You’ve heard the phrase before. This three-word admonition is shared as soothing balm following a tense or difficult moment, but often has the opposite effect. Rather than offering comfort, it stirs up irritation. When my car runs out of gas, when I have bounced a check, or missed an important appointment, please don’t demean me by suggesting that out of the trials of unpredictable or irresponsible living there may come a nugget of wisdom. “Live and learn” often lands on our ears as a reprimand of sorts with a silver lining.

But what if we hear it as something else? What if we embrace living and learning as a declaration of a vibrant Christian life? It isn’t an admonition, but a sustained promise of who and how we hope to be.

We live and learn when we pause to listen to the joys and sorrows of a child.
We live and learn when we look for the lonely and isolated.
We live and learn when we engage in Bible reading and study with others.
We live and learn when we meet one another in worship moments.
We live and learn when we serve our neighbors in need.
We live and learn when we wrestle with complicated issues of race and culture.
We live and learn when we engage in hard conversations to understand one another.
We live and learn when we respond with gratitude.

We can’t help but live and learn as people of faith. It is who we were created to be.

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” Deuteronomy 6:4-9

From the earliest pages of Scripture, God’s people were instructed to put their faith into action, as a way of sharing God’s goodness with the world. “Listen, obey, talk, and write. At home and beyond, love God with your whole being.” Ours is not a stagnant faith, but one that is always growing as we live and learn the ways of Christ.

Lord of Life takes this command seriously by making life-long learning a priority. That’s right. Preschool kids, children, youth, teenagers, college students, newlyweds, mid-lifers, retired folks, and centenarians are all active learners at Lord of Life.

As you continue to fill your calendar with autumn activities, I encourage you to make room to continue living and learning in the faith. Spend time reading the Bible. Sign up for a daily email devotion. Consider stepping into a teaching role with Sunday School. Be a mentor with our teens. Plug into a Bible study. Read a book and wonder how it stretches your journey of faith. Pray for all in need. Commit to being generous with your finances. Step up to serving. Show up for worship. Jesus will meet you here.

Living and learning in hope,
Pastor Lowell

Several years ago I drove to Chillicothe, Ohio to meet my mother-in-law and grandmother-in-law (Brian’s mom and grandma) at a funeral home. No one had died. In fact, everyone was in perfect health and as far as we knew, there was nothing for us to be worried about. We sat with a funeral director and pre-planned everything from caskets to flower arrangements, and later, without the funeral director, I talked them through scripture passages and music.

What a gift it was a few years later when Brian’s grandma passed away and the difficult work of planning the service was already done. There were no difficult conversations about whether she would prefer this or that service that the funeral home provides. Those questions were all answered. No one had to pick from a list of sad hymns that might be appropriate or say, “what was that song she always used to sing to us at bedtime?” We had it all written down.

Most funeral homes are willing to pre-plan the funeral home parts of a funeral with you, and I encourage anyone to do that. But that’s not the part of the process that sits on my mind most days. What I would really love for everyone to do is make an appointment with Pastor Lowell or myself to sit down with planning resources and plan the liturgy for your Celebration of Life.

We have lists of scriptures and hymns that are traditional for memorials, and we love to discuss other readings and songs that are meaningful for you. Do you want to celebrate Holy Communion? Are there any other special things that you want to have happen during your celebration? The more you share about what those parts of worship mean for you, the more we can create a cohesive and memorable service.

Sometimes you’ll stop me after worship and say “I want that song for my funeral …” I really want to remember that for you. If you’re telling me on Sunday morning, though, there is a good chance that the next day I’ll remember you told me there was a song you liked, and I won’t remember which one. This is a great start, but having everything on paper is better.

When the day finally comes and your family is sitting with us to put everything together, their grief makes it difficult to make decisions. The thing is, we’re grieving, too, and we’re doing everything we can to stay strong for you because we love you and want to celebrate you in the most beautiful way we can. It would be amazing if you can help us do that for you.

Loving you on the journey,
John

<a href="https://www.vecteezy.com/free-photos/flower">Flower Stock photos by Vecteezy</a>

A couple weeks ago, I was doing laundry when I opened up the laundry door and my prayer beads fell out. I thought I had lost my prayer beads months ago between one of my moves.

I was given these prayer beads in the summer of 2023 during Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE). CPE is an intensive program where you spend time in a long term care facility or hospital as a chaplain providing care to other people. When you are not providing care to other people you are spending time with a cohort of people learning and debriefing what you are experiencing. I had never received such a special and meaningful gift like this before. I was excited that I found my prayer beads again.

What I find most fascinating about the prayer beads is that there is not one way to use or understand them. In researching to find out more about these prayer beads I found out there are many ways one can use this in their own life. Some people use them for meditation, to focus their mind, and to pray. Some people have very specific prayers they use for each one of the beads. These include prayers of praise, thankfulness, and forgiveness. I do not have specific prayers with my beads, but I am comforted by knowing that I can use them in so many different ways. I often carry them in my bag with me so that way I can hold them in my hands as a way to remind me of God’s love.

In scripture, Jesus prays for his disciples, after healing people, in front of others, and even alone. Prayer was a crucial part of the life of Jesus. The example of Jesus is an invitation to all of us to think about the different ways we can pray and connect with God in our own lives. You might best connect to God by going on a walk, listening to music in your car, having quiet time in the mornings, or dancing. I constantly pray for the ministry here at Lord of Life Lutheran Church and pray for all of you on your journey of prayer.

What ways do you connect with God in your prayer life? How does that bring you comfort and reassurance in your own life? Do you have any physical items as a part of your journey?

However and wherever you pray, may you continue to feel the presence of God.

Always praying,
Pastor Nicole

I have a stack of books by my favorite chair in our home. I’m reading all of them at once—sort of. The pages are filled with poetry, music history, fictional characters and stories, theology, leadership, magazines, journals, and whatever else lands on the pile. I dip in a little here and there, depending on my mood and attention span. It is a delight to be able to slide back into a story with characters I already know or dive into new material that expands my mind.

I also have a stack on my desk at church, too, well…maybe several stacks. There are books I’m using for preparing book and Bible studies, commentaries for sermon reflection, biographies and memoirs, graphic novels, as well as authors writing about leadership, discipleship, best ministry practices, stewardship, and more. 

I haven’t read all of these volumes and may not ever get to some of them, but it is the possibility of encountering people, places, and stories in these pages that brings me joy. It is comforting to have my tsundoku—a Japanese word for a stack of books that you have purchased but not yet read—close at hand.

Kevin Mims, writing about this unread heap, offers, “A person’s library is often a symbolic representation of his or her mind…The [person] with an ever-expanding library understands the importance of remaining curious, open to new ideas, and voices” (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/08/books/review/personal-libraries.html).

One of my goals for our seminary interns is to encourage them to be lifelong learners. Even though their divinity school coursework might be wrapping up, that doesn’t mean that their learning is complete—quite the opposite! A steady diet of both fiction and nonfiction are essential in helping one grow in knowledge and understanding, while also stretching one’s ability to think, dream, and grow a vocabulary.

This applies to our journey with Jesus, too. We should be curious disciples, eager to spend a lifetime stockpiling language and stories that lead us deeper into loving relationships with God and those around us. Our faith journey doesn’t end with singing “Jesus Loves Me” in Sunday School, reciting a few Bible verses, and memorizing the Lord’s Prayer. While these are good to have in your spiritual library, God offers so much more material to help us grow in faith, hope, and love. 

This year, we are going to sink deeply into these three words: faith, hope, and love. We’ll wrestle with how they’ve been used to manipulate and control, and celebrate the ways they have offered liberation and freedom. We’ll place them front and center as we strive to live, share and celebrate with all people, God’s love in Jesus Christ. Faith, hope, and love will anchor our times together in worship, learning, serving, prayer, and discernment.

Sometimes, we become so accustomed to hearing, saying, and using these churchy words, we forget the transformational, otherworldly power that they hold. Collectively, these three building blocks of a Christian life show up more than one thousand times in the Bible. 1 Corinthians 13 reminds us that all kinds of things come and go throughout our lives, but when everything else fades away, “faith, hope, and love remain” (1 Corinthians 13:13).

So let’s pull these off of the shelf and explore where God might be leading us. Join me in savoring the incredible story of a love that will not let us go. Let’s see how faith, hope, and love might direct our days and deeds as we follow Jesus into the great unknown. Hopefully, we’ll learn something new about ourselves, our neighbors, God, and the world at every turn.

Learning and loving,
Pastor Lowell Michelson

If you have ever been around preschoolers, then you know that their heads are filled with their own important information that they can’t wait to share. In circle time when you ask a question pertaining to the book you are reading, you may get answers ranging from “it’s my birthday” to “I have blue shoes.” Their ‘listening ears’ are not turned on (even though we pretended to click them on).

For young children, this is developmentally age appropriate and usually adorable. However, for us as adults, we should have this skill fully formed, but isn’t it something we always struggle with? Our heads are loaded with our own important thoughts, problems, or priorities. It’s hard to hear those around us or God leading us. There is always other noise that draws our attention away from Jesus.

As we enter a new season of faith formation together, how can we hear and process how we are being called? How can we guide ourselves or our families into a rhythm of listening? What is one small step we could make? It is incredibly freeing when we don’t have to do all the talking or be right.

Clicking on our “listening ears” to hear messages of understanding, love, trust, direction, and life-giving priorities will lead us to where God is calling us and could even be more exciting than blue shoes or birthdays.

Pastor Lowell prayed this prayer from Walter Brueggemann as part of our weekly staff meeting devotion. It spoke to me. I pray it does the same for you.

Ears but do not hear

“…So we pray for ears,
open, unwaxed, attentive, circumcised.

Call us by name…so that we know,
Call us to you…so that we live,
Call us into the world…so that we care,
Call us to risk…so that we trust beyond ourselves.

You speak/we listen/and comes life,
abundant,
beyond all that we ask or think…
Our ears to hear your word of life.
Amen.”

Learning to listen with you,
Angie Seiller, Director of Faith Formation

If you were able to be part of Tam Weik’s celebration of life this week, then you experienced a Love Fest! Hundreds of people gathered from many parts of her life to pay tribute to this gifted and compassionate woman who touched so many lives. They connected in the gathering space, fellowship hall, front entry, sanctuary, and even pulled together for conversations in the hallways and by the drinking fountain. The building was packed for hours with hugs, tears, and laughter.

For some, it was a trip down memory lane as stories were shared from raising kids together, women’s retreats, Al-Anon meetings, creative projects, and other places where Tam’s life intersected theirs. We also confronted the realities of our present sorrow. We know that our acute pain won’t last forever, but these days are difficult as we face the gaping hole her death leaves in our lives. Tam’s legacy of beauty, love, compassion, and joy will continue to fuel us as we move forward and celebrate her legacy of hope.

Isn’t it interesting how we are always simultaneously living in three tenses: past, present, and future? Everything we do and everywhere we go is connected to where and who we’ve been, where and who we are, and where and who we will be. Our experiences and relationships are like the constantly shifting mosaic we see when we peer into a kaleidoscope.

We encounter something similar each week when we assemble around the communion table to share a holy meal in the name of Jesus. As we gather, we take a trip to the past, recalling how God showed up throughout history to bring liberation and freedom to God’s people. We retell the story of Jesus gathering around a table with his disciples, sharing this meal, and saying, “When you are together, eat and drink to remember me.”

Landing in our current time, we remember that Christ is present here and now, Emmanuel, God with us. Jesus, the host of the communion meal, invites everyone to the table. As we pass the bread and the wine around, we join countless other communities of Christian faith all around the world who are also savoring this meal of grace.

As we eat and drink, we also look forward to a time when we will share in the great feast that is to come. There will be a day when we’ll sit down at the heavenly banquet for what Canadian singer, Bruce Cockburn, calls the “Festival of Friends.” In that place, Revelation 21:4 promises that, “God will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

I am reminded of one of my favorite prayers from our Evangelical Lutheran Worship (ELW) resource and offer it here as a reminder of who God is, has been, and continues to be. 

O God, you have called me to ventures of which I cannot see the ending,
by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown.
Give me faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where I go, 
but only that your hand is leading me and your love supporting me; 
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

God has been faithful. God is with us now. God promises to guide and accompany us into all that is ahead. May you step forward in confidence and hope, trusting that God’s hand is leading you and God’s love is supporting you.

In hope and expectation!
Pastor Lowell Michelson