On the last Sunday of the Trinity season, we finish the church year by looking ahead to the end of days and the beginning of a new heaven and new earth. Paul admonishes us to be awake – to build each ...  Read More

Where does your hope lie? We can hope for many things – peace, a new job, a baby, health, just fill in the blank. But where does our true hope lie? It is not in this world – we are waiting for a new h...  Read More

The readings for the twenty-fifth Sunday after Trinity are all about waiting. Unfortunately, waiting is not our forte. The Israelites camped out at the base of Mount Sinai, which was covered with the ...  Read More

As we look forward to the celebration of All Saints this week, the scripture readings remind us of the good and sure promises of God. Jesus pronounces blessings – the filling of the poor in Spirit, th...  Read More

Down through the ages, the church of God proclaims the gospel of Jesus Christ to all peoples, while Satan and his angels try to drown out or confuse the good news. We celebrate the Reformation because...  Read More

This week we hear wisdom calling us to come and be satisfied, to eat what is good even though we have no money to buy it. Paul admonishes us not be foolish – to know God’s will. And Jesus tells a para...  Read More

In the reading from Isaiah this week, God reminds His people that He has forgiven their sins. He has redeemed them so they can return to Him. In the gospel, we again see God forgiving sins, as Jesus f...  Read More

In this week’s readings, the Pharisees test Jesus with a question about God’s Law. They do not realize that Jesus, the incarnate Word of God, cannot be tricked or tripped up with any question. They ha...  Read More

The Old Testament reading for this week picks up right where last week’s reading left off, with Elijah staying with the widow of Zarephath and her son. Now, after God’s miraculous provision of oil and...  Read More

Do not worry. Do not grow weary. The Lord will provide. God in His Word asks us over and over to trust Him, but if we are honest with ourselves, we’re not terribly good at it. Most of us are pretty go...  Read More

What (or whom) do we love most? Like most Sunday school children, we know what the answer should be: Jesus! But we are often far more wrapped up in ourselves than anything else. Like children who have...  Read More

The readings for the thirteenth Sunday after Trinity tell us a story of love and mercy. Leviticus tells us to love our neighbor as ourselves – that we should share our food with the poor, deal with ea...  Read More

In this week’s readings we hear Isaiah predicting the coming of the Holy One of Israel, and Jesus fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecy by opening the ears of a deaf man. But Jesus did not come only for those ...  Read More

As the readings have emphasized for the past Sundays of the Trinity season, God is the source of our strength, our confidence, and our wisdom. And conversely, we are not the source of these things. Wi...  Read More

In our readings for this week, Jesus cleanses the temple and laments over Jerusalem. He mourns that they do not know the things that make for peace. But what is Jesus talking about? Jeremiah tells the...  Read More

This week’s readings are full of the goodness and power of God – and of the weakness and fallibility of mankind. Just when you think you are standing firm, watch out that you don’t fall! The sons of t...  Read More

Watch out for false prophets, says Jeremiah. Jesus repeats the message in our gospel lesson for the eighth Sunday after Trinity. Wherever there is God’s truth, the evil one tries to drown it out with ...  Read More

God is the source of all good things. It’s easy for us to say that the feeding of the 4,000 was only a foreshadowing of the Lord’s Supper, by which He feeds all of us with Himself so that we may be sa...  Read More

The readings for the sixth Sunday after Trinity are pretty harsh reading. First, the Law given to Moses on Mt. Sinai, with its you shall and you shall not, with no softness or exceptions. And in the g...  Read More

Next Sunday’s readings are all about following God’s call without looking back. Elisha doesn’t follow Elijah immediately – he wants to say goodbye to his family. But it’s not an excuse (like in Luke 9...  Read More

God is coming! The Song of Songs compares Him to a deer bounding over the hills, or a lover visiting his beloved. In the gospel, Mary visits Elizabeth, and their joy bursts out of them in prophecy and...  Read More

What does it mean to fight the good fight of the faith? To understand Paul’s admonition to Timothy, we need to look at the context. In the sentence before, Paul tells him (and us) to flee from evil an...  Read More

In the readings for the second Sunday after Trinity, we are called into God’s feast. We are invited to feast on the wisdom of God – His Holy Word, Jesus, present in the Holy Sacraments and in the Scri...  Read More

This week we look forward to Trinity Sunday, the beginning of a season in which we celebrate a mystery that no one on earth can fully understand – that our God is one God, but three persons. God in hi...  Read More