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Psalm 38, Domine ne in furore tuo arguas me, in rememorationem de sabbato
By Mary Abrahamson O Lord, rebuke me not in thy indignation, for a remembrance of the Sabbath, A Psalm of David Oh, this is vivid! Right from the beginning, David gives us a searing image of God’s anger, …. hot displeasure, arrows piercing, hand pressing. God’s righteous wrath over our sin isacutely portrayed in these two short verses. Again we see God pressing on David to show David his sin. O Lord, do not rebuke me in Your wrath, Nor chasten me in Your hot displeasure! For Your arrows pierce me deeply, And Your hand presses me down. The following verses remind us of the physical and emotional burden of our sin. We may think…
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Conversation and Consolation of the Brethren
By Vanessa Rasanen I have a confession. I’m not the most patient person. Shocker, I know. I get easily frustrated with others — including (and perhaps especially) with those closest to me, my husband and my children. Even my dogs. I let the day-to-day irritations of life get under my skin more than I should, and I yell, fume, and even — sadly — stomp my feet. To make it all worse I will sometimes vent to friends, privately complaining about the mess the kids made, the struggle we’re having with the kids’ manners, or even the annoying habit of some stranger on the road or at the grocery store. My…
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Milk, Meat, and Introducing Solids
By Mary Moerbe You don’t have to be a parent to know that life gradually gives you more to chew on and understand. Each one of us learned, “The sky is blue” before we learned how and why that happens — if we learned — and religious life and education is in some ways comparable: there is milk and there is meat. St. Peter is clear: “Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation—if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good” (1 Peter 2:2-3). Taste! Drink! Grow by the goodness of our God! Long for pure spiritual milk. Wake…
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Psalm 32 Beati quorum remissae sunt iniquitates
By Mary Abrahamson Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, A Psalm of David David starts this well known Psalm with the acknowledgment of God’s great mercy and forgiveness. Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, Whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity, And in whose spirit there is no deceit. But then David changes direction. He describes his life under sin. Like David, we hide our sin, we deceive ourselves into thinking that we are not sinning, or that our sin is not so very bad. Other times we simply will not let ourselves admit that what we are doing is wrong. Like David, we feel the weight…
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Amazing
By Allison Hull “You look AMAZING in that dress!” “Wow, I can’t believe how beautiful you are in that outfit!” “You got a haircut — it suits you so well!” Gushing about other people in their clothes comes easy to me. I can say those things as an outsider looking at them. I can see how the right type of clothes just puts them at ease and makes them glow. I see how a new haircut or color can give them an extra bounce in their step. And I see that when I comment on it they seem to transform and really own their look. They truly do look amazing…
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God Did Not Name This Blog
By Vanessa Rasanen My email seems to have become the electronic version of our snail-mail box — a frustrating and sad mess of junk mail and bills. I’ve spent months upon months unsubscribing and spring cleaning whatever mailing lists I’ve landed on — with one of my 3 (or is it 4?) addresses, but I’m still drowning in junkmail. So I might get a wee-bit excited when I see emails from friends. Okay, those actually don’t happen very often. It must be getting bad, because when I got a mass mailing from a fellow blogger I hadn’t heard from in a while, you wouldn’t believe how exciting that was. So maybe it had…
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How do I help my son to stop hitting others?
Note: This question has been adapted from a different venue and used here with permission. Dear Sisters of Katie Luther, I have a 9 year old that wont stop hitting people! He doesn’t do it all the time. He only does it when people won’t stop what they are doing to him, after he repeatedly asks them to stop. Instead of walking away he hits. He also feels that when he tells a teachers they don’t do anything. Dear Sister, I’m going to start at the end of your question first. A sad truth of life in this sinful world is that there will always be someone trying to provoke…
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Four Ways to Support Missions
By Vanessa Rasanen We want to help this ministry or that mission, but we only see the big ways to do so — seminary to become a pastor or becoming a missionary and personally setting our own boots to the ground. Yet we often have other vocations and limitations that prevent these paths being chosen — be that the young children in our keep, physical limitations on our abilities, or financial strains on our budgets. We need not throw up our hands in defeat, though, deciding it simply isn’t our job to help these people and shrugging off our desire to do more. We can help and serve even when…
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Help Support the Stephens Family and Lutherans in Africa
Lutherans in Africa (LIA) is an organization which trains and educates Lutheran pastors in Africa, providing confessional Lutheran materials in the languages of the people so they can have access to wonderful resources such as hymnals, The Book of Concord, Luther’s Small Catechism, and more. The Lutheran church in Africa is growing so rapidly that in many cases one pastor serves 12 parishes and these pastors desire more training than they have received. Recently, LIA purchased a plot of land to build a seminary on to better serve these needs. Jason Stephens and his family learned about the work to build the seminary and soon realized he had the skills and…
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Psalm 6 Domine, ne in furore tuo arguas me
O Lord, rebuke me not in thy indignation, a Psalm of David The emotions of the Psalmist David are powerfully expressed. We can likely all recall times during which the weight of our sins is equally great. Right away in the first few verses God’s anger is referred to as hot displeasure. We can understand the troubled bones and soul that cry out for God’s help. O Lord, do not rebuke me in Your anger, Nor chasten me in Your hot displeasure. Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am weak; O Lord, heal me, for my bones are troubled. My soul also is greatly troubled; But You, O Lord—how…
