Month: October 2016

The Ancient Paths

Post author By Don Schatz
Post date October 6, 2016

Following Jesus like the originals we are.

You can listen to today’s podcast by clicking on this SoundCloud link.

Eugene Peterson once wrote to pastors about a paradigm shift in how they see their work and role in the church: “It is as radical vocationally as Ptolemy to Copernicus cosmologically, but with a difference—this is not the formulation of something new but the recovery of something original.” (Under the Unpredictable Plant, p.175).

It is this “something original” that intrigues me; and the apparent need to call clergy, if not all the church, back to the practice of something original. Constitutions and By-Laws can be a gripping read I suppose, but when the Scriptures lay their hands on a person, one is swept up in the continual telling of the Jesus story.

We tend to lose things, this side of Genesis 3. We lost our harmonious community with God, and with one another. We lost our innocence. We lose track of time, we lose our marbles, we lose our minds—the list of important and not-so-important losses goes on. Tragically, we can lose track of Jesus even while we think we are following him.

“This is what the Lord says: Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.”
Jeremiah 6:16 (NIV)

The “ancient paths” of Eden, where God would walk with Adam and Eve, have been restored to us in Jesus. Walk those paths. Walk in community with the Father. Walk the “good way” that is following Jesus. The ancient paths of devotion, prayer, faith and faithfulness provide rest for our souls. We rest in Jesus.

Integral to practicing community with God in Christ Jesus is communing with him in real conversation. Practice his presence in prayer. A relationship of living in close proximity but rarely speaking is not fulfilling. Don’t practice that kind of relationship with the Lord. The ancient paths of Christian devotion are replete with the constant chatter of God’s children, talking with their Father. The ancient paths are deeply rutted by spiritual mothers and fathers who have much to teach us. Walk those paths; know rest for your soul.

Picture and Text Copyright, Don Schatz

Tags Christian Devotion, community, discipline, fellowship, prayer

PWTE Daily Devotion

It’s Another Day

Post author By Douglas Brauner
Post date October 5, 2016

The reality of a new day in Christ.

You can listen to today’s devotion by clicking on this SoundCloud link.

“…anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!”
2 Corinthians 5:17 New Living Translation

I know there are many of you reading this blog who rarely see a sunrise. You’re familiar with sunsets that might look something like this but it’s not normal for you to watch the day begin. This isn’t my problem. My eyes have a tendency to wake up before the sun appears on the horizon. Call it genetics or call it age, it’s my reality.

I wasn’t planning on taking pictures of the sunrise when I plotted out my plan for the Holy Cross men’s retreat, yet as I lay in bed knowing that I wasn’t going back to sleep, I decided to put on my winter coat, gloves and fuzzy aviator hat and hike to the crest of a hill on National Forest Service land.

I didn’t know where the sun would appear, but was pleased when its advent was between these hills. And so began another day.

In Christ, every day is a new day for you. You are a new person. Even though you might wake up feeling like the same old person, wrestling with the same old problems, you have been declared forgiven through Christ. Today is not the same as yesterday. The Son of God’s love has risen on you. Today God has graced you with the reality of a new beginning. “The old life is gone: a new life has begun.” And it begins anew today.

Lord, God, my gracious heavenly Father, I cannot thank you enough that my past has been buried with your Son and that I live in him today. As you have buried my sin with him, so also raise me to that new life you have prepared for me. Amen

Text and Picture Copyright Douglas P Brauner

Tags God's Love, grace, New Day, new life, sunrise

PWTE Daily Devotion

Things Aren’t Always What They Seem to Be

Post author By Douglas Brauner
Post date October 4, 2016

God has a way of turning our night into day.

You can listen to today’s devotion by clicking on this SoundCloud Link

It is the LORD who created the stars, the Pleiades and Orion.
He turns darkness into morning and day into night.
He draws up water from the oceans and pours it down as rain on the land.
The LORD is his name!
Amos 5:8 New Living Translation

I took this picture sometime around 10:00 pm at Lutheran Valley Retreat. I’ve made time to do some night photography at all but one of our Holy Cross men’s retreats. (Granted, that’s only four out of five retreats.) My friend, Nathan, has joined me for the past two nighttime excursions. Since it was a new moon last year, we captured the Milky Way. The opposite was true this September. Not only did the moon shine with all its glory, the sky was cloudless…and boring.

We tried taking pictures of the full moon, did some light painting of the aspen, and took some long exposures, but it was a fruitless night until we headed back to Moose Lodge. On the dirt road that was lit as if it were early dawn, I noticed that the moon shone brilliantly on Cedar Mountain. I stopped, set up my tripod and took a few photographs. This picture is the result.

The camera has the ability to turn night into day. The power of God’s grace that raised Jesus from the dead turns our “darkness into morning.”

There are days that we feel discouraged. Our attempts at getting things “right” turn out wrong and sometimes make life worse. We head back to our ho-hum lives discouraged.

What we cannot do, God does for us. The circumstances of our lives might not change, but in Christ we know that God will turn our darkness into morning. This change may not happen in this life but in the life that God has prepared for us on the day of resurrection.

By faith we hold on to Jesus when it seems that there isn’t much else to grasp. And in holding on to him, we find the ability to say, “The Lord turns my darkness into morning…The Lord is his name!”