Fill… Spill… Thrill…

Bishop Dave deFreese
Nebraska Synod, ELCA

“If we are rich and see others in need, yet close our hearts against them, how can we claim that we love God? My children, our love should not be just words and talk: it must be true love, which shows itself in action.” I John 3:17-18

In a society in which atheism seems to be growing, the following story is most appropriate. Two fellows are talking with each other, and one says he has a question for God. He wants to ask why God allows all this poverty and suffering to exist in the world. His friend says, “Well, why don’t you ask?” The first shakes his head and says he is scared. When his friend asks why, he mutters, “I am afraid God will ask me the same question.”

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Mitch McCartney
Director of Communications and Development
Nebraska Synod, ELCA

I’m not sure if it was this past Christmas or the Christmas before that. We had a giving tree in church and on it were placed the many paper cutout stars, each of which represented a gift that we could go and purchase for a needy child in town. As had been the case every year, stars were disappearing from the tree as church members were claiming them to go and make their gift purchases.

One of the stars on the tree this particular year was for a little boy who had asked for a bicycle for Christmas. That star remained on the tree for most of December, presumably because the size of the young boy’s wish was considerably larger than the simpler, less expensive requests for dolls, toy trucks and stuffed animals.

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Lisa Kramme
Director of Faith Formation
Nebraska Synod, ELCA

I didn’t wear gloves when I worked in my yard a couple weeks ago, planting a few geraniums, moss roses, one tomato plant, some lavender and other little white flowers that were not labeled but on the discount table at the plant sale. My hands got dirty, and I had to work to get the grime out from under my fingernails when the day was done. But it felt good. It felt good to be outside, turning the soil to loosen the hardness left by a season of waiting. It felt good to carry bags of mulch and work the rake to spread that mulch so moisture will stay where it does the most good, nourishing the young plants.

I imagine that there was probably dirt under God’s fingernails while God was working in the garden and creating this world and all the creatures that inhabit it. Anyone who is a caretaker of the earth gets dirt under their fingernails as they go about their important and vital tasks.

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Picture a place where an older couple can sit at a table with two young people sporting the body art du jour, the four of them complete strangers, discussing the new Star Trek movie over a bowl of soup.

“It’s a picture of what the community of heaven must look like,” said Matt Schur.

This brand of “extreme soup supper” known as The Table is the community building ministry hatched by Schur and others from Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church in Lincoln.

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