we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret