338 Past Due

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Past Due” originally shared on November 20, 2024. It was the 338^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   What’s the difference between debts and trespasses? And what does that have to do with Christ the King Sunday? Or not? Today, we’re going to find out.

   The total American household debt is $17.94 trillion. The average American household credit card debt is $7,499. Only around 23% of Americans are 100% debt free.

   Being arrested or cited for trespassing is relatively uncommon.

   But I still prefer the “forgive us our trespasses” version of the Lord’s prayer over the “forgive us our debts” version, though in many ways they mean the same thing.

   Why? Maybe because it’s the one I grew up with, have used the longest, and therefore is more meaningful to me. But also, it’s because of the secondary, sometimes referred to as “archaic” or “literary”, meaning of the word “trespass”.

   As a verb it means to commit an offense against a person or a set of rules. As a noun it means a sin or an offense. Those are closer to the human predicament and to the answer that is given by God on the cross.

   “Forgive us our debts” says that we owe something to God, and what do we do about debts? We ask God to forget them, so that we again become good with God, but we still sin (racking up more debts) requiring our constant prayers for forgiveness.

   “Forgive us our trespasses” suggests that we have committed offenses which, in the context in the Lord’s Prayer, are offenses against God. Those offenses are based on the violation of boundaries. That is closer to our human condition.

   We were created for a perfect relationship with God. For that relationship to have any meaning, we had to have the ability to reject it. And we did. That Sin brought evil into the world and separated us from that relationship with God.

   God made a chosen people who were blessed to be a blessing, liberated them from slavery, gave Laws for a good life, made them a nation, saved them from hostile foreign powers, instituted prophets, priests and kings, and none of them brought people back to that relationship with God, except for short periods.

   Finally, God came Himself and gave his life on the cross and took it back again to restore the relationship for all who believe and are baptized into His reign.

   Our condition is not that we need to be better. Our condition is that we need a Savior.

   That’s where we are in John 18:33-37, the reading for this coming Sunday, the last Sunday in the Church Year, Christ the King Sunday, being celebrated in the vast majority of Churches all over the world.

   As the current year has been coming to a close, our Sunday Bible readings have been focused on the last Judgement.

   In today’s text, Jesus is being tried in Jerusalem by Pilate, a local officer of the Roman Empire, an empire so influential that reports in social media last year indicated that most men in the Western world still think about it several times a week. And when the “Gladiators 2” movie comes out this coming Friday, it will be even more often. 😊

   It begins with John 18:33-36,

³³ Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” ³⁴ Jesus answered, “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” ³⁵ Pilate replied, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?” ³⁶ Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here

   Pilate had totally missed the message, and so had the Jewish leaders of that time that Jesus was referring to.

   “Not of This World” was a popular clothing brand for younger Christians around the 1990’s. Its logo was its acronym, NOTW, with the “O” drawn as a halo connecting the “N” and the “t”, which was drawn in the shape of a cross. I don’t see much of its clothing anymore, but I still see its logo decals on cars’ rear windows around town.

   It’s, at least in part, a reference to Jesus’ reply to Pilate that Jesus’ kingdom, “is not from this world”

   Our recent elections, and the campaigns that preceded them, seems to be pointing in another direction among some Churches in the U.S.

   Jesus’ followers didn’t form an army. They didn’t form a gang, because, as Jesus said, “But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.”

   The only boy in my first confirmation class was walking down the street in his neighborhood when he was approached by a couple other young men. “Where you from?”, one of them asked him, a common gang challenge.

   “Right around the corner,” he replied. Wrong answer.

   “That’s cool,” one of the young men said, and as they passed by, he swung a lead pipe around into the back of our member’s head. He lived for a few days in the hospital and then died.

   Armies and gangs want to know where you’re from. Jesus wants us to know where He’s from.

   The kingdom of God belongs to no nation, no empire, and no gang. We are in this sinful world, but we are not of it. Jesus spells it out in this Sunday’s text.

   It concludes with  John 18:37-38,

³⁷ Pilate asked him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” ³⁸ Pilate asked him, “What is truth?”

   Pilate thought that truth was a proposition, different for everyone.

   Jesus showed us that truth is a person, Jesus. He came to restore the relationship with God that every one of us knows   we need to be whole. Even when we cannot yet name the Name.

   Jesus said, in John 14:6-7,

   ⁶ Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. ⁷ If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

   Jesus, who was fully God and fully human being came to restore the relationship with God for which we were created. He is the only one who can make us whole. He is the Truth.

   Pilate asks Jesus, “What is truth?” John 14:7, above, begins with the conditional phrase “If you know me”. Another “verse that begins with “If” also comes to mind.  

   You’ve probably heard someone say, “the truth will make you free”? It’s something that Jesus said, but it’s also a phrase that’s often thrown up in Christians’ faces to support some non-Christian’s s personal cause. It’s a way to say that what they believe is the truth and that Christians better get with the program because Jesus said, “the truth will make you free”. But did Jesus say that? No.

   Jesus did say it, but not in the way most people think it means.

   Jesus says, “the truth will make you free” in John 8:32. But that quote begins with a great big “If”, in John 8:31-32,

³¹ Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; ³² and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”

   This Sunday is Christ the King Sunday.

   We in the United States had a revolution to get rid of kings so that the people could rule. 😊  It was a radical idea then, in human history, and it is a radical idea right now. One that we are still struggling with.

   We struggle not to put ourselves at the center of our lives. Often, we fail. Hubris always brings us down.

   But Jesus is the one that people long for when they know that they are powerless, when they need a good ruler to be in charge, when they know they need someone who is both Savior and Lord, Christ and King. When they know that they need Jesus, not human beings. When they know that they need transformation. And it has always been so.

   Human beings, both in political office and not, have struggled not to become kings, not to be told what to do, what to think, and what are and are not appropriate boundaries for civil behavior. We struggle not to live in God’s place, or at least not to pose as God-like in our lives. We struggle to let God be God and to trust and to depend upon Him, to let go and let God.

   Christians seek to make the world as much like God created it to be as it is in our power to do so.

   The day of God’s perfected reign is coming, but we don’t fear the end. We long for it.

   The first recorded Christian prayer comes in the second to the last verse of the very last book of the Bible, in Revelation 22:20,

20 The one who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming soon.”

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!

   That prayer has been on the lips of Christians for about 2,000 years. Abraham and Sarah were called to walk until God told them to stop around 2,000 years before Christ, and their faith was reconned to them as righteousness long before the giving of the Law. We have been waiting, longing for Jesus’ return for around 2,000 years and Jesus hasn’t returned yet.

   Though, God’s timing has allowed us to live and to believe and to be saved. 😊

   We have trespassed against God, and we continue to be both saints and sinners every day. We have rejected the relationship with God that is our salvation. But God has called us to repentance, to turning around and going away from the things that destroy us and to live in response to the life that has been given to us by God.

   Jesus will return in God’s own time.

   God is not past due. Our repentance as a human race is past due, and yet God gives us time! God has given us the time to receive the gift of faith, and to know that our relationship with God has been restored by Jesus on the cross. Our sinful past has not gone away, we require a savior. Our Savior is coming!

   And when he comes, how will you stand before God’s Judgement? Only by the grace of God. Repent and believe. Believe and be baptized. Your ticket to heaven has been stamped, “Paid in Full” for you by Jesus, on the cross! Christ is the King. 

337 Every Thing is Temporary

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Every Thing is Temporary” originally shared on November 13, 2024. It was the 337^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   Everything is temporary. Every-thing-is-temporary. The sooner we realize that the sooner we can get prepared for what’s coming. That’s our primary reason for optimism. Today, we’re going to find out why.

   The elections are over and there are a lot of people who are upset.

   What will happen with a new political party in power? How will the lives of those I care about change? How will the lives of those who are the most vulnerable change? Will my life be better? Or worse?

   Depending on your experience, you may be indifferent to major changes in government or fear them.

   Sally and I attended a public interview of Natan Sharansky at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles last week. It was part of a commemoration of Kristallnacht when, in 1939, the Nazi party and the indifference of the German government resulted in the destruction of 267 synagogues, the damage or destruction of 7,000 Jewish businesses, and the arrest and incarceration in concentration camps of 30,000 Jewish men.

   Mr. Sharansky is best known in the West for being a physicist in the former soviet union who was denied an exit visa to Israel in 1973. His protest and refusal to accept this judgement led him and others to become internationally known as “refuseniks”. As a result, he was imprisoned for nine years, tortured, and was sometimes held in a dark cell with barely bread and water, no visitors, no reading or writing materials, and no human contact for extended periods.

   Governments in our fallen world can be very bad.

   Depending on how you thought the elections went last week, you may think that the world is coming to an end right now, or that it is just the beginning of better times.

   The current national administration, the State of California, as well as many organizations and individuals, are preparing for what is coming.

   Christians are preparing too, but for something bigger, and it’s foreshadowed in a new year.  

   A new Church Year will start on December 1^st, with four Sundays before Christmas, on the first Sunday of the Advent season. It will start its focus on the history of salvation and will prepare us for the story of new life in Jesus Christ.

   But as the current Church Year comes to its end, our readings from the Bible at our worship services will focus on the end of the world as we know it, the coming of Jesus Christ in Judgment, the coming perfection of the Reign of God, and the coming of a new heaven and a new earth.

   What’s going to happen to us?

   The text from the Gospels that will be read in the vast majority of churches all over the world this coming Sunday, Mark 13:1-8, speaks to this question, beginning with Mark 13:1-2,

As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” ² Then Jesus asked him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”

   The disciples were mostly small-town guys. They had traveled 90 miles from Galilee in the north to Jerusalem, the big city. They were walking around like tourists!

   Jesus knew the bigger picture, though, and He was not impressed. He knew that God is eternal, that being created in God’s image means that human beings may receive eternal life, but that every Created thing is temporary.

   The city of Jerusalem was destroyed by the Roman Army during a Jewish rebellion in 70 A.D., about 35 years after Jesus died and rose. There was not a stone left upon another in Jerusalem, and the population that didn’t scatter to other nations was either killed or taken into slavery.

   Jerusalem would not be a predominantly Jewish city again until the Modern Age.

   But I don’t think that’s what Jesus was talking about in this gospel text.

   Look at how he describes the event and ends the description of them in the remainder of this coming Sunday’s Gospel reading, in Mark 13:3-8,

³ When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately, ⁴ “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?” ⁵ Then Jesus began to say to them, “Beware that no one leads you astray. ⁶ Many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and they will lead many astray. ⁷ When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. ⁸ For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.

   Jesus speaks of disruption and destruction. He ends his description by saying that this is just the beginning of the birth pangs.

   Don’t let false Messiahs rob you of the hope given to us by Jesus Christ. Many will try.

   Jesus is speaking to his disciples about the end of history, about the return of Jesus to judge the living and the dead. About the new heaven and new earth! They are coming, and what is broken will be repaired. They will be what they were created to be by God. That is the source of our ultimate hope

   Every thing is temporary, but God endures forever.

   About 3,000 years ago the writer of the Bible’s book of Psalms, wrote in Psalm 146:3,

³        Do not put your trust in princes,

in mortals, in whom there is no help.

   You’d think that we would have learned that by now. You’d think that we would remember that today, as we consider the end of history in the second coming of Jesus Christ, we would remember that rulers are temporary.

   The psalm ends with a word of hope, in Psalm 146:10,

¹⁰       The Lord will reign forever,

your God, O Zion, for all generations.

Praise the Lord!

   That’s the scale on which we live our lives. Not in the next four years, but forever. And all of it is under God’s reign.

  Meanwhile, Jesus tells us, many pretenders will come and claim to be Jesus. By one name or another, they will claim to be Our Savior. They have been coming for thousands of years.

   I went to worship on Christmas Day at Redeemer Lutheran Church in the old city section of Jerusalem when I was in college and was studying there in a term abroad. We had some excitement.

   A guy stood up in the middle of the pastor’s sermon and shouted, “Jesus has returned! He has been reincarnated and is now a 12-year-old boy living in India”. 

   In case you are not a Lutheran, just so you know, things like this do not normally happen in Lutheran churches. Someone else stood up and said, “He is not! Jesus taught that we should always be ready, because no one knows when the final judgement will come.” There was a big commotion. Finally, things settled down and the Christmas Day worship service went on.

   Our worship still goes on, and we are still called to be ready every day. I heard someone say that he stayed prepared by living every day as if it was his last. “That’s why I never do laundry,” he said. “Because who wants to do laundry on the last day of their life?” 😊

   I don’t think that was what Jesus meant when he called on us to be ready at all times.  I think that Jesus wants us to live in the living relationship with the one true living God for which we were created. Jesus calls us to life by faith, to be in his presence through the Word and the Sacraments. Jesus wants us to stay awake!

   People have been claiming for almost 2,000 years that they have figured out when Jesus will return in Judgement and Re-creation. Whole Christian denominations and groups have risen and fallen claiming to know when even Jesus did not claim to know.

   And every single one of them has been wrong.

   But someday, someone is going to happen to be right, but not in the ways that they think.

   The signs of the end that Jesus mentions are not there for us to have a schedule code to crack. Those signs are there to show the meaning of the end, and the role that Christians play in the revelation of it.

   They are there to show us that life has meaning and purpose and direction even in the worst of times, in the most uncertain of times, and that God, and only God, is ultimately in control of how everything ends and what happens after.

   So, when we see massive brush fires, earthquakes, volcanos, wars, and famines, and uncertain times, we see them not as the beginning of the end, but as the end of the beginning.

   Movies about the total breakdown of civilization are popular today. They let us prepare for the worst. They encourage us to imagine our best selves on the world’s terms.

   Zombie movies and television shows, and video games, are especially popular today. Zombies are already dead, so some people view them as a stand-in for their fears for the future. Zombies can be viewed as animated bodies, not people, and so can be destroyed without guilt. These shows give us a way to think about a world in which everything has been lost.

   But that is not our world. And it never will be. Every thing is temporary. But God, in whom we live and hope and have our being, is forever. And God has given us eternal life through Jesus Christ: crucified, risen, and coming again!

   At the end of our Gospel text for this Sunday Jesus says, “This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.”

   Events are coming that are the beginning, not the end. That is our hope.

   Paul writes, in Romans 8:18-25,

¹⁸ I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. ¹⁹ For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; ²⁰ for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope ²¹ that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. ²² We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; ²³ and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. ²⁴ For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? ²⁵ But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

   Every thing is temporary but we, the born-again children of God, have been given eternal life by Jesus on the cross. We are God’s people, and no one and nothing can take that life away from us. It has been given to us by God.

   Every thing is temporary but we, God’s people, live with Him forever. 

336 Who Do You Trust?

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Who Do You Trust?” originally shared on November 6, 2024. It was the 336^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.) 

   There is said to be a lot of concern today over who we can trust. Today, we’re going to consider our answer.

   “I’m sorry that Election Day is over because I’m really going to miss all those humanity- polluting political attack ads,” said nobody. Ever.

   I’ve read that the reason there has been so much political trash talk and negative advertising in the past years is that it works. And that the purpose of telling obvious and outrageous lies is to create the distrust that makes it impossible to know who is telling the truth. And that the reason for trashing the media is to convince people that only one person will tell you what is real. That’s how they gain control.

   This is nothing new.

   Appearances can be deceiving, and Jesus speaks of this at the beginning of the gospel text that will be read in the vast majority of churches all over the world this coming Sunday, Mark 12:38-42, starting in verses 38-40,

38 As he taught, he said, “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, 39 and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets! 40 They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.”

   Looks can be deceiving.

   The scribes, in Jesus’ day, were among the rare people who were literate. They made copies of what we would call the Old Testament, what might be called in Jesus’ day the law and the prophets. They made their copies by hand and would check their work by knowing how many words, how many letters, and how many punctuation marks were in every book. They checked all their copies for accuracy by reading forwards, and then the checked them reading backwards, counting by word, by letter, and by punctuation mark. They knew the Bible!

   They could talk the talk, but they didn’t walk the walk. They were highly respected by the public but, privately, they were stealing from vulnerable people. They were acting for personal gain, contrary to the instructions of the Old Testament. They placed their trust in themselves.

   It’s a human dilemma. Who can we trust? How do we know who to respect, and who to listen to?

   I studied enough Biblical Greek in seminary to read Bible commentaries, especially New Testament commentaries, but I stopped after I came to a conclusion that has illuminated much of my study ever since.

   I realized that, in order to have an authoritative opinion as an adult, I would have to have studied Biblical Greek every day since childhood, earned specialized academic degrees in Biblical Greek, taught Biblical Greek, published recognized books on Biblical Greek and still there would be people with similar backgrounds who would disagree with my interpretations!

   I was able to read the commentaries, but how did I know which commentaries to read? Which were faithful to scripture?

   I came to the conclusion that the first question I needed to ask with regard to forming my own interpretations and worldview is, “Who do I trust?”

   Jesus wasn’t just throwing shade at the Scribes. Jesus was asking people to reconsider who they could trust.

   Appearances can be deceiving, and Jesus also speaks of this at the end of the gospel text that will be read this coming Sunday, Mark 12:38-42, in verses 41-44,

41 He sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. 42 A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. 43 Then he called his disciples and said to them, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. 44 For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

   This text is a basis for a theme that I, and many others, have used in church building programs, “We don’t ask for equal gifts. We ask for equal sacrifices.”

   It makes sense, and it’s fair.

   Jesus wasn’t promoting the poor widow’s poverty; Jesus was commending the woman’s giving. She had given everything, because she knew who was trustworthy. She had put her trust in God!

   That is the question, isn’t it? Who do you trust?

   “Who Do You Trust?” was a television game show on CBS in the 50’s and 60’s. It was hosted by Johnny Carson for 5 years, just before he moved to “The Tonight Show” on NBC in 1962. It was based on the judgement of a husband to trust his answer to a question or to trust his wife’s

   “In God We Trust” is the official motto of the Unites States. (Fun Fact: it’s also the official motto of the country of Nicaragua). Its words were particularly significant after the Civil War and after World War II. Like the addition of the words, “under God” to the United States’ Pledge of Allegiance, it made it more palatable for Christians to serve their country. Both were statements of ultimate trust.

   Yesterday was Election Day, and a lot of our concerns in voting, and its outcomes, will be about who we can trust.

   Every candidate who was on the ballot is a human being. (We can be thankful for that, anyway. 😊) But saying that someone is a human being these days is usually followed by a justification for their flaws.

   Martin Luther, the 16^th Century Church reformer, had a higher bar. He has been quoted as saying, in a time when only men were approved to serve as priests or as politicians, “Send your good men into the ministry, but send your best men into politics.” 😊

   Why? Because God, present in both Church and State, is more trustworthy than human beings.

   Which brings us to another message in this text, one that has to do with human worth.

   Human worth can only be determined outside of humanity. Otherwise, we are only worth what others think that they can get from us.

   Our worth comes from God. All human beings are of inestimable value simply because human beings are created by God, in God’s image, as in Genesis 1:27,

²⁷       So God created humankind in his image,

in the image of God he created them;

male and female he created them.

   And whatever else being created in God’s image means, it means that we are created for a living relationship with the one true living God.

   No one and nothing can separate us, the people of God, from God, as we read from Paul in Romans 8:31-39, 

³¹ What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? ³² He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? ³³ Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. ³⁴ Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. ³⁵ Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? ³⁶ As it is written,

“For your sake we are being killed all day long;

we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.”

³⁷ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. ³⁸ For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, ³⁹ nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

   This is the living experience of the poor widow who gave everything that she had in response to her trust in God.

   What does that mean?

   We took a family trip to a local army/navy surplus store last week. It was like traveling in time, returning to another world, and kind of overwhelming. Some of the items had the names of the soldiers and sailors to whom they once presumably belonged stamped in them. I wondered what stories they could tell. Sally saw a flag that said, “All gave some. Some gave all.” It refers to the sacrifices made and given by those who served and serve our country in the military. We will honor them this Sunday on Veterans Day, November 10th. It will coincide with the 249^th birthday of the United States Marine Corps, in which I served. We are grateful for their sacrifices.

   It also might describe the Church and its martyrs. But, in a sense, there is no life in the Church that is less than fully committed.

   We are not called to make God the most important thing in our life. We are called to be transformed as people in whom God has been made everything that defines us in our lives. We all give all.

   That is the significance of the poor widow who gave everything that she had, her whole living. We trust in God.

   What can we do?

   Open your heart to God Be changed. Be a new Creation. Be born again. Be God’s people and share the good news of Jesus Christ with your friends, with your family, and with the world. Repent and believe in the good news of Jesus Christ in the cross.

   MacDonalds recently had a problem with the slivered onions on its Quarter Pounders causing an e. coli outbreak in some parts of the country. What did it do? It got rid of the onions.

   We are at a point in our country where the political temperature, the polarization, the distrust in anybody but those persons who would be our savior, has reached the point where we have made gods for ourselves. After the election, it will be obvious that our trust has been trampled and abused.    

   What is our solution? Repent. Turn away from what is killing us and toward God, who alone is trustworthy.

   Repent and live to make our fallen world more like the perfect world it was Created by God to be and which it will be once again in the new heaven and the new earth, coming as promised.

   Repent and live as a people set-apart. Live as the people of God in the transformational power of the Holy Spirit described by Paul in Galatians 5:22-23,

²² By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, ²³ gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things.

   People are pretty charged-up emotionally today, and half of us are going to be bitterly disappointed and fearful once the results are clear.

   We could do worse than to follow the example of Dodger Freddie Freeman who, when asked how he celebrated after he hit the walk-off grand slam that won the first game of the 2024 World Series, said that he went home and helped put the kids to bed. And when asked what he did after the Dodgers won the World Series, said that he took his kids out trick-or-treating.

   We could do worse than to follow the example of Martin Luther who was reportedly visited by a member of his congregation while Luther was digging a hole to plant an apple tree. His member had been reading the Bible’s book of Revelation and he asked Luther what he would do if he knew that the world would end tomorrow.

   Luther replied, “I’d plant my apple tree.”

   We live as we have been called, equipped and sent to live by God.

   We don’t know what the future holds, but we do know Who holds the future.

   We trust in God.