In 1931 Tennessee Williams wrote a tragic short story about a man who forgot something important…

Jacob Brodzky, a shy Russian Jew whose father owned a bookstore. The older Brodzky wanted his son to go to college. The boy, on the other hand, desired nothing but to marry Lila, his childhood sweetheart- a French girl who was very ambitious and outgoing as he was laid back and contemplative.

A couple of months after young Brodzky went to college, his father fell ill and died. The son returned home, buried his father, and married Lila. Then the couple moved into the apartment above the bookstore, and Brodzky took over its management.

The life of books fit him perfectly, but it cramped her. She wanted more adventure- and she found it, she thought, when she met an agent who praised her beautiful singing voice and enticed her to tour Europe with a vaudeville company. Brodzky was devastated. At their parting, he reached into his pocket and handed her the key to the front door of the bookstore.

“You had better keep this,” he told her, “because you will want it some day. Your love is not that much less than mine that you can get away from it. You will come back sometime, and I will be waiting.”

She kissed him and left. To escape the pain he felt, Brodzky withdrew deep into his bookstore and took to reading as someone else might have taken to drink. He spoke little, did little, and could most times be found at the large desk near the rear of the shop, immersed in his books while he waited for his love to return.

Nearly 15 years after they parted, at Christmastime, she did return. But when Brodzky rose from the reading desk, he took the love of his life as an ordinary customer.

“Do you want a book?” he asked. That he didn’t recognize her startled her.

But she gained possession of herself and replied, “I want a book, but I’ve forgotten the name of it.”

Then she told him a story of childhood sweethearts. A story of a newly married couple who lived in an apartment above a bookstore. A story of a young, ambitious wife who left to seek a career, which enjoyed great success but could never relinquish the key, her husband gave her when they parted.

She told him the story she thought would bring him to himself. But his face showed no recognition. Gradually she realized that he had lost touch with his heart’s desire, that he no longer knew the purpose of his waiting and grieving, that now all he remembered was the waiting and grieving itself.

“You remember it; you must remember it- the story of Lila and Jacob?” After a long pause, he said, “There is something familiar about the story, I think I have read it somewhere. I think that it is something by Tolstoi.”

Dropping the key, she fled the shop. And Brodzky returned to his desk, to his reading, unaware that the love he waited for had come and gone.

What a story, eh? I thought so too. What also came to mind was Revelation 2:4b-5a. (I know what you are thinking—“Did he really think about Revelation after reading this story?” Actually, I did. I am kind of a Bible nerd.) It says this, “You have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first.”

Jacob had forgotten his first love. All he knew were books and the pain of loneliness. Although the story is creatively tragic, I can’t help but think about the ways I forget about our first love. Jacob forgot about Lila. John records the very words of Jesus in Revelation and Jesus is talking about a church who forgot about Him!

They didn’t exactly forget about Jesus, but they forsook (abandoned) their love for Him. It was as if they still loved Jesus but not as much as before. Jesus used to be their “first love” now He is somewhere lower on the list. That’s not so hard to believe is it?

All sorts of things get in the way of loving Jesus. In my life, the first thing that gets in the way of loving Jesus is loving myself. I want things done my way and if they happen to be Jesus’ way too—then it’s a bonus!

Jesus reminds the church of Ephesus to return to Him. Loving should be at the top of their ‘to do list’ and ours too. We aren’t asked to just follow the teachings of Jesus. We are asked to ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ Matthew 22:37. That’s hard to do when we are loving other stuff.

God loves us so much. (Words can’t express this strong enough.) God wants our full devotion over full compliance. Do not forget who loved you first…

Pr. Ben

I often run across stories and articles that are too long for a sermon, yet they are too wonderful not to share. Here is a little known story about the moon landing in 1969.

Communion on the Moon: July 20th, 1969
by Eric Metaxas

Forty seven years ago two human beings changed history by walking on  the surface of the moon. But what happened before Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong exited the Lunar Module is perhaps even more amazing, if only because so few people know about it. “I’m talking about the fact that Buzz Aldrin took communion on the surface of the moon. Some months after his return, he wrote about it in Guideposts magazine.

And a few years ago I had the privilege of meeting him myself. I asked him about it and he confirmed the story to me, and I wrote about in my book Everything You Always Wanted to Know About God (But Were Afraid to Ask).

The background to the story is that Aldrin was an  elder at his Presbyterian Church in Texas during this period in his life, and knowing that he would soon be doing something unprecedented in human history, he felt he should mark the occasion somehow, and he asked his minister to help him. And so the minister consecrated a communion wafer and a small vial of communion wine. And Buzz Aldrin took them with him out of the Earth’s orbit and on to the surface of the moon.

He and Armstrong had only been on the lunar surface for a few minutes when Aldrin made the following public statement:

“This is the Lunar Module pilot. I’d like to take this opportunity to ask every person listening in, whoever and wherever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his or her own way.” He then ended radio communication and there, on the silent surface of the moon, 250,000 miles from home, he read a verse from the Gospel of John, and he took communion. Here is his own account of what happened:

“In the radio blackout, I opened the little plastic packages which contained the bread and the wine. I poured the wine into the chalice our church had given me. In the one-sixth gravity of the moon, the wine slowly curled and gracefully came up the side of the cup.

Then I read the Scripture, ‘I am the vine, you are the branches. Whosoever abides in me will bring forth much fruit.. Apart from me you can do nothing.’

I had intended to read my communion passage back to earth, but at the last minute [they] had requested that I not do this.  NASA was already embroiled in a legal battle with Madelyn Murray O’Hare, the celebrated opponent of religion, over the Apollo 8 crew reading from Genesis while orbiting the moon at Christmas. I agreed reluctantly.

I ate the tiny Host and swallowed the wine. I gave thanks for the intelligence and spirit that had brought two young pilots to the Sea of Tranquility. It was interesting for me to think: the very first liquid ever poured on the moon, and the very first food eaten there, were the communion elements.

And of course, it’s interesting to think that some of the first words spoken on the moon were the words of Jesus Christ, who made the Earth and the moon – and Who, in the immortal words of Dante, is Himself the “Love that moves the Sun and other stars.”

Occasionally I run across an article that is too good not to share. This is one of them. This is written by a “local” here in the South Bay. The grass is not always greener on the other side of the fence as Scott Shute discovered after the loss of his father.

Faith of His Father
His high-tech career at LinkedIn couldn’t have been more different from his father’s life as a Kansas farmer. But some lessons always apply…

By Scott Shute Vice President of Global Customer Operations at LinkedIn

My bike ride to work is the most peaceful part of my day. I have a demanding job in Silicon Valley—vice president of global customer operations for the social-networking company LinkedIn.

I ride along bike trails beside San Francisco Bay with sweeping views of wetlands and forested hillsides. It’s my time to think, to pray, to get some fresh air before plunging into 10-plus hours of meetings, video conferences and e-mails.

This past winter, my dad died and that peacefulness vanished. Dad was 81. His death took all of us—Mom, me, my four siblings—by surprise. He was a Kansas farmer, vigorous and dedicated to the land. He farmed right up until his heart gave out.

I missed Dad intensely. My first days back at the office, I sat at my desk and wondered why I was there. At meetings I blankly watched numbers come and go on PowerPoint slides.

In Silicon Valley people live to work. We’re passionate about innovation, global impact and changing the world. After spending a couple of weeks in my rural hometown, telling stories about Dad, hearing everyone in our small church recall his steadfastness and quiet acts of generosity, work no longer seemed so significant.

I felt adrift in a way I didn’t understand. Dad’s death made me vividly aware of my own mortality. I was in my forties. How should I spend the years remaining to me? I wanted to make them count. Should I leave LinkedIn and join a start-up? Write a business book like other Silicon Valley leaders have done? Or something totally different? Whatever it was, I wanted to make a difference. I kept thinking about these questions on my ride to work.

Dad wasn’t troubled by such uncertainty. Farmer, father, husband—those were his callings and he stuck to them. His name was Ed. He was sturdy, with hands toughened by work and a ready smile that widened around Mom. He loved us kids, and part of that love was putting us to work. “It’s child abuse not to teach your kids to work,” he said.

His standards were high. “Is that the best you can do?” he’d ask quietly. It wasn’t criticism as much as motivation. It always made us want to do better.

Life on the farm was fun when I was little. I rode my dirt bike and wandered the fields with my black Lab. As I got older, Dad ramped up the chores. I tended nearly 1,500 hogs, a dirty, smelly job I did not enjoy. I was 12 when I started driving tractors.

Other kids my age got lifeguard jobs and spent summer days by the pool. I plowed fields in the broiling sun.

Dad never pressured me to go into farming. That wasn’t his way. In fact, he never pressured any of us kids to do anything. He led by example. I think he learned that at church.

Dad was no Bible-thumper. He lived his faith by deeds, not words. Our tiny Methodist church had all of six or seven families. But they were big farm families, so the sanctuary always felt full.

Mom led the choir. Dad taught Sunday school. We showed up for worship without fail. Dad firmly believed that if you relied on God, everything else would fall into place. No rain? No problem. God would provide. For Dad, faith meant being faithful. He was faithful to the farm. To Mom. To his family.

And he did the right thing even when it hurt. At the funeral, my cousin told a story about a day he went to the store with Dad and my brothers to buy supplies. Back in the car, my cousin realized the cashier had undercharged him.

“Check it out, guys, free money!” my cousin exclaimed.

The car slowed. “What was that?” asked Dad, his eyes on the road.

“The guy at the counter didn’t charge me enough,” my cousin said. Dad looked at him in the rearview mirror. “You’ll want to make that right,” he said.

“It’s only a couple bucks,” my cousin muttered. The look in Dad’s eyes made it clear that that was no excuse. My cousin got the message—and still remembered it all these years later.

I could picture that road, long and straight, bordered by endless waves of wheat. Sometimes, riding along the flat bike trail beside San Francisco Bay, under a big blue sky, I felt like I was back on those country roads of my childhood. Of course it wasn’t Kansas.

And at the end of my ride was a cubicle, not a farmhouse. There wasn’t much in that cube, just a computer and a phone, because we changed desks all the time in typical restless Silicon Valley style.

Was that why I felt so unsettled? Silicon Valley restlessness? Here, if you’re not changing jobs every couple of years people wonder what’s wrong with you. I steered my bike into the LinkedIn campus, a cluster of low-slung gray office buildings surrounded by parking lots and flower beds. I locked the bike, showered, changed and sat down at my desk. It was early and the office was still quiet.

Another wave of memories came over me. How different the farm seemed without Dad bustling around it! My older brother Tom had taken over day-to-day management years earlier, and he’d brought the operation into the twenty-first century. The combine harvester alone cost several hundred thousand dollars and used GPS to harvest crops on autopilot with accuracy down to inches. The driver sat in a cockpit like a spaceship’s.

Dad preferred the old methods but he was a realist. And he had to admit the air-conditioned cab was nicer than getting blasted by sun and dust all day. Maybe high-tech and farming weren’t so different after all.

 What would Dad have thought about this cubicle? I wondered. How would he have answered the big questions about life and work I keep asking?

Actually, I knew how he’d answer. He’d wake up before dawn, get on his tractor and plow. He’d take care of the livestock. Order fertilizer and meet with the seed supplier. Check up on me and my brothers and sisters. He’d plant what needed to be planted, harvest what needed to be harvested and nurture everything in between. At the end of the day he’d be at the dinner table thanking God for providing.

Dad led by example. He did what he said he was going to do. He didn’t scan the horizon restlessly, looking for a new direction in life. He already knew what was important, and he focused on those things with unwavering faithfulness.

I smiled. The more I thought about it, the more I realized I knew the answer to my questions too. Dad had been showing me that answer my entire life. The externals—this job, that job—mattered less than living with integrity. I didn’t have to change the world. I just had to be myself.

Businesspeople talk a lot about leadership. The most influential leader in my life was my dad. And he was still leading me, even after he was gone. His values were part of everything I did—mentoring employees, coaching my son’s Little League team, writing songs with my daughter. From now on, I would make those values even more central to my life.

I turned on my computer and glanced at my schedule. Another busy day. Not on a farm—but the principles were the same. Lots of chores. A rich harvest of work and relationships. Doing the best I could do. Having an impact by living with integrity. “Thanks, Dad,” I said quietly. And I got to work.

Original article from:
https://www.guideposts.org/comfort-hope/faith-of-his-father?nopaging=1

I read a chilling statistic the other day on cnn.com… “Imagine every man, woman and child leaving home in 29 states, mostly in the U.S. West and Midwest. That’s everyone west of Ohio and Kentucky and north of Texas, all the way to California.

The 158 million people in those states make up the same share of the U.S. population — 49% — as the proportion of Syrians that have fled carnage there.

The war in Syria is so hellish and unrelenting that more people have left that country than any other in recent years. One of every five displaced persons in the world is Syrian.”

Of course Syria is not as big as the United States but if it were, the above statements would be accurate. That is disturbing and it is heartbreaking.

I am reminded of what God says to the people of Israel even before they take possession of the land of Israel. “For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes.  He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing. And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt.” (Deuteronomy 10:17-19)

Why yes, God is speaking to His chosen while they are still on their way to the “Promised land” of Israel and yes, God is referring to those who will be already living among people of Israel some day. I readily admit that is what it says. However, is our interpretation of the Bible so narrow that we would limit who we would extend help to based on where they live? I didn’t think so either.

It is heartwarming (to me at least) that God says to Moses—“I show no partiality…” or more bluntly God says, “I don’t play favorites.” He loves equally. It is not the brightest and best or the richest who are on the top of God’s most loved list. Not at all! God wants Moses (and us) to see that God cares about those who struggle or as Jesus puts it, “the least of these.” And we should to.

There are refugees from many places in the world. Even Jesus, Joseph and Mary were refugees. (See Matthew 2:13). The problems in Syria have highlighted the plight of those seeking a safe place to live, raise a family and make a living. Many of the refugees are caught between ISIS or ISIL and the Syrian government that is not that much better. Most Syrians are between a rock and a hard place. That is not meant to minimize those fleeing from other oppressive situations but it serves as a reminder to me to think critically and faithfully about the struggles of others in this broken world of ours.

Should Christian love be limited by borders or by a shared faith? I can’t imagine saying to someone, “I’ll help you if you can come to me first.” Or, “I’ll help you if you are Christian but no one else.” That doesn’t sound like love to me. The “Golden Rule” keeps bouncing around my head. “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” (Luke 6:31) I keep thinking, “What would I want/need if I were in that situation?” Clearly I hope others would come to my aid.

I am not offering solutions or even asking anyone to see things the way I do. I am writing because this weighs heavy on my privileged, rich, white American heart. However, I do know that I feel compelled to do more than just write about it. Maybe this is the first step…

God bless,
Pr. Ben

Electronic Bible study. . . That is exactly what this blog post is. Two weeks ago, I wrote about this verse from Ecclesiastes. . .

¹⁵ In this meaningless life of mine I have seen both of these: a righteous man perishing in his righteousness, and a wicked man living long in his wickedness.

¹⁶ Do not be overrighteous, neither be overwise—why destroy yourself?

¹⁷ Do not be overwicked, and do not be a fool—why die before your time?

¹⁸ It is good to grasp the one and not let go of the other. The man who fears God will avoid all extremes.

If you want to read what I wrote you can find that here: https://benbergren.com/article-down-the-middle-of-the-road/#comments

King Solomon (who wrote part of Ecclesiastes) advocated for a ‘middle of the road approach’. On one side of the road are the legalistic, religious folks who view their faith in God as rules to be followed. There is only one way to please God and you better behave because God is watching.

On the other side of the road are the ‘anything goes’ folks. Do what you want, when you want, as much as you want. Live for today, YOLO and that kind of short-term way living.

The middle way is the way of Jesus. Not focusing on rules and not doing what you want. Instead we cultivate a relationship with God and others based on love.

You might be saying, “hey wait a minute, this is just a repeat of your last blog post.”

As the old TV pitchman used to say, “…but wait, there’s more!”

Someone then asked me online, “How does that compare to this verse in Revelation 3:15?”

Here is that verse… Jesus says, “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! ¹⁶ So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.”

 Does this verse stand in contradiction to what Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes? Is Jesus saying he doesn’t like middle of the road living? Is Pr. Ben wrong???? (Disclaimer: I am wrong a lot. That shouldn’t surprise or upset anyone.)

The church in Laodicea to whom Jesus is speaking in Revelation is a rich church. They are not passionate about anything and they have found comfort and safety in their wealth. In lot of ways, this church was filled with a bunch of ‘fence-sitters.’ You know, people who are accused of ‘sitting on the fence’ don’t take a stand on anything. They want to see where the prevailing winds are blowing before committing to anything. In the words of Jesus, they were “lukewarm.” This church must have been pretty laid back and didn’t do much in terms of serving and caring for others.

Jesus was so confounded by them that he actually wished they were passionate about anything, even if it was the wrong thing! (“I wish you were either one or the other.”)

It is easy to see that using the metaphor in my previous post about being in the “Middle of the road” would then be viewed as being “lukewarm” in Revelation.

Solomon says don’t be extreme in your religious practice (rules) and don’t be an extreme fool- doing whatever you want to do.

What is going on here? Is there a contradiction?

I don’t think there is a contradiction between Jesus’ words and the words of Solomon. Jesus spoke out against religious legalism all the time. He called out the Pharisees for telling people the only way to please God was to obey the rules. One example of this is in Luke 11:46 when Jesus said, “And you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them.”

Jesus also spoke out on sin, specifically related to doing what you want whenever you feel like it. Remember what he told the woman caught in adultery after he forgave her? He said, “Go now and leave your life of sin.” (John 8:11)

Jesus was advocating for a new way of living—something way outside of boundaries of right and wrong. He wanted people to draw close to God and have personal relationship with Him. Yes, there is instruction in how to live life and avoid pitfalls but those things (laws and judgments) do not make up the essence of one’s relationship with God.

God loves both the righteous (redeemed) and the sinner. God’s Love is not based on performance or compliance. God loves all. However the commandments and laws given to live a holy life are still helpful to us humans; they just don’t constitute our relationship with God. Laws and judgments are like guardrails on the road. If we get too close (on either side) we are soon to have an accident. That is why I said Jesus calls us to the middle!

However, the problem was that the church in Laodicea was not even on the road! They were sitting on the fence. They could see the road, they just weren’t traveling on it. They weren’t making that spiritual journey with Jesus that we all are on (or should be on).

They weren’t passionately following Jesus with their feet. They probably gave great ‘lip-service’ but their walk didn’t match their talk. Maybe their talk didn’t really impress Jesus either for that matter.

Even Jesus wished they would be “over-righteous” or “over-wicked” just so that they were passionate about something—even if was the wrong thing! They were more like ‘pew-potatoes’. (That is the distant cousin to the ‘couch-potato.’)

Jesus wants to capture our hearts and instill the Holy Spirit so that we are passionate about following him more than doing our own thing or just following the rules.

In summation . . . (Thank God, right?)

Be Passionate for Jesus.
Rules/Commandments are good guardrails.
Don’t be a fool.
Don’t be fixated on religious rules as a way to please God.

God bless,
Pr.Ben

King Solomon was pretty smart. The Bible says that he was the wisest person ever to live (short of Jesus the Son of God). He is believed to be the partial author of 3 books of the Bible: Song of Songs, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. One of them is racy and the other two are filled with great wisdom. I’ll let you figure out which book is the racy one. (It is doubtful I will ever preach on that. If you read it, you’ll know why.)

I am struck by one particular passage in one of King Solomon’s books. The book is called Ecclesiastes. The word comes from the Greek and it means “Teacher” or possibly “Preacher.” There is no doubt that King Solomon is preaching about the meaning of life in this book.

Sometimes it seems King Solomon is mired in a mid-life crisis when he writes, “Meaningless, meaningless, utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless!” and “For a man may do his work with wisdom, knowledge and skill, and then he must leave all he owns to someone who has not worked for it. This too is meaningless and a great misfortune.” You get a sense that he is rather unhappy that he is getting older.

However, there is this wonderful set of verses from Ecclesiastes 7:16-18 that should give everyone something to think about. . .

¹⁶Do not be overrighteous,
neither be overwise—
why destroy yourself?
¹⁷Do not be overwicked,
and do not be a fool—
why die before your time?
¹⁸It is good to grasp the one
and not let go of the other.
The man who fears God will avoid all extremes.

Wow. King Solomon says taking the middle path is the best path to be on. Don’t super over the top religious (in a bad sense) and legalistic. And on the other side don’t live by the seat of your pants and be a fool.

Somehow there is a balance between being “over-righteous” and “over-wicked.” Being in the middle of this continuum is where we should be. Avoiding extremes is good but it is hard.

Think about all the extreme stances people take today. Any more, you best not talk politics because a lot of people have adopted the approach of “you are either with me or against me.” Or even the attitude we bring to a lot of our own life, “It’s either my way or the highway.” We all have to watch what we eat because more is better, right? All doctors have said that “fad dieting” is bad because most of it is extreme.

Yet 3000 years ago, Solomon says walk in the middle. Don’t be extreme! Take the middle path that avoids religious extremism and legalism and don’t do whatever you want to do. Either one will kill you.

What is really interesting is that Jesus walked that middle path. He wasn’t a religious zealot yet he was the Son of God who was rejected by the over-righteous Pharisees. Jesus also wasn’t a fool. He didn’t do whatever he wanted. As a matter of fact, Jesus said that his mission was to do what the Heavenly Father wanted Him to do. Check out John 6:38.

Jesus stood in the center of extremism and asked people to come to him in the middle. He called sinners to know the love of God and change. He tried to educate the Pharisees on the actual will of God but they wouldn’t listen.

Standing in the middle is all about knowing to whom you belong. Knowing that there is nothing you can do to make God love you anymore and nothing you can do to make him love you any less. It’s not about being perfect and it’s not about doing whatever you want.

If Jesus stands in the middle maybe we should too. Let’s be kind to each other and avoid extremes.

God bless,
Pr. Ben

Love is an amazing gift that God ‘built’ into humanity. God wanted us to know how He feels towards us. The downside to love is that sometimes others hurt us or we have say goodbye for awhile when a loved dies. The great pastor and theologian Paul (from the New Testament) says this about the importance of love. . .

“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

What he is saying is that love is most important thing. Even though everything else will eventually pass away—only 3 things will be left and one of them is greater than the other 2. It is love.

I am reminded of the bond of love between two people in this story by Nicolle Woodward. It brings a tear to my eye every time I re-read it. . . 

They had just celebrated their 39th anniversary in April when Bill went for his annual checkup. Always in perfect health, he was unprepared for what the doctor found. Symptoms Bill had ignored as “old age” led to questions, palpations, more questions, and finally instructions for a battery of tests.

“Just to be on the safe side,” the doctor said. When Bill took the news home to Constance, she refused to consider that it could be something serious.

Fortunately, it was April and the gardens beckoned. There was more than enough work needed to prepare the beds for the coming season, and they threw themselves into the now-familiar yearly routine. They spent their days, as always, surrounded by trays of flowers and bags of mulch, wielding their favorite trowels.

As the summer progressed, 30 years of gardening rewarded them with a showplace of color. Benches and swings were placed amid the bounty of flowers, and they spent nearly every evening during the summer relaxing and basking in the beauty.

As they worked, Constance began to notice a subtle change in Bill. He seemed to tire more easily, had difficulty rising from his knees, and had little appetite. By the time the test results were in, she was no longer so sure of a good prognosis.

When the doctor ushered them into his office, she knew. His demeanor was too professional, too unlike the friend they had known and trusted for so many years. There was no easy way to say it. Bill was dying, with so little hope of curing his illness that it would be kinder to not even try. He had perhaps six months left, time enough to put his house in order, but little time for anything else.

They decided he would stay at home, with help from visiting nurses and hospice when the time came. Their children were both far away, one in Oregon and the other in Chicago. They came for extended visits, but with jobs and children, neither could come permanently. So Bill and Constance spent the ending time as they had spent the beginning time, alone together. Only now they had their beloved gardens, a great comfort to them both for that entire summer.

By September, Bill was fading fast and they both knew the end was near. For some reason Constance couldn’t understand, he seemed to be pushing her to get out more. He urged her to call old friends and have lunch, go shopping, see a movie. She resisted until he became so agitated that she conceded and began making her calls. Everyone was more than willing to accompany her, and she found she did take some comfort in talking over lunch or during the long ride to the mall.

Bill passed away peacefully in October, surrounded by his family. Constance was inconsolable. No amount of knowing could have prepared her for the emptiness she felt. Winter descended upon her with a vengeance. Suddenly it seemed dark all the time. Then the holidays came, and she went to Oregon for Thanksgiving and to Chicago for Christmas. The house was cold and empty when she returned. She wasn’t quite sure how she could go on, but somehow she did.

At long last, it was April again, and with April came the return to longer and warmer days. She would go from window to window looking out at the yard, knowing what needed to be done, but not really caring if she did it or not.

Then, one day, she noticed something different about the gardens. They were coming to life sooner than they had in the past. She went out and walked all around and through the beds. It was daffodils. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of daffodils. She and Bill had never put many spring plants in their gardens. They so enjoyed the colors of summer that they had only a few spring daffodils and hyacinths scattered here and there.

“Where did they come from?” she wondered as she walked. Not only did the blooms completely encircle each bed, they were also scattered inside, among the still-dormant summer plants. They appeared in groups all over the lawn, and even lined the driveway to the street. They ringed the trees and they lined the foundation of the house. She couldn’t believe it. Where on earth had they come from?

A few days later she received a call from her attorney. He needed to see her, he said. Could she come to his office that morning? When Constance arrived, he handed her a package with instructions not to open it until she returned home. He gave no other explanation. 

When she opened the package, there were two smaller packages inside. One was labeled “Open me first.” Inside was a video cassette. Suddenly Bill appeared on the screen, talking to her from his favorite chair, dressed not in pajamas but in a sweater and slacks. “My darling Constance,” he began, “today is our anniversary, and this is my gift to you.”

He told her of his love for her. Then he explained the daffodils.

“I know these daffodils will be blooming on our anniversary, and will continue to do so forever,” Bill said. “I couldn’t plant them alone, though.” Their many friends had conspired with Bill to get the bulbs planted. They had taken turns last fall getting Constance out of the house for hours at a time so the work could be done.

The second package held the memories of all those friends who so generously gave of their time and energies so Bill could give her his final gift.

Photographs of everyone came spilling out, images captured forever of them working in the garden, laughing, taking turns snapping pictures and visiting with her beloved husband, who sat bundled in a lawn chair, watching.

In the photo Constance framed and put by her bed, Bill is smiling at her and waving his trowel.

Now that is love! Leaving a legacy of love so that the most important people (or person) in your life never forgets. Jesus did that by rising from the dead. What will you do for those you love the most?

God bless,
Pr. Ben

Where in the world is Pastor Ben this week? Some of you heard a little bit about the summer camp that I am the director of in the announcements last Sunday at Bethel Lutheran Church.

I am the co-director of a camp called Leadership Lab (as in laboratory). It is a one week camp that is over 55 years old. Pastor Dick Hanson started Leadership Lab with 8 students. This year we will have close to 400 students participating. We rent the campus of Augustana College in Rock Island, IL (One our ELCA colleges) and we essentially take over the school.

We accept students beginning at the summer of their 8^th grade year going into their freshman year of high school and it goes all the way through college. There is even an adult level! It is a stair-step model and a student has the opportunity to begin as they enter high school and keep coming back all the way through college. Many have.

I first attended Leadership Lab in 1985 when the camp had about 125 participants. I went all the way through high school and that is when Leadership Lab ended. (We added the college level later.) In 1989 I was asked to be on staff and have been going ever since then. If you didn’t do the math, I have been going for 30 years or 2/3’s of my life. Leadership Lab is one of the most important things ever to happen to my faith life. All my children have attended and I hope one day my grandchildren will go too.

It is a week of learning, faith-building and relationships. We teach students the practical side of leadership and planning and in the process we provide a safe place for life-long Christian friendships to form. Yes, there is faith formation as well. We worship twice a day and the students actually look forward to praising God!

This is my 8^th year as one of the directors and it is a privilege to serve God in this capacity. It is also a blessing to serve Christ’s Church this way as well. As God formed my faith at Leadership Lab, I now ‘pay it forward’ so that other students may learn and grow as I did.

This week will also be a family reunion for me. I have built life-long friendships with many of our staff at Leadership Lab. When we get together, it is like a family (of God) reunion. It is blessing for me to be associated with such great people.

I will be posting pictures this week so that you can get a glimpse of what I do. Keep checking back here or on the Bethel Lutheran Church Facebook page.

For those who call Bethel home. . . I am holding all of you in my heart too.

God bless,

Pr. Ben

In the Lutheran Church some people make the sign of the cross and some don’t. Either is acceptable. From the brand of Lutheranism I come from no one ever made the sign of the cross. My guess would be that it would appear too “Roman Catholic.” Today we don’t worry about such things and I am glad about that.

I started wonder about the Lutheran background of making the sign of the cross when I found a wonderful blog post by Joel Miller who is not a Lutheran but wrote about the Lutheran history and theology of making the sign of the cross. I found it very interesting; I am hoping you will too. Below is part of that article. . .

In reading Letters and Papers from Prison, I was surprised to discover Dietrich Bonhoeffer used the sign of the cross in his daily prayers. “I’ve found that following Luther’s instruction to ‘make the sign of the cross’ at our morning and evening prayers is . . . most useful,” he said in one letter. “There is something objective about it. . . .”

Not to mention Martin Luther instructing every Lutheran since his own day to “bless yourself with the holy cross,” as he says in his Small Catechism. Owing to my ignorance, this was also a surprise. But in fact the German Reformer directed the sign’s use not only for morning and evening prayer, but also for baptisms and ordinations.

Adding to my curiosity, in the same letter Bonhoeffer cautioned, “[D]on’t suppose we go in very much for symbolism here!” And also said this: “[M]y fear and distrust of religiosity have become greater than ever here.” According to my upbringing, the sign of the cross was nothing but symbolism and religiosity. Yet Bonhoeffer signs himself. Why?

To begin with, signing oneself is more than mere symbolism. It is, as Bonhoeffer said, “objective.” There is something tangible and actual about tracing the points of the cross over one’s body. It goes back to something covered in C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters. Christians, (the senior demon informs the junior,) “can be persuaded that the bodily position makes no difference to their prayers, for they constantly forget . . . that they are animals and that whatever their bodies do affects their souls.”

What we do physically affects us spiritually. Whether it’s lowering our gaze, raising our hands, bending our knee, or crossing ourselves, physical actions have a qualitative, spiritual effect.

Next, signing oneself is more than mere religiosity. It’s communion with God. At bottom, the act of faithfully signing the cross is an act of prayer, one that is physical, a remembrance, a benediction, a collect that gathers every trial, worry, and fear and consigns it to the care of Christ. It can also be used to express gratitude at a meal, joy at a blessed occurrence, repentance in a moment of sin, resistance in a moment of temptation, and faith when undertaking any task (with emphasis on any).

It’s always been this way in the church. “At every forward step and movement,” Tertullian wrote in the year 204, “at every going in and out, when we put on our clothes and shoes, when we bathe, when we sit at table, when we light the lamps, on couch, on seat, in all the ordinary actions of daily life, we trace upon the forehead the sign [of the cross].”

This is not some superstitious innovation of the Middle Ages or the empty religiosity Bonhoeffer opposed. It’s a foundational aspect of Christian identity. Making the sign of the cross says to yourself (and anyone watching) that you belong to Jesus, that you belong to God. When faced with temptation, wrestling with a bad attitude, or feeling grateful for the mercies of God, is there anything better?

Identifying as Christian by using the sign of the cross is a physical and demonstrative way to communicate our reliance on God and our identity in Christ.

Like any religious practice it can be a vain empty thing or full of personal and spiritual meaning. If you make the sign of the cross, great! If you don’t, great! I just want you to understand why we do what we do. . . if we do it at all!

God bless,
Pr. Ben

I am sure that some people no longer want to talk about the tragedy in Charleston, S.C. last week. “It was bad and it was last week.” I am not so sure we should be so quick to put this behind us and “move on.” Not because I have some political axe to grind but rather the sobering fact of how broken our world really is.

Whether it is racial hate, cultural hate, individual hate or even self-loathing hate… violence is not the answer. Violence is never the answer to anything and neither is hate.

The violence against our own (family of God) reminds me of other mass shootings in the recent past: Sandy Hook Elementary school, Fort Hood, Columbine High School, the Washington Navy Ship Yard, the Aurora, Colorado movie theater and the list goes on.

When I try to make sense of tragedies like these, I come to conclusion that there is no way to make sense of them. Sure we can describe what happened and what might have caused some to act in such a cruel and vicious way but it does not bring satisfaction or resolution and maybe it shouldn’t.

Killing fellow brothers and sisters in Christ at a Bible Study only because of their skin color is sickening.  There is no way to make sense of something like that.

The Presiding Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America wrote an open letter to us Lutherans. Here is what she wrote. . .

It has been a long season of disquiet in our country. From Ferguson to Baltimore, simmering racial tensions have boiled over into violence. But this … the fatal shooting of nine African Americans in a church is a stark, raw manifestation of the sin that is racism. The church was desecrated. The people of that congregation were desecrated. The aspiration voiced in the Pledge of Allegiance that we are “one nation under God” was desecrated.

Mother Emanuel AME’s pastor, the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, was a graduate of the Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary, as was the Rev. Daniel Simmons, associate pastor at Mother Emanuel. The suspected shooter is a member of an ELCA congregation. All of a sudden and for all of us, this is an intensely personal tragedy. One of our own is alleged to have shot and killed two who adopted us as their own.

We might say that this was an isolated act by a deeply disturbed man. But we know that is not the whole truth. It is not an isolated event. And even if the shooter was unstable, the framework upon which he built his vision of race is not. Racism is a fact in American culture. Denial and avoidance of this fact are deadly. The Rev. Mr. Pinckney leaves a wife and children. The other eight victims leave grieving families. The family of the suspected killer and two congregations are broken. When will this end?

The nine dead in Charleston are not the first innocent victims killed by violence. Our only hope rests in the innocent One, who was violently executed on Good Friday. Emmanuel, God with us, carried our grief and sorrow – the grief and sorrow of Mother Emanuel AME church – and he was wounded for our transgressions – the deadly sin of racism.

I urge all of us to spend a day in repentance and mourning. And then we need to get to work. Each of us and all of us need to examine ourselves, our church and our communities. We need to be honest about the reality of racism within us and around us. We need to talk and we need to listen, but we also need to act. No stereotype or racial slur is justified. Speak out against inequity. Look with newly opened eyes at the many subtle and overt ways that we and our communities see people of color as being of less worth. Above all pray – for insight, for forgiveness, for courage.

Kyrie Eleison.

The Rev. Elizabeth A. Eaton
Presiding Bishop
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

I also received an email from Pr. Rick Warren of Saddleback Church in Southern California. This is what he wrote:

How do we respond to such evil? The answer is that we must do the exact opposite of what the gunman wanted to accomplish. That way he doesn’t win.

The gunman’s intention was to divide people,
so we must unite in our grief.
His intention was to show hatred,
so we must show love.
His intention was to kill,
so we must protect life – all of it.
His intention was to do evil,
so we must respond by doing good
His intention was to start a race war.
We must be peacemakers.
His intention was to further segregation,
so we must model integration in our churches,
His intention was to do an injustice,
so we must stand for justice
And his intention was to do harm
so we must be agents of healing.

I am not going to tell you what to do or how to feel. I do hope that you take all of these words and commendations to heart. We have been reminded in the most horrible of ways that we live in a broken world and that we have been called to bring the Kingdom of God.

“Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

Amen.