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Preparation – now is the time to prepare. We are about to embark on the busiest holiday time of the year.

Recently on the radio, the two radio hosts talked about the trend that has taken place in the United States over the last few years, which is to decorate absolutely every room in the house for Christmas. Because there are so many Christmas-like items out there in the world of retail, people’s collection of decorations has become overwhelming. Instead of simplifying and reducing our collections, we are now choosing instead to spread our decorating throughout the house, and we are purchasing even more to do just that. What used to be a decorated tree inside and maybe some lights outside has turned into holiday shower curtains and toilet paper inside and a full winter wonderland outside.

Behind all of that decorating is a great deal of time preparing – planning out a theme for each room, collecting together the decorations, and taking the time to put everything in its place. The last few years Art and I have bucked the trend. We haven’t even put up a tree or gotten our Christmas decorations out because we haven’t wanted to spend the time decorating when both of us – I as a pastor and Art as a baker – get too busy with work to enjoy the decorations any way. We decided that we didn’t need to put up a tree for the two dogs to enjoy while we were gone. And then we also got cats – enough said!

Preparation – now is the time to prepare. We are about to embark on some of the busiest holy days of the year.

In the midst of decorating and holiday concerts and parties and caroling and family gatherings and shopping and all of the rest, we as Christians also need to take time to prepare ourselves spiritually to meet the Christ Child once again. The reason we celebrate this time of the year is because God sent a tiny baby to a faith-filled couple in a manger in Bethlehem so long ago. This was the beginning of Jesus’ life – a life that changed the world. This was the beginning of the event that continues to change our lives today. We as Christians must remember that Jesus Christ is why we celebrate this holy time of the year.

Preparation – now is the time to prepare. The season of Advent is the time for us to prepare. Take some time this season to pray, to meditate on the Christmas story, and to remember what Christmas is really all about.

Pastor Beth

Regular Office Hours: Tuesday and Thursday 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.

            A few weeks ago I did a sermon about the importance of spending time in prayer as an individual and as a community of faith. Prayer above all else is communicating with God in order to feel closer to God and to improve our relationship. Prayer also helps us find guidance, overcome temptation, and accept God’s will. In addition, prayer gives us a greater sense of purpose, improves our mood, and helps us to cope with life’s difficulties. The Bible also tells us to pray for one another.

            I think the month of November gives us many good reasons to be in prayer:

             November 1 is All Saints Day on which we remember those who have died and those who have been left behind to remember and mourn them.

             On November 3, we turn our clocks back to standard time, and we pray for this adjustment for our bodies and minds.

             This year we have a national election for the next President of the United States. As I said in my sermon, this is an important day to spend in prayer.

             The last several days of the month will be gun deer hunting in Wisconsin. We pray for all to be safe during hunting season.

             November 28 will be Thanksgiving Day this year. I think we all become mindful of what we have to be grateful for at this time of the year, and hopefully we bow to God in prayer to show our gratitude.

            There are always good reasons to spend time in prayer. November is not unique, but I thought about prayer this month because of the recent sermon that I did and because of Thanksgiving. As individuals, we know what we need and what we are grateful for and who we want or need to pray for. As a community of faith, we can lift one another up in prayer and pray for specific concerns within the community. By doing this, we can encourage one another and find strength and comfort together.

As Jesus prayed in John 17:22-23: “The glory that you (God) have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”

Prayerful Thanksgiving blessings to you all!

Pastor Beth

920-562-2853

pastorbmacha@yahoo.com

              Too often, I think, we forget to say, “Thank you.” It’s not that we are ungrateful. I think we get busy and forget, or we are so used to a specific person doing a specific task that we just expect it to happen. I have made a conscious effort over the years to try to remember to thank people for what they have done. That simple gesture can have a positive effect on the one who is thanked.

              Saying “thank you” is important. An article I read recently named a number of positive effects that hearing “thank you” can have. It makes the recipient feel good and boosts their well-being. It creates a positive atmosphere that can lead to more meaningful connections. Grateful people are happier people. Gratitude can reduce stress and improve sleep.

              Our Redeemer’s congregation has been very, very busy over the last few months. We have been doing the usual things we do, and we have added a number of other things in the mix. Just since Easter (which is a random date to choose, but it also reminds us of new life), we have:

put a new floor in the storage room to make it more usable

hosted a Mother-Daughter banquet

hosted the Memorial Day service at Hickory cemetery

hosted VBS

had ice cream sundaes and a pancake breakfast after worship

went to WIR to watch racing

raised money for Lutheran Disaster Relief

collected items to donate to the Suring school

had our first float in the Suring Labor Day parade

hosted our first pet blessing

sent off a number of quilts and health kits to the mission field

among other things.

That’s a lot of activity, and it takes many hands to get it all done. So THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU to each and every one of you who has helped to make all these events happen!! It warms my heart to see how many people care for each other and for our neighbors. God bless!!

Pastor Beth

Every once in a while, I develop a cleaning bug. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, look out! I clean. I organize. I recycle. I get rid of things we don’t need any more. And when the project is finished, I expect it to stay that way. If you ask Art, he will probably tell you that my favorite phrase is: “Don’t mess up the system.” He has heard that often during our marriage.

              After Sunday school and confirmation classes were finished in May, Blanche and I independently started to clean up the two Sunday school rooms. Blanche likes to use the corner Sunday school room to quilt because it has such lovely natural light from all the windows in it, so she spends a good deal of time there. I wanted to go through and see what all was stored in the cupboards in those two rooms. Between the two of us, we decided that all the cupboards needed to be gone through. Little by little, we went through pretty much everything that was in the cupboards in the classrooms.

              The next step I took was to go through the cabinet in the hallway outside the two classrooms. Blanche had cleaned mouse poop out of it a few times before, but there was some in it again. I cleaned and disinfected all of it. Then I decided that the cabinet would be a good central area for storing crafting supplies that all the classes can use. There were crafting supplies in all of the classrooms, and I would say that typically people didn’t look to see what we had before they bought more supplies. During this step, I went through all of the crafting supplies, weeding out what couldn’t be used any more, and combined what could be used. Then I placed almost all of them into plastic bins to keep the mice out of them and placed them in the hallway cabinet. I labeled the plastic bins and the edges of the shelves in the cabinet so that the supplies can easily be located.

              It feels good to me to finish a project like this. Supplies are now organized and easy to find. We won’t waste money purchasing more supplies before using up the ones we already have. The cabinet is clean and safe and hopefully will not be used by mice again. At least the supplies in the plastic bins should be safe from mice.

              In 1 Corinthians 14:40, the Apostle Paul reminds us that “all things should be done decently and in order.” That goes hand in hand with Psalm 51:10: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” I find that cleaning and organizing in one area of my life makes all the other areas feel better, too.

              God’s blessings on your own cleaning and organizing journey!

Pastor Beth

On July 4, Art and I went to my sister-in-law’s house in Appleton. My brother-in-law and his wife were there, also. It was a little odd because it was only our generation gathered together for the holiday. All the kids (who are in their 20s) were working or had other plans. We had a good time. We played a game, watched a movie, and cooked out.

              When we were eating our meal together, my sister-in-law who was hosting us started to talk about how challenging it was to come up with a menu that worked with all our needs. One has acid reflux. One was recently diagnosed with diabetes. I have the gluten allergy. We each have our own dietary concerns. That led to the question of “when did we get so old?” It’s an honest question. We are all in our 50s and starting to think more about retirement than about changing jobs or advancing in our jobs. We’ve all had some recent health challenges related to aging. We are definitely not teenagers any more.

              That day’s experience and discussion have led me to reflect more about how short the journey really is from toddlerhood to senior citizen discounts. It’s been 40 years since I graduated from high school. I’ve been ordained 33 years, married 32 years. Those sound like long time periods, but they seem to have whizzed by. In some ways it seems like I should be 20 years old, but in other ways I know that I have had a ton of experiences in my life. Time is a concept that has a lot of variations.

I remember a few years ago when my Mom had shoulder surgery. I was staying at her home for a few days to help her out, and one morning I found myself needing to tie her robe for her because she couldn’t. Suddenly, a Bible verse came to mind: “Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.” (John 21:18) My mom was both proud and annoyed when I mentioned it to her – proud because her daughter could quote scripture, annoyed because I was quoting it at her when she wasn’t feeling well.

              The good news in all of this is that God never leaves us on our own, no matter where we are in our life’s journey. Another Bible verse reminds us that “neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 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.” (Romans 8:38-39) From birth to death God loves us and knows every detail about us, even every hair on our heads. Time marches on, but God is eternal. Our life journey has its ups and downs, but God is constant.

              God’s continued blessings on your journey!

Pastor Beth

Many of you know that Art and I took a trip recently to the Canadian Rockies. One of the places we stopped along the way was Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. We lived there from 1995-1999 (4 ½ years, 5 winters). I served a church there. It is pictured above.

I was called there in 1995 to be their pastor because I was young, cheap, and had some training in redeveloping congregations. The church at the time was located ¼ mile outside the Edmonton city limits, and it was about 4 miles away from the closest housing development. Mostly we were surrounded by farmland and the occasional acreage.  The belief was that more and more housing developments would continue to creep out until the church was in the middle of neighborhoods. My main purpose there was to help prepare them for when that time came, so that they would be ready to welcome people to the neighborhood. However, they could no longer afford to pay my salary after a few years, so we moved back to the States.

This was the first time in 25 years that we had been back, and we drove to the church so that we could walk out to the cemetery. That drive was OVERWHELMING! The city is next door now. The farm that was literally next door is now being developed for housing. However, it is not just housing on the way out to the church. It is CITY. It is businesses and warehouses and restaurants and hotels and paved roads and traffic. There is even a Tim Hortons just a block away!

This is not how anyone imagined it would develop. When I served there, I went to meetings about where the ring road was going to be built. I met with housing developers. I talked with local politicians. Everyone thought that it was only going to be housing built out to the church. However, those plans changed as the developments were built. Because the church is located between the city limits and the international airport, people demanded hotels and restaurants and shopping centers be put in the area, too.

This experience reminds me of the Yiddish proverb which says, “We make plans, and God laughs.” Even with the best-laid plans, life doesn’t always happen as we plan it. There are so many variables that come up. We think we are in control of our lives, but ultimately only God is in control. If we look back at our own lives, what we had planned, and what we believed, I suspect that we would laugh at some of those plans and beliefs, too.

Things may not have turned out as the people of that church had planned, but as we were reminded, they are still there. They are still worshiping God, and they are continuing to reach out into the community. Thanks be to God!

Pastor Beth

As you should know, Art and I love to travel, and we will be on a trip in the early part of June. We are going to the Canadian Rockies. Back in the late 1990s I served a congregation just outside Edmonton, Alberta, Canada for 4 ½ years (5 winters). However, we were quite poor and could not afford to go to the national parks in the Rockies, even though Jasper was just four hours away and Banff was five hours away.

              Our plan was always to go back and to travel to those national parks. Back in 2020, we planned to do this trip. We had all the arrangements and the reservations made. We were all set for our trip at the end of June in 2020, but of course Covid hit. We held out hope until the middle of May when we finally had to decide that we could not go. There was no vaccine that early in the pandemic, and the Canadian government was not allowing visitors into Canada, so we had to cancel all our plans.

              It is now 25 years since we moved back to the States. We have traveled to different parts of Canada, but we have not been back to Edmonton. We are very excited. We will be visiting with friends along the way and in Edmonton. We are looking forward to seeing how things have changed in the old neighborhood. We have plans about what we want to visit while in the area. And (miracle of miracles) the Edmonton Oilers are still in the Stanley Cup playoffs!!

              We are also excited to be among the mountains for a few days. We will be in Jasper and Banff and then we will travel south to Waterton Lakes and Glacier national parks. Mountains are grand and glorious and always remind me of the incredible nature of God. “I lift up my eyes to the hills – from where will my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth. He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber.” (Psalm 121)

              Several years ago, Art and I decided to try to visit all the national parks in the United States. We each have a tee shirt that has the national parks listed on it, and we are marking them off as we go. Each park has its own unique glory. Each one has its own history. And we have had a lot of fun exploring each one. We want to appreciate what our great country has to offer. We have also been to a few in Canada so we can appreciate what that great country has to offer, also.

              Wherever you go, all those places become a part of you. The experiences are incorporated into our brains. The memories are priceless. I wish all of you good travels and wonderful memories.

Pastor Beth

Last month I talked about how April showers bring May flowers. So how are your May flowers doing? This year everything seems to be blossoming and blooming early because of the lack of snow that we had this winter and because that spring snowstorm we had in April brought much-needed nutrients into the soil.

              Of course, May is about more than flowers. We hear the chirping of birds in the morning and the buzzing of bees during the day. Butterflies flit from plant to plant. The skies are clear, and the wind is cool and refreshing. The school year is wrapping up. Graduation plans are in place. We all become more active as the temperatures warm up. This is perfect weather for hiking and nature walks.

              There are a number of health benefits that come with the spring weather. We emerge from our winter hibernation. There is a psychological boost. Depression and anxiety which are common during the winter can be replaced by hope and optimism. Spring is notable for its rejuvenating and joyful nature. The sunshine and the blossoming plants make us smile when we see them and smell them. We simply feel better when the weather is sunnier and warmer, and when people feel better they tend to be nicer to one another.

              Within church life, we also gain a sense of renewal as we hear the good news of new life during the seven weeks of the Easter season. We hear the stories about the Risen Christ in the assigned readings on Sunday, and they reenergize our spiritual lives. We remember once again that Christ died for our sins and rose again. This brings about feelings of happiness and love and hope and joy.

              So, our May “flowers” are more than flowers. There is much that grows and blooms in our lives during this time of the year. I hope you all are feeling better these days and that your health is good. I hope you are enjoying all the blessings that come our way during the Spring of the year.

Pastor Beth

April showers bring May flowers. That’s a saying that I’m sure we all have heard. This year we are praying for April showers. We have been in draught conditions for months. We need rain for crops, for gardens, for flowers, and to keep the water table at an appropriate level. We need water for life. We don’t always appreciate everyday items in our lives until they are missing. We may not always appreciate having enough water in our lives until we hit these draught conditions.

              We may not appreciate our health until something happens, and our health isn’t as good as it once was. Many of you know by now that my husband had a TIA (transient ischemic attack) or mini stroke a few weeks ago. As he was finishing up his shift at work, he suddenly could not control his right hand. Within 30 minutes the symptoms had gone away, but now we wait as the doctors try to figure out what caused it so that it won’t happen again. Every medical professional who has seen him is amazed that the result wasn’t worse. It’s not that we didn’t appreciate our health before, but this incident reminds us how fragile life and health can be.

              I’m part of an ELCA clergy Facebook group. There have been a good number of conversations on there over the past few years about small congregations that have closed. Sadly, COVID sped up the demise of many of them. Even though they have gone through a process of evaluation and decision making, it’s still said when the doors close for the final time and the building and contents must be sold. Sometimes we don’t appreciate our church and our congregational family until it’s too late.

              However, April showers bring May flowers. Spring brings with it the promise of new life, and the opportunity to begin again. Animals have babies. Birds hatch their eggs. Trees bud, blossom, and leaf out. Flowers pop out of the ground. We make plans for our own gardens and our flower beds. The daylight stays longer than during winter. Hopefully, the weather will warm up. We have just celebrated the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

              For me, Spring is an exciting time. I look forward to seeing how that new life which is all around us will develop and change. Hopefully, I also take some time to appreciate the new life and to give thanks for it. Hopefully, we all take some time to appreciate God’s handiwork in our lives.

Pastor Beth

This March will be a month filled with holidays (and Holy Days) this year, and many of them have significance in the Christian faith.

Many people remember St. Patrick’s Day on March 17. It is a day when we all seem to want to be Irish, wear green, drink beer, and eat corned beef and cabbage. The story behind St. Patrick’s Day is that Patrick was a devout Christian who believed that God’s voice spoke to him in his dreams. He was born in Britain, but he moved to Ireland as a missionary of the Christian faith and is credited with bringing Christianity to Ireland. He is also associated with having driven snakes out of Ireland.

However, when St. Patrick’s Day approaches, my husband likes to remind me to also celebrate St. Urho’s Day on March 16. He knows this celebration from having lived among Finnish immigrants in the U.P. As legend has it, St. Urho is credited with driving grasshoppers out of Finland. In honor of St. Urho, people celebrate by wearing purple, drinking wine, and reciting the story. This is Finland’s version of St. Patrick and is believed to actually be a made-up holiday for the Finnish people as they prepare to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.

My friend Pastor Cory also likes to remind me that March 17 is also St. Gertrude of Nivelles Day. Devoted to her faith, Gertrude started a female-only monastery in the 600s to tend to people in need. Because of the illnesses and plagues spread by rodent infestations, she was often called upon by townsfolk to ward off illness. To do so, she encouraged people to keep cats around and to treat them well so that they would help control the rodent population. Therefore, St. Gertrude is known as the patron saint of cats. (Cory is a huge fan of cats which is why she promotes this celebration.)

All of those are very fun days of celebration, but this March also brings us some very solemn Holy Days. Palm Sunday is the day when Jesus rode a colt into Jerusalem amid grand pomp and circumstance, but it was his entering Jerusalem for the final time. Maundy Thursday is the day when Jesus gathered with his followers in the upper room to celebrate the Passover feast; however, the night ended with Jesus arrested. Good Friday is the day when we remember Jesus’ suffering and death on the cross. All of these are vital stories in the Christian faith, but they are not the most pleasant of stories. They are solemn, and they are real.

But, of course, in March this year we also will celebrate Easter, the highest Holy Day of the year. This is the day when we remember that Jesus overcame sin and death. Jesus rose from the grave and brought us new life. This is the day that anchors the Christian faith for all eternity. This is the day to rejoice for all the world to hear!

I hope you enjoy the month of March with its various holidays and celebrations!

Pastor Beth

920-562-2853