Pious Lutheran

At Babel, some thousands of years ago, the Lord cursed man by separating and dividing us from one another. “ Come ,” said the Lord, “ let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech. ” This curse caused man to disperse from one another, and it persists still to this day.  In some ways the curse of Babel is worse than the flood, since the flood only killed one generation, but the confusion of language has harmed man for every generation since Babel. It’s divided us into races and nations and cultures and states. Even among those who share the same language, and even the same house, our language has been confused and communication rendered difficult among even the best of relations. Many a misunderstanding has resulted in terrible feuds between friends, now rivals. This separation and division among man is not a good thing. As evidenced in the creation account, it wasn’t good for Adam to be alone, but he required the company of an...

Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia! Forrest Gump’s momma always said that life is like a box of chocolates, because you never know what you’re gonna get. She’d be right if chocolates weren’t just filled with sugary sweets, but some were filled with rocks or dog poop or poison. Because in the course of life, while eating the proverbial box of chocolates, you’re not merely faced with a myriad of sweet experiences, but you often also take a bite out of something rather bitter and painful. It’s apparent to most anyone that this life is filled with many a fiery trial, for this reason Christ has sent us the Holy Spirit as our comforter. Before we dive-in to speaking about the Holy Spirit’s comfort, it behooves us to say a little something about who this Holy Spirit is. Christ said: “ When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me. ” When Christ says that the Spirit proceeds ...

Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia! “Prayer is a joke, a waste of time; stop praying about it and just do it!” Or so says the scoffer who mocks Christ. For many of the heathen in our world, prayer is a joke, and in their minds it’s no different than virtue signaling without ever actually doing something about the problem. And I suppose they believe that because prayer is treated like a joke by many Christians, who do use it in order to virtue signal without ever actually even praying.  There is some truth to the heathen’s mockery. Consider how often we say we will pray for someone, just to make them and ourselves feel better, but then never actually do so. Consider how often we write on social media: “#praying,” in order to show others our spirituality, but then we never even pray. In that same vein, why do we tell people we’re sending them our thoughts and prayers? That doesn’t make any sense, the only One who hears our prayers is God, not the person who needs...

Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia! Christ said, “ Now I am going to him who sent me, and none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. ” Indeed it does seem like a terribly sad thing that Christ would ascend away from this earth and into heaven. Afterall, one of the most joyful events to have ever happened in history is the incarnation, when Christ descended from heaven and became man, which we celebrate at Christmas.  We’d like to think how marvelous it would’ve been if Christ had not ascended into heaven, but had remained on earth indefinitely. He could’ve set up some sort of community or nation even in which He rules us all with truth and peace. Whenever we get sick He could’ve healed us and dispeled our sorrows. How nice that would’ve been!  But that wasn’t Christ’s plan, because that was never God’s plan for us on this earth. From the very beginning God’s plan was that we would ...

Christ is risen! Alleluia! He is risen indeed! Alleluia! “ Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy. ” That’s probably not the exact promise you would like to hear from our Lord today, but there it is anyways. In this life we will weep, lament, and be sorrowful, but only so that we might have joy in heaven. Often we probably try to ignore Jesus on this subject of suffering, or His words simply fall on deaf ears. And as Americans living here for the past 50 years, life has really been quite comfortable and relatively safe. War, pestilence, and famine have been far removed from us, relegated to 3rd world countries. We just watch documentaries about those things from our comfortable leather couches. For those reasons, it does seem as though the Corona Crisis has awakened us to this reality of suffering that Christ promises. In the first place, the virus has given us cause to reflect u...