Shade Tree Wisdom 11/16/11

          It seems to defy all reason, but there it stands tall, in the middle of the backyard, a red Cana blooming in the middle of November.  Where did it get enough moisture to do that is a mystery I will not solve for you.

          It reminds me that God’s nature is sort of a thing that God works, “we know not how”.  But it also points to a great truth we sometime forget.  God did say that “The gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matt.16,18.) He was speaking of His Church.

          In an article in the November Lutheran Witness, President Harrison harks back to Emperor Constantine who converted to Christianity A.D. 312.  Shortly thereafter the Church received all kinds of privileges from the government, and forgot the One Thing Needful, and as a result lost its strength and weakened.  The State church in Europe, Harrison writes, is “a theological disaster”.  It is always so when a church forgets its mission, to preach the Gospel.

          Today the Church faces all kinds of difficulties, often direct opposition.  So we tend to say “poor me”. When we do have at hand what the first President of the Church said in one of his first convention addresses. “The Only weapon we have is the Gospel.”

          So let us take courage in this time of change and challenge.  The Lord’s promise is still true, “The gates of hell shall not prevail against it”.  And the times to the end are filled, for us, right at hand, with opportunity to tell the good news that God’s Son, Jesus Christ, paid for the sins of the whole world.

          In it all, remember the lines from an old Gospel song?
               “His eye is on the sparrow,
                And I KNOW He watches me.

          May the Lord bless your day and fill it with treasured fruitfulness.

GPD 11/16/11