SUMMER SCHEDULE FOR HALSTAD LUTHERAN PARISH BEGINS JUNE 6TH.
        
          9:00am  Worship at Halstad Lutheran Church
        10:30am  Worship at Augustan Lutheran Church

SPECIAL EVENTS

          June 13th, Joint Worship at Halstad
          July 25th  All School Reunion Worship

PICNIC IN THE PARK RETURNS
        June 9th  start gathering at 5:30pm
                         6:00pm  Eat
                       (bring salad, side dish, or dessert to share - hot dogs, hamburgers, drinks provided)
                         supervised games for children/visiting
                         ends with songs and brief worship
         EVERYONE IN THE COMMUNITY IS WELCOME!
FREE EVENT EVERY SECOND WEDNESDAY ALL SUMMER LONG!

God Loves You, yeah, yeah, yeah!

       When he was very little, my son decided he was going to run away from home.  He wasn't getting his way and didn't feel loved because of that so he was leaving.  He asked me to make him a peanut butter sandwich and he took it and his musical teddy bear, wrapped them in his blanket, and said goodbye.  I followed him as he walked out the door and sat down on the front porch feeling about as bad as he did.
       I watched as he set out down the sidewalk.  He got past the house next door and then stood still at the road down to the student housing.  He stood there for several minutes looking sad.  Every once in a while, he would glance back to make sure I was still there.
       It began to drizzle so ran back in and picked up the umbrella and walked over to him.  "What's the matter?", I asked.  "How come you stopped?"
       "I can't cross the street without a grownup."
       "That's good you remembered.  It's raining, maybe you should come home now?"
       That made a good reason to come home while still sparing his pride.  He slipped his hand in mine and asked if I still loved him.  "Of course I still love you," I reassured him.  "I will always love you."  We went home and ate the peanut butter sandwich together.
       John Lennon once wrote "All you need is love".   There is truth in that for human beings.  Babies will not thrive without touch and caring contact.  People in loving relationships live longer as do people who reach out to volunteer and help others.  Some studies show that it boosts our immune system and lowers blood pressure and has other positive effects on our health.
       It is normal for people to need and want love.  You could say that we were created to love.   It's the answer to the question of why God allowed there to be sin in the world.  God gave us free will, the ability to choose and feel for ourselves.  Minus that ability, there would be no need for love; it wouldn't matter.  Yes, we make bad choices as well as good ones and we get hurt as well as hurt others, but we also are able to experience and express love and joy and be in relationship to others.  It is what makes familial love, friendship, martial partnership, and bonds with others possible.
       Why would that matter to God? Because God loves us and craves our love and relationship in return.
       Never thought of God needing our love?  The whole Old Testament is the continual story of God's people being in relationship, slowly turning away and forgetting God, God sending a prophet to call the people back to God, and the people then repent and return to God.   The story of the New Testament can be summed up in John 3:16, "For God so loved the world that God gave God's only son, so that everyone who believes in him may not die but have eternal life."  Jesus gives himself so that this imperfect people can be reunited with God forever.  Why?  Because God loves you just the way you are.
       So while some faiths or kinds of churches focus on decisions, rules, codes of behavior, and disciplines designed to help people make themselves holy, Jesus tells us that what God wants is our love; to be totally, happily, securely, and faithfully in love with God.  Movies, books, and preachers often give us a picture of truly faithful people as dour, sad-faced, very proper people often living stark spare lives that look more like prison than pleasure.

       Meanwhile, scripture tells us that what God wants is for us to be head-over heels in love!  Before telling the parable of the good Samaritan, a man asks Jesus what we must do to inherit eternal life.  The answer is that we are to love God completely and love each other as well.  As Jesus says over and over in the book of John, we will be known as his followers by the way in which we love others.  God invites us into relationship so that we can be filled with God's love.  To (mis)quote another Beatle's song, "God loves you, yeah! Yeah! Yeah!"  Read Luke 10:25-28

Blue Sky Cloudy Days

       At some point as a youth, I remember dividing cloudy days into different categories just as I had heard some cultures do with snow.  There are the dark, heavy clouds very black of rain and thunderstorms and the pea-green clouds that signal the danger of hail and a coming tornado.  Though these clouds may be the darkest, they are often the quickest to break into sunshine when the storm has passed and leave a rainbow arched across the sky.
       Some cloudy days are just overwhelmingly gray and dreary in their pervasiveness; especially when they hang on for days.  Those are the kind of clouds that can sink into our mood because they are so dark and often cool and damp.  And then there is what I call blue-sky cloudy days.  Perhaps the clouds are just so light that you can most feel the sun shining through or sometimes you can actually see blue sky peeking through the clouds here and there in the breeze.
       Flying in an airplane is a dramatic way to experience the differences in clouds.  I was away at a meeting once where it had been dark and rainy the whole visit.  Before I had left, everyone was very envious that I was leaving Midwest winter behind and going somewhere warm and sunny; only it wasn't.  When I left and the plane finally took off, the first part of the ride was bumpy as we went through the turbulence in the wind and rain.  As we passed through the clouds, it looked foggy and dark until we suddenly broke through into the sunlight.  The clouds were below us and we were surrounded by calm blue skies and bright sunshine.
        Hope is often symbolized as the blue skies after a dark storm.  It is an ancient image, at least as old as the oral tradition of the story of Noah from the first part of Genesis.  After the flood, God sets the rainbow across the sky as a sign of God's promise. (Genesis 9:13)  When the problems and events of our life are hard and the way seems dark, wouldn't it be wonderful if we could simply lift ourselves up out of despair into the sunlight?
       It too often seems as if life is intent on making sure that we know our limitations and learn how hard things can be.  Our days can be clouded with grief, pain, and the uncertainties of the world around us.  Sometimes it feels impossible to see the blue sky in our circumstances.  And there are times when depression sets in and we need help to move forward.
       But our hope is sure.  Someone asked this last week if our best days (in the context of the church) are ahead of us or behind us.  My immediate response was that as people of faith in the resurrection, the best always ahead of us.  As it says in Revelation 21:4, God will wipe away every tear, death, mourning, crying, and pain will be no more.  The gift of faith does not promise us a life without storms or darkness.  What God does is promise that we are never alone and that we have hope even in the face of great pain and even death.  Because Jesus lives, we always have the promise of sunshine ahead of us.  Read John 12:44-47