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- Written by: Pastor Tobias
- Category: Sermons
When Gary and Sharon Torrez of Fort Myers, Florida, heard that their former community of Jamaica Bay, Florida had been hit hard by Hurricane Ian in 2021, they “bought power banks to charge phones, boiled drinking water, and delivered essentials to people in need.” (Thrivent Magazine, Spring 2023) In the coming weeks, the Torrez family and others would use their own resources and leverage grants through organizations like Thrivent (formerly Thrivent Financial for Lutherans) to purchase cleaning supplies to prevent the spread of mold, mosquito netting, and plywood to board up broken windows. Yet they also witnessed the power of showing up, providing a listening ear or a shoulder for folks to cry on.
Nancy Clarke grew up in a family without much money, but her parents taught her to save and to give through the church to help others. She remembers putting in an offering each week at church, and helping out with cleaning and volunteering around the congregation’s building, which she believes was one of the building blocks of her life-long commitment to service, in efforts such as organizing a Relay for Life Team at her church or joining international Habitat for Humanity teams with people from her church that have built hostels and schools in Zambia, Nicaragua, and British Columbia.
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- Written by: Pastor Tobias
- Category: Sermons
I remember when my niece Maria was about eight years old, and we were walking outside at my parent’s house one spring day, observing the beauty of the natural world around us: the grass beneath our feet, the first of the flowers blooming for the season, the warm sun upon our faces. At one point we were looking at the bark of a maple tree, at the ripples on the surface, and even how the bark had healed around places where branches had come off, or other marks had been made. My niece, looking first at the bark thoughtfully, and then at my hands, grabbed my hand in excitement and said “look, your hands are like the bark, they have lines and even scars where cuts and marks have been made!” “But oh,” my niece’s face fell, “you have a cut here on your hand that still hasn’t healed yet.” I assured her that it would heal in good time, and she need not worry about me.
I was amazed at my niece’s observation as an eight-year-old and also touched by her compassion then and still am now. The practices of observation and compassion can be powerful tools indeed.
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- Written by: Pastor Tobias
- Category: Sermons
I love this day! Flowers and music and alleluias. Reunions like old home week, when we gather together with folks we don’t see as often, be it our families, friends, or perhaps the congregation here at Redeemer, New Paltz.
This is a beautiful day! A day to say, no to shout, “Alleluia!”
For though shadows huddle about the earth; though the powers and principalities of evil try to break apart all that is good and true and real, though false messages and false messengers try to lure us down paths of hatred and destruction, there is a Deeper Story, a Deeper Work of LOVE that has sprung forth from the clutches of death to bring resurrection and rebirth and re-creation for this whole aching world.
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- Written by: Pastor Tobias
- Category: Sermons
There is something very special about being the first one awake in a household in the morning. If there are other people are in the house, I swear that you can feel them still asleep and you can sense them off in the realm of dreams. And I swear that the world itself feels quieter in the early morning. There is a quiet to the early morning. A peacefulness.
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- Written by: Pastor Tobias
- Category: Sermons
We’ll leave quietly tonight. We’ll leave this barren landscape, the barren interior of this church and maybe quickly, furtively turn on the music in our cars to try and dampen what I suspect may be the profoundly loud sound of silence - left with us after witnessing to, after hearing again the story of Christ’s willingly given sacrifice. Such deep, strong, and powerfully given LOVE.