Text Box: GOOD HOPE LUTHERAN CHURCH WILLIAM EMBREE, INTERIM PASTOR TITONKA, IOWA 50480 OFFICE PHONE: 928-2282 PARSONAGE: 928-2552 KITCHEN: 928-2780 Text Box: Text Box: VOL. XVV No. 6, 7 & 8 Text Box: “What I’m trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God’s giving. People who don’t know God and the way he works fuss over these things but you know both God and how he works. Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don’t worry about missing out. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met.” Matthew 6:31-33 THE MESSAGE//REMIX I’ve always loved these words of Jesus to the crowd and disciples that gathered on the mount for his sermon. I like the way it cuts through questions and gets to the heart of Christian living. When the senior high school graduates received their quilts from the church, I noted that a mature Christian life has three levels of maturity. The first is grabbing hold of God’s promises to us: “I am the Lord, your God (emphasis mine)”. God is for me. Yet maturity takes us beyond this me/mine understanding to the second level, me/you: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” A lot of church and community life strengthens that emphasis. 21 youth and five chaperones are traveling this summer to Tanzania. They will participate in the Southern Diocese’s annual Youth Rally, connecting with Tanzanian youth groups, learn about and participate in their ways for doing ministry and work on a couple of service projects. A study guide is now available for our church’s Draft Social Statement on Human Sexuality. It is a resource to help us in our day-to-day efforts to make decisions that are good for us as individuals. The emphasis on meeting the needs of others and being God’s presence for others is long in history but is short on under-standing. We get stuck on thinking that being Christian ends with helping our neighbor and we forget to push to the third level of Christian maturity, me/God: living for God. While it is an important aspect of Christian living, as I told the graduates, the third level is one not every Christian gets to. While a third level Christian still cares for neighbor, creation, family and community, he/she does so because of his/her love of God and not of neighbor, creation, family and community. Earlier in the text quoted above, Jesus speaks of beautiful lilies in the field, hungry birds in the air and worrying. All of it is taken care of, Jesus pro-claims, by God’s abundant hand so that we may be free to seek God and the kingdom of God. That means I love the neighbor because in that way I love God. I care for creation because I can express my care for God that way. I am responsible for the well-being of my family and community (including Iowa, USA, and the world of human beings) because in that way I honor God who gives it all. See the difference? By the time you read this we will be ready to call together a Call Committee to further our search for the pastor God is preparing for Good Hope. It is a lot of work. Any who have served on previous Call Committees can describe the burdens carried and the effort expended to match congregation and clergy. You can help! Obviously, you can hold the committee members in prayer. You also can make lists of the resources we have in Good Hope congregation. What has God blessed us with?: people, buildings, attitudes, community, experience, finances, ages, and so forth. What a wonderful resource that is, to have all our assets accounted for? Consider, too, what we can use our assets for? If God has given us these things, what does God want us to do with them? To use the language of the above Scripture, what “God-initiative” are we called to with the “God-provisions” at our disposal? Your answers will be of great help to your Call Committee’s work in the coming months. Please note, the history-timeline will be up in the Fellowship Hall all summer for you to add your history to Good Hope’s. What a wonderful gift it will be for our next pastor, and an interesting view of Good Hope it is becoming. Peace, Pastor Embree

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