servanthood

2887) Brighten Your Corner

My good friend Chris Brekke blogs at:  https://pcbrek2020.wordpress.com/ This is from his May 16, 2025 blog (with a few changes and additions):      At our condo in Minnesota there are no outdoor grounds to take care of.  Professionals come weekly to mow the grass.  There are three rock and bush gardens, but no flower gardens. […]

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2868) Treasures in Heaven

     When you think about what you will give to the Lord’s work each week, you should consider your offerings from the perspective of eternity.  Let me tell you what I mean.      Several years ago, in the old American Lutheran Church, the Division for Missions had a program by which congregations here

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2762) Wisdom from Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was the pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, in Montgomery, Alabama, from 1954 to 1960.  Everyone knows about Rev. King’s work after 1960, but many forget that his work as a reformer that changed America began with, and grew out of, his call to serve as

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2761) “I Have Seen the Promised Land”

By John Piper, at http://www.desiringgod.org, January 21, 2013      The racial world I grew up in and the one we live in today are amazingly different.  Racism remains in many forms in America and around the world.  But in the days of my youth the segregation was almost absolute and the defense of it

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2760) Whom Shall I Fear?

Martin Luther King, Jr. was born 96 years ago today.  He died April 4, 1968 at the age of thirty-nine, assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee by James Earl Ray.  Five months earlier, in a sermon to his congregation on November 5, 1967, King said this: You may be 38 years old, as I happen to be.

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2651) Advice from Aunt Agnes

 From a sermon      Whenever I have to give a stewardship sermon I think about my grandmother’s oldest sister, Aunt Agnes.  She was a kind old lady, and I only once remember her having a stern word for anyone, and that was for me.  I was still in seminary, and it pleased her to

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2563) Dealing With Ingratitude

    In these quotes taken from an anthology of quotes by Martin Luther (What Luther Says, volume 3,  Concordia), Luther teaches us to learn to live with ingratitude. ————————      To learn to be thankful is not enough; we must also get used to exercising the virtue of bearing up under ingratitude.  This virtue

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2487) The Glue That Holds the World Together

From Speaking of the Dead by Russell Saltzman  (American Lutheran Publicity Books, 2014, pages 89-94).      Most people can name their grandparents. Quite a few are able to name their great-grandparents. But reaching beyond to a fourth generation is almost impossible from simple memory. By and large, by the third generation following our own

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2435) Playing Your Part Well (2 of 2)

Above:   Pharaoh’s daughter finds the infant Moses while Miriam watches from a distance. —————————-       (…continued)  Moses is thus not only saved from certain death, but he is allowed to live in the palace.  His own mother is hired to care for him and will be paid out of the king’s treasury to

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2434) Playing Your Part Well (1 of 2)

Above:  The small passageway and door to the State box seats at Ford’s Theater ****************************      John Parker had the worst seat in the theater.  He was attending a popular comedy and could hear the audience roaring with laughter.  He could hear most of the lines being said, so sometimes he knew what everyone

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