Christ

Stress: The Reason for the Season

By Cindy Koch –

Do chestnuts roasting on the fire make you break out in hives? Does the holiday hustle find you hiding under the covers? Do the weeks leading up to the most wonderful time of the year fill you with anxiety and stress? You just might be experiencing the true meaning of Christmas. Now, I know this is not really what we want to hear. We would rather find a blog about ways to reduce our holiday stress. We would rather listen to advice on crafting our Christmas to be more restful. We long for something that will transform our Christmas preparations to reflect that serene Hallmark holiday. 

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Your Faith Has Made You Well

By Paul Koch –

This day is truly a wonderful day. It is a day of family and friends, a day of food and football, a day where everyone gets a little time off from their usual grind and just stops in order to give thanks. And though our days of innocent bliss from our childhood have grown cold, though we no longer want to dress up like puritan settlers or native Americans, we still find value in a holiday like this one. We may have grown more cynical and skeptical about family and our traditions but still there is something that we think is good about taking time to simply give thanks. It is good to give thanks for this great country we live in, to give thanks for those who make our lives better, richer and more exciting, to give thanks for the many gifts we’ve received for our heavenly Father.

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Stay Awake!

By Joel A. Hess –

It was not hard to stay awake on Christmas Eve when I was a kid. I remember coming home from the candlelight service at midnight. I was not tired at all as the snow crunched beneath my boots. Walking from the station wagon to our house, I took in the splendor of snowflakes falling as if in slow motion, stars glistening in the icy sky, and the sudden burst of warmth and orange light as we entered our home to escape the cold and the darkness and wait for Christmas Day.

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Weep For Yourself

By Paul Koch –

As a father of five, I have become quite good at the using the gift of discernment. For I have learned that discernment is most needed when we are faced with excuses; and none are better at excuses than children. Not that I blame them. In fact, I think it is just part of life, part of growing up, part of the process that we all go through. You see, we begin to learn early on that things don’t always work out the way we imagined they would. We don’t always follow through on what we promised to do, whether it was to clean our room or get the dishes done. We don’t always follow the golden rule and we fail to treat our siblings with the kindness and respect that we believe we deserve. When the failures in life happen, our instinct is to make an excuse as to why we failed. We get pretty good at making excuses and we can even begin to believe them if no one challenges them. But that is where I come in. Part of the gift I give to my children is to check their excuses. I see if they are focusing on the real issue or if they are just trying to find an easy way out.

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Tearing Down the Wall

By Ross Engel –

In Berlin, Germany in 1987, former President Ronald Reagan emphatically declared, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” I was seven years old when that speech was given. I knew very little of the world, and even less about communism or the Cold War. What I did know was that, according to Rocky IV, Communism was bad and Russia was where the “bad guys” were. Darn you, Ivan Drago! Thanks to my Uncle, who had been stationed near “Checkpoint Charlie,” I also knew that the Berlin Wall divided Germany into two sections: free Germany and communist Germany.  When the wall fell in 1989, I, along with the rest of America, cheered.

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Preachers, Shoot the Elephant in the Room

By Joel A. Hess –

Last week, I attended a funeral. It was for a boy who took his own life, as teenage boys sometimes violently and impulsively do when they think they are backed into a corner. The room was packed with kids, family, and friends. They all knew he died. They all knew how he died. It was on everyone’s mind. Suicide does that; it forces everyone to stare blankly into the abyss. Though kids laughed and nervously carried on, no one can deny that there was, as they say, a huge elephant in the room.

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How You Should Vote

By Paul Koch –

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Allegiance. Allegiance to a republic that stands boldly as a great nation under God. Allegiance that binds us together as citizens of this great country. Left-wing, right-wing, Christian, Muslim, black, Hispanic, poor and rich we are all a part of the land of the free and the home of the brave. And this Tuesday we will once again take to the polls and the rest of the world will watch as we elect the next President of the United States. Once again, we are enduring a hotly contested race. Once again, we hear the charge that this is the nastiest year yet, most divisive, and most shameful all around. Perhaps it is. Perhaps this year really is the worst we’ve ever experienced. It is certainly the most expensive. Did you know that this year they’ve estimated that over 5 billion will be spent on the political campaigns?

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Fly the W!

By Bob Hiller –

One of the first blogs I wrote for The Jagged Word was a little piece on how the Chicago Cubs were cursed and would thus never win the World Series. Well, today I am happy to say that I am no prophet! The 108-year curse has ended! Baseball’s “Loveable Losers” will no longer bear that name! GM Theo Epstein, also famous for breaking the curse of the Boston Red Sox, has once again worked his magic and redeemed the Cubbies from being bound to post-season sorrow! The long night is over! A new day has dawned in the Windy City!

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Holy Cow!

By Ross Engel –

Cubs Win! Cubs Win! Holy Cow!

I have been a Cubs fan for my entire life. Over the years, I have caught my fair share of crap from people, especially since I grew up in the south suburbs of Chicago where White Sox fans seemed to reign. I grew up listening to Steve Stone and Harry Caray calling the Cubs games (they were so much better than Joe Buck). I even recall quite fondly the WGN pregame intro to Cubs baseball back in the 80s (they used Van Halen’s, “Jump!”). Wrigley Field is a great park to watch a ball game, I even remember how big of a deal it was back in 1988 when Wrigley got lights and had their first night-time ball game!

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It’s Not About the Journey; it’s About the Destination

By Joel A. Hess –

How often have you been told by your wise friends, “It’s not about the destination; it’s about the journey.” Or as one of the originators of many pseudo smart sayings, Ralph Waldo Emerson says, “Life is a journey, not a destination.” It sounds comfy, right? The saying is supposed to elevate the challenges of life so they don’t seem meaningless. The saying highlights the now-ness of life hoping to get people to embrace it rather than unknown future.

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Guilty and Free

By Paul Koch –

Today in churches across this country, well at least in Lutheran churches (well, at least in some Lutheran churches), they are taking a moment to step aside from the normal flow of things to focus on an event in time 499 years ago in a little town in Germany. On All Hallows Eve in 1517, a young and energetic Augustinian monk and professor of theology named Martin Luther, nailed to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg an invitation to debate on the topic of the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences. An indulgence was a way to reduce the amount of punishment one must undergo for their sins. In Luther’s day the church would sell them to fill the its coffers. So, Luther invites discussion on this issue by putting forward 95 theses that ought to be considered. Little did he know or expect at the time, but this simple act, this honest attempt to resolve a problem that had robbed so many of the sweet assurance of the Gospel, would prove to be the beginning of the great Reformation of the church.

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The Hell House

By Ross Engel –

All Hallows Eve is only a few days away. Costumed trick-or-treaters and late night revilers will soon be upon us! Be prepared! I have many fond memories of my childhood, dressing up to go trick-or-treating on Halloween and getting lots of free candy! I grew up in the 80s and back then my parents had a standing rule that we couldn’t eat any candy until we got home and they inspected it all. They meticulously checked our candy-filled plastic pumpkins for things that might be dangerous. Over the years, some really sick people have tried to hurt children by poisoning candy and there have even been instances of razors or nails imbedded in Halloween loot. We had great neighbors growing up though, and never had anything like that in our Halloween haul.

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You Better Stop Smoking or Else!

By Scott Keith –

Let me set the stage. After five days of being as sick as I have ever been in my life, my wife finally drags me to the urgent care. Now, keep in mind that I am really sick at this point. I a have 102° fever (often pushing 103°), I’m coughing my brains out, I have a horrendous headache, and generally look like death on a cracker. The first doctor I saw diagnosed me with an ear infection, upper respiratory infection, and said I might have pneumonia. So he gives me some antibiotics and we go home. But before I leave, I’m sent to a nurse to discuss a smoking cessation program. That’s right, at one point in my sickened stupor, I must have admitted that I smoke a pipe once or twice a week. That was enough to get the wheels of the medical-political machine moving. It no longer mattered that I was very ill with something that had absolutely nothing to do with smoking a pipe. All that mattered was that I was one of those evil ones:  a smoker.

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