It was the very first day of preschool and our very first recess of the school year. The 3-yr-old tripped on the wood chips and fell. Although she didn’t have a scratch or any injury to be found, she gave an impressive wail with overreactive sobs and flailing of limbs. Seconds later, her 4-year-old classmate swooped in and shouted, “It’s ok! It’s ok! I’m a doctor, everyone stand back!” The theatrical damsel in distress stopped crying immediately when I turned to him and said “Is she going to make it, doc?”

Throughout the Bible, we see examples of Jesus being “the Great Physician”. He healed the sick and made the blind man see. He cured a paralyzed man and countless others that could not be healed by earthly medicines and procedures. But “fixing people” on the outside was not why he came to earth. God becoming a human was not an accident. The purpose of God becoming man wasn’t to heal the sick (although he did!) or to set an example of how we should live (although he did that, too!).

Jesus’ goal, mission, and purpose was to come to the earth to make us ready for heaven. Jesus’ mission was to prepare salvation, which is a fancy word for “deliverance from our sin”. We were born with sin and in desperate need of a doctor to give us the antidote. Jesus is the only one that can heal us from this sickness that not only plagues us on this earth but also means we would spend eternity separated from God in hell.

But Jesus removed our sin forever when he died on the cross on Good Friday and came back to life on Easter. By his suffering, we are made perfect in God’s eyes. Jesus suffered and died as our substitute and through his underserved love we are given the gift of heaven. We have become his “sons and daughters”. We are now welcome into his family and will enjoy the riches of heaven.

When we reflect on this Christmas season, let us stand in awe at the baby that humbly came into this world, the only doctor that could give everyone the true saving medicine: freedom from sin. What child is this? This child is our substitute! This child is our Savior, who gives us true peace, the child that earned us a place in God’s family and our home in heaven.

I was sitting at the table with a young girl and we were both drawing with crayons. Suddenly, she slammed the crayon down and said, “This one isn’t working!” I noticed that the end that she was trying to use was covered by the wrapper. All she needed to do was flip the crayon around and use the working end. Before I could suggest this, she looked me and said “I know what we have to do! We need to pray.” “Dear Jesus”, she prayed, “fix my crayon. Amen.” Then she picked up the crayon, the correct way this time, and started drawing. “See?” she said, “We need to pray more.”

God wants us to pray often. He wants us to turn to our heavenly Father first. How often we try to solve problems on our own! We so often say, after we have tried everything humanly possible, “All we can do now is pray”. But prayer should be the first thing we do in a time of need!

It is not easy for us to “not be anxious about anything”. Although it is good use of our minds and means to plan ahead, use resources, and use common sense, worry is still a sin. When we are worried and anxious, we are not trusting in God. We should have childlike faith that God can and will “fix the crayon.” God cares for us and blesses us!

When we pray, God wants us to come to him with any request. We first come to him with prayers of thanksgiving, knowing that he will provide for us. When we pray, we are close to God. Our God is SO big and we are so little! God beat the devil, his number one enemy. We still fight the work of the devil every day, and, without God, we will fail. But God fights for us, and he gives us peace.

The peace that God gives us comes from his love for us. This love he gives us is free and undeserved. He knows that we struggle with sin and still he forgives us, every time. With this forgiveness comes a peace that is unlike any other! We are confident that, because God sent his Son into the world to beat his number one enemy, we are free!

This peace that God gave us, through his son, Jesus, is like a fortress around our heart and mind. When we put our eyes on Jesus by reading his Word in the Bible and by coming to him in prayer, he wraps us in the peace that we are truly forgiven and will receive the blessings of heaven. May we be daily reminded, during this Christmas season, of the true peace that baby Jesus brings to our hearts!

“Come on, mom! Just one more chapter! Bookmarks are for quitters!” This is usually how our family bedtime read-aloud sessions conclude. We all want to read just. . . . one. . .more chapter because we want can’t wait to see what happens next. We want to know how the story ends.

One author describes the Bible as a love story written by God for the whole world. The main character is Jesus, and he is seen on every page, in every chapter, in every verse. Even though the book of Zechariah was written long before Jesus was born, on those pages we see some details of Jesus’ final days on earth. On what we now call “Palm Sunday”, Jesus rode into the city of Jerusalem on a young colt, one that had never been ridden. As he rode into town, people showed that they loved and honored him by shouting praises, waving palm branches, and placing garments and palm branches on the road before him. Our King had come! What a humble way for our King to come into town.

As the Christmas season approaches, we remember how humbly Jesus entered into the world. The hero of the Bible, God’s love story, was born in a small town and in a room where animals had lived. Some of the first people to ever see him were not wealthy or highly educated—but were instead poor shepherds. God allowed himself to be humbled when he became man and lived with us. Our King had come!

Our King also forgives. In the Bible we hear story after story about all the people that have disobeyed, mocked, or turned away from God. People fail. No one can escape sin. But our King also forgives us, over and over and over. He wants us to see our sin, repent, and feel the comfort of his grace and forgiveness.

And there’s still another chapter! Don’t put the book down yet! Remember all the shouting on Palm Sunday? Jesus will come again, and everyone will shout his name. This day will be the final, complete fulfillment of all promises God made in his love story. We will see our King! We rejoice here on earth while we wait for his victorious return. We shout praises to His name in full confidence that we know how this story ends.

My two little girls had a lot of questions when grandma died. Death is shocking, sad, and very hard to work through, perhaps especially when the person that dies is someone that you had a strong relationship with. The children’s book What Happened When Grandma Died explains it this way: Grandma had 3 things– her body, her house, and her life. After she died, she no longer needed those things. God gave her a new body, a new house, and a new life.

The words from today’s Psalm are actually a hymn, a song of thanksgiving for the three things that God gives us when we die. First, he will give us a new body. Our earthly body is full of sin. We sin with our actions, our words, and our mind. We can’t even stop the sinful thoughts from creeping in. Our earthly body will fail us—perhaps we have poor eyesight or a weak back. When we see these weaknesses in our body, we are reminded that we live in a sinful world. Our new body, however, will never get sick, hurt or tired.

After we die, God will also give us a new home in heaven, and there he gives us a new life. This new home won’t have plumbing issues and it won’t fall apart. Our new life will be completely free from sin and the sad consequences that come from it. In heaven we will continue to praise God for the mighty things that he has done.

Our job on earth is to work for him and carry out the mission to “go and tell” all the “mighty things he has done” until our turn on earth is over. We study the life of Jesus by reading the Bible and learn the great things that Jesus did while he was alive. Jesus healed the sick, comforted his friends, gave true hope to sinners, trained his disciples, and even raised people back to life! And, after a life of giving to the world, he allowed his enemies to nail him to a cross. We are those enemies! We are the reason he had to die!

And yet, because of his death and by crushing the devil, he continues to give us even more! His victory over death earned us our new body, new house, and new life. Let’s share this news with the world!

“Ok, kids, settle down. Hey! Be still, it’s about to start!” When something exciting is about to happen: a field trip, special snack, or visitor, it is hard (and perhaps developmentally impossible) for children to wait without wiggling or making noise. Children can get excited and anxious when the normal routine is disrupted, even if the new experience is a positive one.

The words “Be still” in this verse can be a rebuke. In the same way that we may tell a child, “we have to wait”, or “stop wiggling,” God tells us to “Be still” and know that he has full control over all things. Like children, we get excited or anxious when our own routine is disrupted. As adults, even if the new experience is ultimately a positive one, the fear of the unknown takes hold of our heart and we forget to “be still.” We panic and forget to instead come to our God for help. The entire world around us is rebelling against God and his promises and it is easy to join in that rebellion by doubting God or becoming angry with God when we struggle. We forget that God is all-powerful, he loves us, and he wants us to come to him for help.

We need reminding how God ultimately showed his love for us: he gave up all that power for our sakes, to be “the LORD Almighty with us” in human flesh, to suffer and die for our every sin. When Jesus rose from the dead, he took back all that power. He still is the LORD Almighty who is with us.

And so, the words “be still”, can also be an assurance of peace. God is saying, “Don’t worry, it’s going to be ok, I’ve got you.” The words give us the peace that we do know God has all the power. He does not promise that we will never struggle in this world. In fact, he says that, because of sin, there will be pain and sadness. But he also says that we should take comfort in his promise to be with us through the dangerous times. Because Jesus died and rose again, we will find complete freedom from the sorrow of this world when we are with him in heaven.

What can we do when we forget to “Be still”? First, we can go to God in prayer. He hears our every need! We can also ask others to pray with us. Surrounding ourselves with friends who trust in our almighty God and his promises will help to strengthen our faith and theirs. Knowing that God is with us and he is our fortress, we pray with the hymn writer, Martin Luther:  “Support us in our final strife, and lead us out of death to life!”

In the front of Christian Worship, the hymnal, you’ll find a simple Morning Devotion on page 152. The opening words are as follows:

God, our Father, each day is a gift of your grace.

Your mercies are new every morning.

What beautiful reminders these words are at the beginning of a new day. Yesterday is done but the remnants, especially our failures, hurtful words, impatience, apathy, can linger and build day after day. We can begin each day with the burden of sins behind us by God’s gift of forgiveness.  What a comfort these words are for the repentant sinner in you and in me. Today is another day of God’s grace-his forgiveness that we don’t deserve but that he freely gives. His mercies, unlike our own patience and mercy with others, never runs out. It is new each and every day.

Beginning today and each day with those reminders can be wrapped in the prayer we find in Psalm 90. Earlier in the Psalm, the writer expresses praise for the eternity of God but also describes the mortality of people. Our mortality is a result of sin but because of God’s eternity, he can be the dwelling place for all people of all generations. While we can do nothing to deserve each day of God’s grace, today’s verses ask for God’s mercy. We ask for God to give us each day not for ourselves, but for the opportunities to serve him. We ask him to use us, use our hands in our labors no matter what those may be, to glorify him, to reflect him, to share the astounding message of his grace and mercy to others.

As you begin a new day, reflect on the tasks before you. As you change a diaper, your words of kindness and love are nurturing a young soul. As you share a Bible story, you are helping plant seeds of faith in a small child. As you comfort an anxious child or forgive a disobedient young child, you are modeling and teaching God’s endless grace and love. As the Psalmist has shared, as you begin the tasks of the day, remember God’s mercies that are new each day and ask that God would establish the work of your hands that all you do may reflect him and bring him glory.

“You’ve got this!” is a phrase you might have heard more often this past year. Meant as a statement of confidence in you and your ability to handle things, you and I know the truth. When it comes to spiritual matters, sin knocks that confidence right off our shoulders.

Our sin is not hard to find. It’s with us constantly and Satan is relentless in his consistent attacks. Today’s reading from the book of James provides several things to consider as we face the daily battles against our faith.

Submit to God:
God expects perfection. We are not perfect and never will be. We acknowledge that and in doing so, we place ourselves humbly at his feet. Our submission is one that trusts God’s will for us knowing how dearly he loves us in spite of our sin and because of Jesus.

Resist the devil:
You likely have heard that God is stronger than Satan and that’s true. Knowing that can’t allow us to sit back. Satan is powerful, conniving, relentless. He never gives up and with God’s help, we can’t either. We need to fight each day with God’s Word as our weapon.

Come near to God:
We can’t go to God on our own. God’s grace, given to us through Jesus, allows us to go to him with repentant hearts, confident that forgiveness is ours. God is always near to us.

Wash your hands:
In the Old Testament, this was a picture of washing away the sins people had committed. Soap, water, hand sanitizer can’t touch our sin but through Jesus, we are cleansed from sin.

Purify yourselves:
God doesn’t want us to be a Christian sometimes and worldly the rest of the time. In these words, he encourages us to live in a way that our faith is part of each day, all day, in all we do.

Grieve, mourn, and wail:
God is not telling us to walk around downhearted. Rather, we are encouraged to grieve our sins and put our lives of sinfulness behind us. Repentance leads us to inexpressible joy in knowing our sins are forgiven and we are right with God.

Humble yourselves before the Lord:
By nature, we are fiercely independent. When we recognize and repent of our sin, we humbly lean on God’s mercy for us, the only source of true peace.

That’s quite a list. “I’ve got this?” We can see that it’s only with God’s help that we can do any of these things.  God is all powerful, gracious, compassionate.  He looks at us with his love, his grace, and his mercy. In humility and gratitude, we can approach each day with joy and share that joy of peace through faith with those we serve, those we know, and in all we do. God’s got all of this and through faith, we do as well.

He heard me. He listened to me.

There are times in our lives when that is one of our greatest needs-that someone listens and hears our words. Often times this occurs when we are hurting, afraid, lonely, or sad. We don’t always need an answer or a solution. We just need to be able to share what’s on our hearts to someone who will listen.

The individual who wrote this Psalm shares a wonderful expression of gratitude for God’s graciousness and his mercy. We don’t know exactly what it was that the Psalmist had been delivered from, but we know that God listened, he delivered him from the whatever it was that led the author to seek God’s mercy.

This section of Psalm 116 reminds us of several of God’s amazing attributes. He is gracious-full of his grace. God wants nothing more than that you and I are his dear children through faith in Jesus. God is righteous. He expects perfection all the time, every time. This reminds us also of how dearly he loves us. His desire is that we be with him for all eternity in heaven. He is clear that perfection is the ticket. However, knowing our complete inability to be perfection, he makes us perfect in his sight through Jesus. God is compassionate. He expects perfection but kept his promise of salvation through Jesus. He also hears and knows our cries of pain, sadness, grief, loneliness, despair. God looks at us with the loving eyes of a Father and loves us in spite of our weaknesses.

What can we do? We see and hear of God’s grace, his righteousness, his compassion and we know that we can go to him anywhere, anytime with confidence. We can trust him and know that not only can we go to him, we know that he is eager to hear from us.

He hears you. He listens to your prayers. He forgives you. He gives you a peace that is only found in him. You can trust in him in any and all things to be with you.

We sometimes hear about the “power of prayer.” While that phrase sounds nice, today’s verse helps us to understand more about prayer and where the power lies. The verse encourages us to pray in the Spirit. That Spirit is the Holy Spirit, who works faith in our hearts and then we in turn pray from a heart filled with faith. The power is in God, who hears our prayers.

Think for a minute about your prayers. Are you a grocery list type? How often are you driven to prayer because of something you need? (“Keep my loved one safe.” “Help me solve this problem.” “Please take my worry away.”) Those are all great things to take to Jesus in prayer. Today’s verse says to pray, “on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests.” Might some of those occasions include times of thanks for an answered prayer, for blessings such as food, home, family, friends? Could those occasions include prayers of thanks for an ordinary day—a blessing so often overlooked until a crisis hits? We can be eager to ask for things and not as intentional about praise and gratitude for all that God has done for us.  Above all, what a blessing that we can go to God with a heart of repentance and know he forgives us because of Jesus.

Today’s reading also encourages us to pray not just for ourselves but for all the Lord’s people, people of faith. We can pray that the Lord watches over them both in an earthly sense but even more in a spiritual sense. We can pray that the Lord keeps them always close to him and blesses them with an eagerness to be in the Word and live as faithful disciples, impacting the world around them.

Consider your prayers and what an overwhelming blessing it is that we can go to God who is all powerful, all knowing, the Judge and Ruler of all. We can talk to him as our loving Father because of what Jesus has done. You and I love to hear from people we love. God loves to hear from you and me even more. He loves to hear our praise, our thanks, our repentance, our concerns, our needs. He is eager to answer our prayers as he wills out of love for us. We can pray with a heart full of faith with confidence in a God full of love for us.

“That’s just not her!” a mom says as her adventuresome, happy-go-lucky child spends the day clinging to her in tears.  “That’s just not him!” a daughter says as her once gentle dad becomes more of a challenge for his nurses.  Changes like these, often caused by sickness or other ailments, can be so difficult to witness!

In our Bible verses for today, Paul is describing behaviors that are “just not us,” those saved by God’s grace.  We see the behaviors listed: bitterness, rage, anger, brawling, slander, every form of malice.  Sadly, on second reading, that list actually sounds very much like us!  How often have we let a student’s behavior trigger us into a fiery rant or dragged a coworker’s name through the mud?  How often have we allowed ourselves to sink into bitterness over our lot in life?  The Holy Spirit grieves over each of us, as we turn away from who we are, who his work has made us to be, and return to our old selves that love to let our tongues (or our hearts) run wild.

To this we say, “Lord, forgive us!”  And he has!  The last and first parts of this section of Scripture tell us what God has done for us and remind us of who we actually are.  At the end of this section, we hear “in Christ, God forgave you.”  God sent his Son to live through every temptation we live through: to let loose in an ungodly rant, to join in with the wagging tongues, to let the devil have his way in planting bitterness in hearts. Jesus lived through all of these temptations perfectly, for us.  Then Jesus went to the cross, to suffer for the countless times we’ve failed. “In Christ,” in Jesus’ work of living perfectly and dying for us, “God forgave you!”  The first part of our verses adds that through the Holy Spirit, we are “sealed for the day of redemption.”  The Holy Spirit worked faith in your heart to trust in what Jesus had done, and sealed you as God’s own dear child, whom he will carry with the Word all the way to the last day.

So now, when those temptations come, remember who you are.  Sealed by the Holy Spirit’s power, armed with God’s Word, you can say no to the evil that so readily comes knocking.  And, when you fail, flee to who you are in Christ.  This sin that dragged you down?  That’s not you!  Through the One who became just like you, but without sin, you are holy and perfect in God’s sight.  You are his, freed to live in his love and grace.

You’re on a neighborhood walk. Maddie has managed to stay upright the whole time-no trips today!-and your partnering of the students seems to be working out well.  But then, Alex finds a bit of dandelion fluff and throws it in Ava’s hair.  Just like that, the peace is broken!

Bond of peace.  Last week, we spent some time looking at how we belong. We rejoiced in knowing our status as a stone built on Jesus!  Now we get a chance to pay a little more attention to the stones around us.  Paul reminds us, “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.”  That unity of the Spirit is the bond we all share as Christians, the great equalizer that reminds us we are all part of a family, only through the Spirit’s work, which brought us to faith in Jesus.

Isn’t it difficult, though, to keep the bond of peace?  Our sinful natures want nothing more than to break the bond of peace at every turn!  Our little ones show us this every day.  But our own hearts also convict us as we think of the times when we’ve said a word that has built us up, only by tearing another down.  So often we use words and actions to put up walls between fellow stones in God’s building, causing strife and division where God asks for peace to reign.

Is there any hope?  In Jesus, there is. In the waters of baptism, in the words about Jesus, the Holy Spirit created faith in our hearts and changed our hearts from ones that desired only peace-breaking, to hearts that now seek after peace-making, always modeled after the ultimate Peace-Maker, Jesus. With Jesus’ sacrificial love on the cross in view, we can look at our fellow stones, and love them, knowing Jesus loved them first.  With Jesus’ help, we can fight back the words that threaten to cause disunity and strife and can instead speak words that help to build each other up as fellow members of his kingdom.  These words about Jesus are what will change the hearts of our little ones, too.  As we share with our students what Jesus has done for them, we’ll see evidence of their faith growing, as they, too, work to be peace-makers with each other.  None of us will do this perfectly here on earth, but with the Spirit’s help, we work at it each and every day, all the way until our ultimate peace is fully realized in heaven!

Do you remember the “telephone game”? In this game, often played at teen events and slumber parties, one person whispers a phrase or sentence in an ear and then it gets passed down and passed down through whispers and giggles. And in the end the last person shouts out a sentence that almost always had NOTHING to do with the original!

Well, in the early times of the Bible, generations relied on storytelling, a “telephone game” of sorts, to preserve their history, traditions, and faith. There were no GoogleDocs and there was no recording of Zoom meetings. Before the Bible was written by men through God, everything that God wanted us to know was passed down from generation to generation with conversation. How thankful we are that God’s Word is well-preserved. God’s Word is eternal, even during the times that we didn’t have paper and Smartphones!

The words “parable” and “hidden” in the Psalm might be confusing because these words might give the impression that the truth of God’s Word is something unattainable. But here the word “parable” means that teachings of the Bible need to be carefully and frequently studied in order to apply them to our lives. And the word “hidden” is used not because we cannot access God’s Word, but because we need to have God the Holy Spirit give us the faith to understand what we are learning.

Are you able to listen carefully when you have opportunities to hear and read God’s Word? Or are you easily distracted—by your “to-do” list, housework, financial concerns, or family issues? Do you take the time to really study and learn what God wants us to know, or do you rush through your devotional time just to check it off your list? I have good news—it’s never too late to refresh and restart devoting your time to read the Bible! God knows our sins; he knows that we are easily distracted and sometimes unfaithful. But God is always faithful, always forgiving, and he wants us to come back to him and his Word.

Let us listen carefully to the teachings of the Bible, passed down to us for generations and written down for us through the power of the Holy Spirit. After careful and frequent study of the stories in the Bible, we are more ready to pass on these truths to the children and families that we serve.

What a blessing that we work in a Christian early childhood program! Christian education first begins with adults studying the Bible. The more we grow in the Word, the more ready we are to “tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord.”

A teacher asked the group of preschoolers “Hmmmm. . . .what is the opposite of cold?” And a tiny voice in the back of the group said, “Texas!” Ha! Most would agree that, yes, with the exception of the surprising winter storm of the century this past February, “Texas” and “cold” are often considered a sharp contrast!

The Psalm for today’s reading is filled with sharp contrasts. The first contrast we read is that “his anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime.”  Sin makes God angry! He sees everything that we do. God is all-knowing, and even the sins that we can hide from other people are seen by him. Even if we “get away with it”, God knows we sinned. You may have heard that “God hates sin and loves the sinner.” He does hate sin, but he loves us. His wrath and anger over our sins, even those we think we can conceal, only lasts “a moment”. When we come to him in repentance, that is, showing true remorse for what we did, then he forgives us. Every. Time. His love for us is eternal. The Psalm says that his “favor lasts a lifetime.” His “favor” for us is found only because of what Jesus has done for us by dying on the cross, and this favor lasts eternally.

Another contrast that we see is “night” and “day” in verse 5. “Weeping may stay for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.” This is not to say that our sorrow is not real, deep, and painful. Our sorrow might last a long time—years even. When we look at all the sin in the world—those that we commit and those that we see in our neighbors, family, friends, and strangers– we ache. But when we compare our current sorrows to the joy of heaven, our time on this earth really is “only a night.” Our joy in heaven will last forever!

God’s grace is the focus of this psalm written by David. The word “grace” means “undeserved love.” Although we deserve God’s eternal punishment, his anger “only lasts for a moment.” Even when there are earthly consequences for sin, these don’t question or diminish God’s forgiveness. His love is eternal, and we will live with him in heaven forever because of his undeserved, forgiving love. With this reality in mind we daily put on a “new self,” a “new identity,” and we begin each day with renewed joy.