freedom

Illustration of the Month: Thanksgiving Cross

By Hillary Asbury –

People are sometimes very surprised to find out that my church has a service on Thanksgiving. I love it though; I grew up with it being a normal thing and for whatever reason I find it to be a very comforting service. There’s something grounding about celebrating a Christ-centered Thanksgiving. Its about something more than gorging ourselves with food, about more than time with family, and even about more than expressing gratitude for the many blessings we have enjoyed that year.

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Beautiful Debate

By Cindy Koch –

There is something beautiful about a debate. Even if it is with the tiny mind of a two-year-old, it is a valuable and precious conversation. The exchange of ideas, as eloquent or as basic as it may be, requires both people to be introspective. Why do I think this? Why does she think that? How can I get someone else to see my point? Maybe, possibly, I am wrong. The questions and tactics flow back and forth, from passion to passion. And there is a true beauty in the discussion.

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The Harrowing of Hell

By Hillary Asbury –

The Harrowing of Hell is just one panel of a larger altarpiece which depicts several vignettes from the Passion of our Lord. In the painting, we see a cut out scene of a dark cave, and several of the faithful departed huddled within. Two men, perhaps Noah and Abraham, kneel before Jesus.  Behind them stand John the Baptist who is, as always, pointing to Christ and turning to his companion (likely King David) to tell of the coming of the Savior. In the back corner we see Adam and Eve, patiently awaiting the fulfillment of that long-ago promise.

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What God Has Joined Together

By Paul Koch –

I recall many years ago I was doing a Sunday morning Bible study at my previous congregation in Georgia. We were working our way through St. Matthew’s Gospel that happened to be the text that corresponds to our reading today of Mark 10:2-16. So, we began by talking about the harsh realities of divorce. Divorce seems to be a plague of sorts in our land, it’s no longer rare or shocking. All of us have come in contact with the realities of divorce. Either you have been divorced or your parents have, or you know someone who has gone through the hurt and struggle of divorce. And it is easy if you haven’t been divorced to speak with a certain self-righteousness about the whole thing. Then again, it is also easy to justify divorce to the point that it can seem a noble or necessary thing. During that Bible study in Georgia, I was no doubt more on the self-righteous side of things when a member brought to my attention the simple fact that most of the people sitting there had been through divorce. In Bible Study on a Sunday morning a small southern town, those who had not been divorced were certainly the minority.

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F-You Money and the Gospel

By Paul Koch –

The concept of F-You Money flows from a new take on the American dream.  No longer is it simply about climbing the social-economic ladder to achieve a comfortable middle-class lifestyle. It’s not merely about doing better than your parents did or setting up your own children to have a better life than you. F-You Money is about being free to give your boss the finger, to quit and walk out without any sacrifice to your lifestyle. It means you are not beholden to another for your time. If you don’t want to do something, you don’t have to do it, period.

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Just another Mundane Monday

By Cindy Koch –

So much of our daily lives cycle around the same old thing, day after day. Laundry, dishes, fixing the car, going to work, walking the dog, the mundane routine seems like it spins around and around, never resolved and never finished. It takes me back to a time when my babies were very little. I found myself caught in the mundane, the everyday routine. I would wake up, feed the baby, change her, do some dishes, feed the baby, change her, clean the bathroom, feed the baby, change her, and go to bed. Every single day. But nothing much changed.

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Confessional Freedom

By Paul Koch –

Do you confess the Unaltered Augsburg Confession to be a true exposition of Holy Scripture and a correct exhibition of the doctrine of the Evangelical Lutheran Church? And do you confess that the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, the Small and Large Catechisms of Martin Luther, the Smalcald Articles, the Treatise on the Power and Primacy of the Pope, and the Formula of Concord—as these are contained in the Book of Concord—are also in agreement with this one scriptural faith?

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