Weedon's Blog

Four days...

2012-05-29T19:51:00.002-05:00

...to David and Meaghan's wedding. Just sayin.

As June is almost upon us...

2012-05-29T17:42:00.000-05:00

...that means time for VBS in parishes across the Synod. We remembered at our IC Chapel (and at CPH) the work of our VBS volunteers and the children who attend in our prayers last week:

Memorial Day

2012-05-28T11:06:00.003-05:00

and poetry answers where prose fails:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,

In Flanders fields. Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

John McCrae (1872-1918).

A beautiful thought

2012-05-26T08:32:00.000-05:00

on the Vigil of Pentecost: "The Holy Spirit turns to joy whatever He touches." - St. Seraphim of Sarov

I've been thinking about the disciples being mistaken for drunks. Whence such a supposition on the part of the crowd? I think may be more than the flood of odd words (which, of course, it says they understood in their own languages), it was rather the overflowing joy that filled them.

All that the Lord Jesus did for them and for us all was for this end: that the Holy Spirit might fill and overflow our lives, He who is (as Blessed Martin Chemnitz called him) the Personal Joy and Love between the Father and the Son. Joy as a Person, Love as a Person.

How can we not then rejoice to join with the Church in crying out in these days: Veni, Sancte Spiritus! Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of Your faithful and kindle in them the fire of Your love! This is joy itself.

Well...

2012-05-23T17:48:00.004-05:00

... I had a day with ZERO meetings, and so took advantage of that to get a handle on my work spaces. At last both offices are beginning to depart from Tohu w' Bohu. I spent much of today tidying up, going through old papers and such. Earlier the good folks in General Services had installed my standing work station in the Director of Worship office, and today removed a part of my desk that I didn't need. I left both offices today for the first time thinking what a joy it will be to arrive to their clean spaces tomorrow! Home is almost completely organized; and work is not too far behind. Yeah! For a neat-freak, things are looking up!

New Lutheran Quote of the Day

2012-05-22T12:44:00.000-05:00

In Col. 3:16-17 [St. Paul] says that through His Word, Christ actually moves and prompts us to teach each other with Spirit-inspired, Spirit-filled psalms and hymns and songs and to give thanks to God the Father together with Him. Thus, the word of Christ which dwells in the congregation, produces its song, even as it is the content of that song. -- Dr. John Kleinig, Singing with Grace in our Hearts, Teach Me Thy Way, O Lord, p. 107.

Old Lutheran Quote of the Day

2012-05-22T12:41:00.000-05:00

Great joy is commonly followed by great misfortune... All who love Jesus Christ in this world must get used to this. Prosperity and adversity are always mingled together. "God leads His saints in a wondrous way." -- Blessed Valerius Herberger, The Great Works of God III/IV, p. 274.

Patristic Quote of the Day

2012-05-22T12:39:00.000-05:00

Glory be to thee, O Lord! Glory be to thee! What an abyss of love is in thee! How great are the riches of thy forbearance! -- St. John Chrysostom, On the Priesthood, III.15

New Lutheran Quote of the Day

2012-05-21T13:32:00.002-05:00

The church has, as St. Paul declares in Eph. 1:12, been given its allotted place in the heavenly realm and its allotted task as the choir that exists for the praise of God's glory. In Christ it stands together with the angels in God's presence and praises the Father together with them. -- Dr. John Kleinig, Singing with Grace in our Hearts, Teach Me Thy Way, O Lord, p. 106.

Old Lutheran Quote of the Day

2012-05-21T13:23:00.001-05:00

Here we have the answer to the greatest and most difficult question in the whole world, to wit, Where is the Christian Church to be sought? (1) Where Jesus Christ alone is set up as the cornerstone of our salvation; (2) where the Gospel is offered in such a way that people's consciences are purified by the astringent wine of repentance-preaching, and where the precious balm of Jesus Christ' all-availing blood is proclaimed; and (3) where the Word of God is heard and defended in its purity and without human inventions - there is Bethel, there is the House of God, there is the true Christian Church... Outside of this Church there is no salvation. -- Blessed Valerius Herberger, The Great Works of God III/IV, p. 272.

Patristic Quote of the Day

2012-05-21T13:08:00.000-05:00

Don't you know how good our Master is? The tax collector went up full of ten thousand wickednesses, said only, "Be merciful to me," and went down justified.... What is there to equal this loving-kindness? To the sorrowful so God speaks: "I forgive him his sins." -- St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on 1 Cor, 8:8.

Crazy Week and Weekend

2012-05-19T19:58:00.000-05:00

After getting back from Arkansas on Tuesday evening, the remaining week days flew by. Thursday was Meaghan's graduation, which I missed. But she is now a doctor of physical therapy! Congrats!!! AND she is gainfully employed. Thanks be to God!

Friday was Dean's graduation. I went to work early and came home early. Cindi had started the grass and I finished it up. We showered, ate a quick dinner, and headed back into St. Louis to see Dean walk the dais. It was a great moment. I got to chat briefly with Pr. Martin Schulz, whose son John, was also in Dean's class. That makes FOUR generations of pastors for that family. Wow. What a beautiful heritage. I remember Martin's dad and thought the world of him (and also of Martin). John's parish will be blessed with him, as I'm certain beyond all doubt that St. Paul's in Norlina, NC will be blessed with Dean and Lauren. Dean will be ordained at Holy Cross in Collinsville on July 15 and he'll be installed in the weekend after Labor Day in Norlina. Anywho, we got back home late and enjoyed our favorite BBC drink and then tumbled to bed, completely wiped.

This morning bright and early we started the yard sale. Cindi and the girls (and Jo) have been working on this for the longest time. I was skeptical, but it turned out to be a smashing success. They ended up getting rid of every heavy piece of furniture or appliance we were trying to sell and tons of the littler stuff. We loaded up the left overs into the van, ran them down to Good Will (and waited in a long line of folks doing the same thing!), and then returned the tables we'd borrowed from St. Paul's. Home for a bite of dinner and then we went separate ways for Church. Cindi served as cantor at St. Paul's, and yours truly attended Zion in Staunton, where Pr. Fritsche delivered yet another fine homily - masterfully weaving together the appointed pericopes for Exaudi. His joy in the Lord is a beauteous thing to behind - his face beams with delight as he preaches.

Tomorrow promises to be another run, run day. David and Meaghan hope to move much stuff over to the apartment in Highland where they will live following the wedding - which is, what, two weeks from today??? YIKES. We'll be helping them and I sure hope also finding a wee bit of down time before Monday arrives. I told Cindi I hope we don't have ANY plans for Memorial Day because three days of absolutely nothing sounds downright heavenly.

Still ahead: wedding, family vacation, deaconess conference, missionary orientation, Dean's ordination in July, grandson's birth in August, helping Lauren, Dean and Baby move to NC, and Dean's installation in September. Cindi and I were figuring that MAYBE by October things would actually settle down? Maybe??? We can but hope. And we try not to think about what it will be like to have Pr. Herberts and family so far away...

An OP Rerun

2012-05-17T08:48:00.002-05:00

Now He was going home... In seven words the years of labor and sorrow end: "While they beheld, He was taken up."... There were no bells and banners on earth, but surely all the trumpets on the other side sounded as they never sounded before... Surely the chiming golden bells of heaven sang their welcome, and angel choirs intoned the song of the throne: "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdomand strength."... On the anvils of God the nails had been forged into the scepter of a king... "He was taken up"... The angel hosts sweep to either side, leaving the way clear to the Eternal Light that no longer blinds the eyes of us who stand gazing after Him... He leads a procession which comes from the ends of time and space, all the harvest of all the white fields the world has ever known, the pilgrims of the night who come at last to the dawn of an everlasting day... "He was taken up." The Child of the manger, the praying heart on the starlit lanes of Galilee, the hunger in the wilderness, the weariness of the Sychar Well, the tears of the Garden and the Hill, the thirst of the Cross - all over now... The robes of the Transfiguration once momentary, now clothe Him forever, and angels and archangels sound the great doxology of the Waiting Church: "Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever."...

An old story - perhaps too old for us to do more than glimpse its glory... And yet - we ought to remember it more clearly... It was the solemn moment in the story of God and man when the visible Christ became the invisible Christ... From that hour everything concerning Him became visible only to the eyes of faith... The final line of demarcation in the world - between those who believe and those who refuse to believe - was now clear... Men can say that all this is not true and use the mind of man to reject the mind of God, or they can know that God once walked among them and that they now have a Friend in heaven who knows all that earth and time and pain can do to man...

The Ascension did not take Jesus away... It brought heaven near... In the realm in which He now reigns time and space have no meaning... There is no up and down, no near and far, no darkness, and no distance in the world of faith... He is as near as yesterday's prayer, today's joy, tomorrow's sorrow... His homecoming has made heaven a home for us who still walk far from home... Wherefore stand we gazing into heaven?... Our momentary task is here, but through the slow dimming of the years we see the evening lamps of home tended by the pierced hands of Him who has gone to prepare a place for us... Is there a better way to live - or die? ... All that we have to do now is believe and follow:

The lapping of the sea of death before his feet
Crept near; the wind was wild;
But he, who knew the One he came to meet,
Saw it and smiled.

Stepping without a hesitating word
Into the icy tide,
As if he saw the footprints of his Lord
Gleam at his side,

Borne up by Love that gave as he had given,
He crossed the midnight foam
And laid his hand upon the door of heaven
Like one returning home.

A Little Luther Joy on Ascension

2012-05-17T08:47:00.000-05:00

Against this doctrine of faith and salvation, the devil, his apostles and henchmen, are fighting with all their might. They distort this doctrine with there heretical marginal notes and maintain, Here is how you must understand this article: He that believes and does good works shall be saved. That's why it is doubly important to be fully equipped to analyze their deception and reply, I know very well that genuine faith is active in good works, and that if there are no good works, then true faith does not exist; but opening the gates of heaven and being saved are things that only faith can accomplish; works cannot do that. I must first have the all-important gift of salvation. But when, through faith in Christ, my sins have been forgiven and the gates of heaven opened to me, so that I am saved, then I, too, can say: fiat justitia [become just], "You must live a godly life and do what is right." - preached in the afternoon of Ascension Day at the parish Church, 1533. House Postil II:138.

New Lutheran Quote of the Day

2012-05-17T08:40:00.001-05:00

The key to understanding any liturgical enactment in public worship is to ask what is meant to be accomplished by it there by those people in that location in that order of service. So, for example, even though the Lord's Prayer always has the same meaning wherever it is used liturgically, it functions differently and so has different significance, if it is used at the end of the Prayer of the Church or in the rite of baptism, or in the communion liturgy before the Words of Institution. -- Dr. John Kleinig, Singing Grace in our Hearts, Teach Me Thy Way, O Lord, p. 105.

Old Lutheran Quote of the Day

2012-05-17T08:36:00.003-05:00

But what does it mean to sit at God's right hand? We will not make a judgment on this on the basis of our own discretion. Instead, we will get it out of Holy Scripture. What the evangelist Mark states here about Christ ascending up to heaven and seating Himself at God's right hand, St. Paul explains in Ephesians 4:10 this way: He who ascended is far above all heavens so that He fills all things. -- Blessed Johann Gerhard, Sermon for Ascension, Postilla I:421

Patristic Quote of the Day

2012-05-17T08:33:00.001-05:00

The indescribable grace of Christ, which we lost through the ill will of the devil, prepared us more fully for that glory. Incorporated within Himself, the Son of God placed those whom the violent enemy threw down from the happiness of our first dwelling at the right hand of the Father. The Son of God lives and reigns with God the Father almighty and with the Holy Spirit forever and ever. Amen. -- Pope St. Leo the Great, Sermon 73 on the Ascension

New Lutheran Quote of the Day

2012-05-16T08:59:00.000-05:00

The natural rhythm of light and dark, of creation and re-creation in the liturgy of the hours continually reminds us of our re-creation in Christ in the waters of holy Baptism. This pattern of nature provides the framework for our praise and prayer. -- Dr. Arthur Just, The Devotional Life of the Pastor, Teach Me Thy Way, O Lord, p. 100.

Old Lutheran Quote of the Day

2012-05-16T08:56:00.001-05:00

The divine service should be well provided for before all else. From a well-ordered church flows every blessing. -- Blessed Valerius Herberger, The Great Works of God III/IV, p. 342.

Patristic Quote of the Day

2012-05-16T08:55:00.000-05:00

The Father stands and awaits your return from your error. Turn back to Him, and while you are still far off, He will run and fall on your neck. With loving embraces He will enfold you, cleansed by repentance... He says, 'There is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents.' If anyone of those who seem to stand by will bring a charge that you have been quickly received, the good Father Himself will answer for you. He will say, 'It is fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead and is alive, he was lost and is found.' - St. Basil the Great, Letter 46.

Joys in Mid-South

2012-05-16T08:08:00.002-05:00

A whirlwind trip, but what a blessing. Sunday after lunch, I hit the road and traveled down to the Beethe's in Little Rock - they had graciously offered to let me spend the night there. Visiting with the whole family was such a blessing - and the primal breakfast was an added treat that I hadn't expected. Unfortunately on the trip down to Little Rock my iPhone died. It had a baptism. Don't ask. Grr.

So, first thing Monday a.m. (AFTER the primal breakfast - with some absolutely super bacon and pancakes), off to the AT&T store to replace the phone. Sigh. Funny how panicky I get without that tether - as I was driving all those miles without any phone at all (and with only the iPad for a navigating devise to get me to the Beethe's - and that only worked at wi-fi joints), I kept reminding myself of what David wisely says: "You never had a phone when you were driving around for years and you were fine." Too true.

Little Rock was really a surprise. What a beautiful city! After getting the phone up and running, though, I had to leave the city and head into even more beautiful country: Lake DeGray State Park. Led the brothers of that region of Midsouth through some joys in Colossians, joined them to celebrate a reverent and yet joy-packed Divine Service III, heard many outstanding devotions around the theme "At Table with Jesus" and thoroughly enjoyed the visiting. A special treat was getting outside on Tuesday morning at 6 and running with Mark and Emil as the sun rose, the woodpeckers pecked away, and the day slowly stretched and woke up. It was great. Emil and I ran for six miles and chatted almost all the way - fascinating to learn a bit more of his story.

Tuesday a.m. after wrapping up Colossians, I sadly had to hit the road back home - I would have loved to sit at the feet of Dr. Alvin Schmidt again. He's amazing. But what a beautiful day for a drive! I had the roof open all the way home, the windows down, the radio blaring oldies and the miles flying by. The way down I'd been stuck on Highway 40 between Memphis and Little Rock for an hour due to an accident, but the way home was without incident. It ended up being over 1000 miles round trip, but as I love driving (at least on open highways on Spring days when the sun is warm and shining!), all was good. Got in about 5:30 and crashed for the evening. Cindi revived my weary spirit with a fabulous dinner and an after-dinner BBC (which is our favorite tropical drink by far).

Thanks to Mark and the brothers in Midsouth for the invite. It was a blessing indeed to be with you all!

Due to all kinds of scheduling conflicts...

2012-05-13T11:39:00.000-05:00

...we couldn't get everyone together today to observe mother's day. Sometime in the next few weeks maybe? So Cindi and I had a quiet mother's day breakfast after church. While she stayed to play bells at late service, I came home and whipped up the brunch. How's this for some variety?

Green smoothies (apple, carrot, banana, spinach, blackberries, raspberries, kale, coconut milk, ice)
A pound of bacon (and we ate almost the whole thing just the two of us!)
A fresh sliced avocado, topped with salsa
Mushrooms fried in bacon grease
Fried eggs

It was rather tasty if I do say so myself. A happy Mother's Day to the wonderful mother of my children - thank you, Cindi, for having been and continuing to be such a fabulous mom!

New Lutheran Quote of the Day

2012-05-10T14:29:00.000-05:00

The liturgy of the hours arose early in the Christian church as a way for Christians to rehearse and tell the story of the world, to praise God for his mighty, saving acts, and to petition the Father through the Son in its common prayer. -- Arthur Just, The Devotional Life of the Pastor, Teach Me Thy Way, O Lord, p. 99.

Old Lutheran Quote of the Day

2012-05-10T14:27:00.000-05:00

Oh Lord Jesus, my heart also follows You constantly: to church to hear Your Word; to the confession to receive Your consolation; to the Holy Supper to take the pledge of Your love; and in heaven to call on You. -- Blessed Valerius Herberger, The Great Works of God III/IV, p. 242.

Patristic Quote of the Day

2012-05-10T14:23:00.001-05:00

The incarnation of the Word and His assumption of human nature took place for the overthrow of death... - St. Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on Luke 13.13