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April 3
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Holy Holy Week: Musical Encouragement

Luther’s note:  As we enter the second day of Holy Week, our attention is fixed on the passion of our Lord.

Many of you wrote me after hearing last Monday’s “musical encouragement.” (Thank you!) The group that recorded “It is Well with My Soul,” during the limitations of the Covid pandemic — The David Wesley Virtual Choir — has since gone on to record other hymns in the A Capella style that allows us to hear music from the world’s first instrument: The human voice.

As we ponder the valleys and the mountains of our Savior during this week of reflection, prayer, and re-commitment; I hope the words of the hymn, “Christ Alone,” will help prepare your mind and heart to receive (as John the Baptist proclaimed upon first seeing Jesus), “The Lamb of God, Who takes away the sin of the world.”

Without Him, we have nothing. With Him, we have everything.

Click here, and be encouraged by the matchless love of God for us — in Christ alone. Have a blessed week!

April 1
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“When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, ‘Do you want to get well?'”  (John 5:6, NIV)
 
A little story (not true, but illustrative): Jesus encountered three disabled men along the roadside.  The first, He touched and he was able to walk.  He touched the second man, and his sight was restored.  As Jesus approached the third man, the man retreated and said, “Don’t touch me!  I am on permanent disability.”
 
It may be hard for some of us to fathom, but those who have spent time helping acutely needful people can attest to the fact that not all such people want to “get well”; especially if they have been in that “condition for a long time.”  Change — even good, positive, change — can be unsettling because it means releasing the old, familiar, ways.  Change means — well — change.
 
Our Lord addresses each of us at the point of our need, and He asks, “Do you want to get well?”  – Luther
 
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March 31
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God always answers the prayers of His children.

Sometimes, it is within the plan of God to deliver His child from peril or difficulty.  To be sure, it is a gift beyond words to be delivered from illness, injury, and death.  More times than we realize, God’s hand has delivered us from difficulties, danger, disease, and from death.

Yet, sometimes it is within the plan of God to deliver His child through the peril or the difficulty looming before us.  Even here — perhaps, particularly here — we are not alone in our suffering.  As God did for His only begotten Son in the crisis reflected in today’s scripture, God will also do for you when you allow Him to work through you for His purposes.  He will give you evidence of His presence; and He will strengthen you with His strength!

Fear not!  Whether “from” or “through,” God’s presence and God’s provision are always — always — ours when we confess: “Yet not my will, but Yours be done.”  – Luther

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