Brandon’s Eagle Scout Project

Hi, my name is Brandon Liden. I am a life scout in Troop 95, currently working on my Eagle rank. One of the many requirements for Eagle is to lead a service project for a non-profitable organization. I picked Christ Lutheran Church. I’ve worked with the church council and have decided to construct a shed for the lawn equipment, which has been exposed to the elements throughout the years. It will also house the black stacking chairs and tables currently in the back of the narthex.

I have two requests. First, I have been asked to raise at least one thousand dollars. So far, I have raised five hundred dollars.  If you are able, please consider a donation. Second, I am asking for volunteers to help build the shed. If you are the hands on type, please consider helping. Please contact me at (847) 837-8672.

Thank you
Brandon Liden

“Why do you look for the living among the dead?”
(Luke 24:5)

Life is Sweet

There will be times in our life when we aren’t sure which way is up, who we can trust, how to take the next step forward, and not only if God has our back-but does God even know we exist. When those times either creep into our hearts or slam the door in our faces, I want you to ask yourself this question: “Why do you look for the living among the dead?”

Let it be a mantra for you during the “dark night of the soul” times. Let it be the one question that helps you remember that the Evil One did not win-not then, not now and not ever. Ask yourself that question when you wonder where God is or if God is.

And remember the answer. “Jesus is not here! He is risen!” Our everyday faith is an Easter faith that says, “God has made all things new.” There is nothing God can not or will not do for His children-for you, for me, for the person down the street, for the ones who are down and out, for the helpless and homeless, for the rich and the poor, for the sinners who are all of us everywhere.

We forget sometimes, just like the disciples did that first Easter morning when the angels had to remind them what Jesus had told them.

“Remember what He told you back in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be betrayed into the hands of sinful people and be crucified, and that He would rise again on the third day.” (Luke 24: 6)

“Then they remembered that He had said this.”
“Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here! He is risen!”

Thanks be to God!
Pastor Sue Beadle

O God, you are my God, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you; My flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory. Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you. So I will bless you as long as I live; I will lift up my hands and call on your name.

Psalm 63: 1-4

Spiritual journey

Gone are the days when we can count on doing what was always done in the church and get the same results. Long gone. People want more than “Just to go to church.” People want to know that they are different, somehow, after they worship than before they walked through the sanctuary doors. They want to know that they will encounter God and be changed.

Granted, worship is a 2-way street and not a spectator sport. God is everywhere and can be encountered everywhere by everyone. But. . .

There is a deep yearning among people who want to know God more deeply and personally. They want to feel God’s Holy Spirit within them guiding and empowering them in their everyday life. And they want to know how to grow in their faith.

In my readings and spirituality workshops I have attended, I have discovered that people, both churched and unchurched, are more spiritual than ever before. People are hungry and thirsty for the power and glory and steadfast love of God in their life, but don’t know how to get there.

The Stage is Yours

I love going to musicals. I recently went to see “The Adams Family Musical” and I loved it! I try to arrive at the theater with plenty of time to spare so that I can listen to the orchestra warm-up. As I listen to the various sounds, I try to pick out which instruments the musicians are playing. And then as the musicians continue to warm-up, I listen for familiar tunes that I’ll be hearing during the musical.

A few minutes before the show begins, there’s people talking and trying to find their seats. But when the lights grow dim, everyone settles down and you can feel the excitement in the air. One of my favorite moments is just before the orchestra begins its opening medley. There isn’t a sound in the entire theater. . . The conductor takes his or her wand and motions for the musicians to get ready, take a deep breath because here we go! It’s in the silence as the conductor’s arms are raised up that I find myself also holding my breath in expectation of what is to come.

As we begin a new year, we often hold our breath in expectation of what is to come. We know there will be wonderful music that fills our hearts and homes; but we also know that some of the music will not be pleasant. I wonder if we can think of the Conductor as God and the musicians as all of us. God has the entire score in front of Him; we have only our parts–but it’s important that we try to play the parts we’ve been given. Some other parts might be more interesting or less challenging, but God knows why we have the part we have and how it fits into the entire score of life.

When we have difficulty “playing our part,” please know that we are a family of faith and are here to help each other through the challenges of life. Keep your eyes on the Conductor because God will give you the direction, cues, and rests you need to be His disciples and to grow in love and faith for Him.

“I will give thanks to you, O Lord, among the peoples, and I will sing praises to you among the nations. For your steadfast love is higher than the heavens, and your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.” (Psalm 108: 3-4)

Yours in Christ,
Pastor Sue Beadle

Baby Jesus

In the book, Silas Marner, written by George Eliot, Silas is a miser whose gold gets stolen. He’s desolate until he comes home one night, sees what he thinks is his gold on the floor of his hut. He bends down to grasp the money in his hand-”but instead of hard coin he felt soft curls.” It was a child, a girl, lost and alone, and she changed everything.”

Eliot goes on to write, “He had a dreamy feeling that this child was somehow a message come to him from a far-off life; it stirred old quiverings of tenderness, old impressions of awe at the presentiment of some power presiding over his life. We older human beings feel a certain awe in the presence of a little child, such as we feel before some quiet majesty or beauty in earth or sky.

“Marner took the little girl on his lap, trembling with an emotion mysterious to himself, at something unknown dawning on his life. He could only have said that the child was come instead of the gold-that the gold had turned into this child. This child, whom he named Eppie, loved sunshine, sounds, and every other thing in God’s world. The gold had asked that he should sit weaving longer and longer, deafened to all things except the monotony of his loom; but Eppie called him away from his weaving, and made him think all its pauses a holiday, reawakening his senses that her fresh life, warming him into joy because she had joy.”

Many people spend their whole life seeking wealth or fame. But, like Silas Marner, what we really need to seek is a child-the Christ child. Could it not merely be that the coming of a child gives us joy, but that we actually give God this sort of delight? Could we believe that God, instead of being a far off, distant God who enjoys heavenly isolation, actually finds joy in “touching our curls”, hearing our laughter, and sharing our joy?

Christmas is all about the birth of our Savior-Emmanuel, which means “God is with us.” God took great delight in creating our world and God took great delight in redeeming our world-everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved because God is with us. He came to earth to save His people from their sins and God did this by becoming one of us, Jesus, so that one day, we could be freed from all that binds us to this world.

I wish you all a very blessed and joyous Christmas! Celebrate the fact that God came down from heaven as a little baby, born of an unwed teenage mother, so that we might be saved.

Thanks be to God!

Yours in Christ,

Pastor Sue Beadle

“Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and you shall name him Emmanuel-which means ‘God is with us.”

So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us. (1 Thessalonians 2: 1-8)

Scars - we all have them

People often spend lots of money on creams or medical treatments that cover up or remove scars. We all have scars, whether from a cut finger, broken arm, open heart surgery or any myriad of other marks life leaves on us. We look at our scars and remember the pain, the accident, the diagnosis that brought us the need for healing.

Sometimes our scars can’t be seen because they are from a broken marriage, lost children, or strained relationships that wound our heart and soul and can seem to take forever to heal. These scars are deep within, beneath the covering of skin and clothes, often buried as far as we can bury them.

But our scars help tell our story. In some ways, our scars help define who we are and where we’ve been. Scars give us a way of telling the story of our lives. “What happened to your arm?” “Oh, I fell out of a tree when I was 10 years old and broke my leg and both my arms. I was in the hospital for 6 weeks and in a body cast for 3 months.” So is the story of one of my dear friends.

“That’s a pretty ring,” one friend says to another. “It would have been my husband’s and my 40th wedding anniversary. I only wear it this one day. I miss him so much.”

Scars mark the story of our lives. The wounds we have help us to tell our story, to get past the shallow greetings and help us speak the truth. Scars are not meant to be dwelt on or to keep us stuck in the past. They are marks of a freedom known only in Jesus who took all of our pain and grief and sinfulness to the cross—and left it there; the ultimate healing for all that has caused us and will cause us pain.

As a family of Christ, I invite and encourage you to reach out and reach into the lives of your brothers and sisters who gather around you to give honor and praise to God. We all have scars and we all have stories that we can share that will help others to know the love of Jesus even during and especially during the darkest times of our life. In the sharing of our stories, God transforms the scars we wish we didn’t have into things of beauty and restoration for all to see. Through the sharing, God will make them beautiful.

Queen Anne's Lace

I came across an interesting article about the wildflower, Queen Anne’s Lace. It has beautiful umbrella shaped, lacy-looking white flowers that have a small red dot in the center of it. The rare thing about this flower is that it cannot blossom unless it is first infested with bugs. Weird, hey? God created such a beautiful wildflower to open only if bugs forced the blossom to open. There’s that sense of hu-mor in our Creator again!

We can be like Queen Anne’s Lace. Or we can be like Azaleas that blossom only under ―perfect‖ conditions. What do we do when life ―bugs‖ us? Do we use those difficult times to grow in our faith, to become a better person, to listen to the voice of God? Or do we blame it on where we’re planted, the lack of attention, or other people who aren’t treating us the way we want to be treated?

Times of stress, illness, or hardship can help our relationship with God grow stronger in the strangest ways. They can give us permission to be mad at God. We can scream, yell and kick our feet until we’re blue in the face. The great thing about getting mad at God is that God is big enough to take our anger. God does not run from our angry words nor does God turn His back on our pain. He stays with us while we run the gamut of emotions and helps us find ways to show us His love. Then God wraps His loving arms around us and helps us to see the light of His love through the darkness of our despair.

I pray that when you feel like your life is overwrought with ―bugs‖ and you don’t know how you’re going to cope, that you will see the possibilities of new life and new beginnings. I pray that we will be like Queen Anne’s Lace and become fully alive in spite of and because of the troubles we bear. Through the fire of pain and suffering we gain our depth, our flavor, our salt.

Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. (Romans 5: 1-5)

Yours in Christ,
Pastor Sue Beadle

Something’s missing. Something’s not quite right. I couldn’t put my finger on it and then through a difficult, but important conversation with a member I highly respect, we started to figure it out.

Long story, short—I’ve enrolled in the SPLaSh–Sacred Practice Leadership Series, which is a joint program of the Alban Institute and the Center for Renewal. This is a 2-year series of 6 workshops (3 days each) that are held at the Shalom Retreat Center in Dubuque, Iowa. Each workshop focuses on a different sacred practice. They are: Visioning, Discernment, Relationship, Prayer, and Proclaiming and Interpreting Scripture.

Here’s an excerpt from the Sacred Practices Overview:

“Leadership in the church is changing. In the past, leadership often meant knowing and following good business practices, reading the desires of members, and developing programs. Leaders were judged by their ability to keep people happy and to make numbers grow. Today there is a growing awareness that our emphasis on efficiency and success often leaves something important out of the mix—namely God and the sacred practices which express and form our ability to respond to God’s call to us.”

In A New and Right Spirit, Rick Barger states, ‘I believe that pastors suffer from burnout and depression, not because they are poor at self-care, but because they are stuck in systems that no longer work. They are exhausted from one technical approach after another. They know deep down inside that something is inherently
wrong.”

Some of the goals of SPLaSh are:

1. Growth in one’s ability to respond to God’s call in ways that are particular to one’s specific context.
2. Movement from a focus on accumulating knowledge and skills to the ongoing process of Christian formation.
3. Becoming as adept at equipping members for ministry as at providing ministry for others.
4. Beginning the transition from an expert-driven, event-oriented educational model to ongoing peer-supported formation.

I ask for your prayers as I work through this series of Sacred Practices. The next workshop is August 21 – 23. I’m excited about these workshops and pray they will be a blessing to my ministry and to you, my family at Christ. If you would like to learn more about this program, the website is: www.sacredpracticeseries.org.

Helping the Sudanese is a calling in itself

One of my favorite games to play with teenagers (especially Confirmands) is “Would You Rather. . . ?” It’s a fun book that asks the question, “Would you rather. . . “ and then offers two different choices. There’s over 400 questions, some with rather bizarre choices and some with choices one hopes never to have to make. For instance:

• Would you rather. . . bite your tongue or stub your toe?
• Would you rather. . . have a scar story involving an alligator or a shark?
• Would you rather. . . shed your skin like a snake or molt like a bird?
• Would you rather. . . get beaten up by a mom or a nun?
• Would you rather. . . be called to mission in a far off land or to be a missionary in the inner city?

My husband, Rod, called me a few weeks ago with a question that reminded me of the choices in “Would You Rather. . . ?” He’s gone on short-term missionary trips to various countries in Africa and Eastern Europe through Engineering Ministries International (EMI), but I wasn’t quite prepared for the “would you rather” question that EMI asked him. “Would you rather. . .I go on a mission trip to Ethiopia or Sudan?”

Wow. What a choice. To me, it was like choosing between a scar story involving an alligator or a shark. Neither, thank you. But I’m a bit of a pampered princess, so I told Rod the decision was completely up to him. He chose Sudan mostly because it was Malakai, Sudan, which is in the southern part of Sudan (supposedly safer than the northern part or the western part where Darfur is).

Rod and a group of 7 other engineers and architects will be working on plans for a proposed orphanage in Malakai, Upper Nile, Sudan. The project is being sponsored by The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Sudan (Rod says at least he’s assured of good coffee). He leaves for Sudan on May 14th and will be gone for almost 2 weeks.

Please keep Rod and the team from EMI in your prayers. The names of the other team member are: Kevin, Mark, Bernie, Heather, Brian, Jenifer, and Ruedi.

Disneyworld reminds us to enjoy life

One of my very favorite places is Walt Disney World. I could be their poster “child!” We try to make our pilgrimage to WDW fairly often—we wouldn’t want to overstay our welcome.

Over the years, I think people have come to see Disney as the real symbol of American culture. Forget the Statue of Liberty, the Grand Canyon, and Old Faithful. America’s recreational Mecca has become Disney World. Some argue that WDW is the spirit of America, the nation’s main sacred space, the bearer of the images that carry American meaning and mission. That might be a stretch.

Disney’s mission statement is simple and straightforward: “Provide People Happiness.” They achieve their mission by focusing its energies in the realm of fantasy—convincing us that in order to find happiness we need to escape reality.

The first time I walked into The Magic Kingdom and saw Cinderella’s Castle, I about cried. Even though I was an adult with two little girls in tow, I was entranced. The Castle was majestic and magnificent. Its graceful, soaring storybook towers and turrets rose high above the rest of the theme park. I wanted to run to it and explore every nook and cranny, find all the secret passages, and climb up to the top of the tallest turret. As we got closer to the Castle, my heart raced with excitement all ready to go exploring.

I was totally and completely disappointed to discover that the Castle was just a shell. There was a restaurant and a gift shop. . . and that was it. The Castle was only a walkway to the other side of the park where we were met with an onslaught of children wanting to ride Dumbo, Peter Pan, and It’s a Small World.

Unfortunately, the very emptiness of the Castle is filled with meaning. The function of WDW is to empty us of the harsh realities of life and to become “unconscious” of the real world. It’s a never-never land of fantasy and illusion (which I still totally love!).

Disney’s mission is to help us escape life by lulling us into a fantasy-like trance. The church’s mission is to wake people up in order to experience an authentic and life-filled existence. Easter is a call to all believers announcing the dawn of our new relationship with God in Jesus our Savior. This is a radically new reality. The message of Easter wakes us, not just from a slumber, but also beckons us out of the tombs of sin, bound in grave clothes of despair, to wear robes of righteousness and hope! The only thing empty about Easter is the tomb.

Easter is the transforming power of God shaking each and everyone of us awake to a life in Jesus, a life of eternal joy, wholeness, and peace. Easter is our wake up call. So, wake up, Church! Christ is risen from the dead! Wake up to the power the risen Lord brings to our lives. Wake up to the power of the Holy Bible to speak to our lives. As Jesus called Mary’s name to finally stir her soul out of grief and despair, so Jesus calls out to each and every one of us and empowers us to bring the world back to life.

Christ has risen! He has risen indeed! Alleluia!