Nothing can destory the work done for a sermon fastern than the work of the Holy Spirit.

I was out riding my bicycle today so I could lose some of the weight that I have gained during seminary.

While I was riding, I was thinking about Mark 5:21-43, the Gospel reading for June 28, 2009. I have been drawn to three phrases of this pericope. The first phrase is “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.” The second is “He strictly ordered them that no one should know this.” The third phrase is “Give her something to eat.” I was also thinking what Dr. Hank Langknecht kept saying to me in class “One text, one theme, one doctrine, one image, one need, one mission.”

At first, I was first thinking that my sermon would focus on the statement “no one should know this.” Jairus and his wife knew what a person looks like when a person is sleeping, when a person is alive, and when a person is dead. They knew what was happening and what did happen to their daughter.

I was thinking that if I had a daughter, she had just died, she was brought back to life, and then I was told to be quiet by the person who brought her back to life; I would tell this person that he/she is nuts. I would not be able to keep this good news to myself. As I see it, telling Jairus and his wife not to tell anyone what just happen to their daughter is like telling the wind to stop blowing or water from being wet.

But it wasn’t just anyone who told Jairus and his wife to be quite, it was Jesus, the one who even the winds and the sea obey. It was Jesus who gave Jairus’ daughter her life back. While it is Jesus who asked the impossible, it is also Jesus who does the impossible.

I figured this would preach.

Then came my bike ride today. Sometime while the wind was in my face and my bike tires throwing mud in my face, the Holy Spirit came. (I am assuming that the Holy Spirit was in the wind – not the mud. But, who knows?)

Every time I saw something on this bike ride, the phrase “give her something to eat” kept resurfacing. When I saw a baby chipmunk having lunch near the path, “Give her something to eat.” When a bunny crossed the path right in front of me, “Give her something to eat.” When I saw a person fishing in Alum Creek, “Give her something to eat.” When I saw a family BBQ’ing, “Give her something to eat.” When I was drinking some water, “Give her something to eat.”

As I was pondering what the phrase “give her something to eat” meant for me (the requirements for life – food, water, air), an ambulance was leaving a house with its lights on and its siren blaring. Then the words “give her something to eat” once again re-emerge.

As of right now, I am not sure what to do with “give her something to eat” as it relates to my sermon, bur I am sure that I will be rewriting what I have written so far.

The nakedness and barrenness of Columbus’ nature trails

Because I thought I needed something other than a brief introduction about myself, I thought I would copy something that I posted on Facebook. I posted this on March 6, 2009.

I just got back from his first bicycle ride of the year, and I could not help but to compare Columbus’ nature trails to our lives. The nature trails are currently naked and barren because the trees do not have their leaves as of yet and the grass is still brown from the winter weather. Along with the trails’ barrenness, they are very ugly because all of the amount of trash that has piled up all winter long.

Despite the barrenness, nakedness, and ugliness that the trails display during this part of the year, there is life all around and through them. Birds are in the trees squawking, dogs are running up and down the trails near their owners, and people prepare a baseball field for its next game. And very soon, the trees will have their leaves, the grass will be green, and the flowers will be blooming.

This is how I believe God sees us, in our barrenness – in our nakedness – in our ugliness. And because of these traits of ours, God the vinedresser enters our lives so that we will have a life that is vibrant and full of color.

Introduction

I have been thinking about starting to blog for several years now, and I figure that I may as well and start.

Here is a little about me, I was born and raised in Port Huron Michigan. A week after high school, I left for the Navy, and I spent eight and a half years serving in the U.S. Navy. While I was in the Navy, I served onboard the U.S.S Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71), U.S.S Hermitage (LSD-34), U.S.S. Steven W. Groves (FFG-29), and the U.S.S Saratoga (CV-60).

I had several jobs (SCM Glidco Organics, Langston Electric, Beach Pizza) after I got out of the Navy, and they allowed me to pursue my dream of entering the software development field. I finished my B.S. in Computer Information at Univ. of North Florida.

While I was going to school, Alltel Information hired me in their Custom Programming Department. I loved working for Alltel. It was fun, it was challenging, it was a good job. Later, Fidelity purchased part the information part of Alltel, and this made me start to think about security. This is because we went through a couple of rightsizing (downsize) measures. While I still had a job, some of my friends did not.

To back up just a bit, I started to think about God calling me to the ministry when I first started my faith walk in 1999.

It was during these rightsizing events that I gave the Action Rollo at a Via de Cristo weekend in Jacksonville Florida. During one of our breaks after I gave my talk (I did not mentioned that I was thinking about being called to the ministry of Word and Sacrament during my rollo), Larry M. and I were talking about our pastors, and he then placed his left hand on my right shoulder and said, “I have all the respect for our clergy (looks me in the eye), and for those individuals who will become our clergy.”

Once this Via de Cristo weekend was over, I went and told Pastor Ellen (my pastor) of this event along with several other events that I have skipped in this brief introduction. She then told me that it now was the time for me to start my discernment concerning God’s calling.

A few years later, I started my seminary education at Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Columbus Ohio. I am now schedule to start my internship at Our Redeemer Lutheran church in Marion Illinois.