Give us this Day Our Daily Board

Dear Future-Focused Friends:

Yesterday, Memorial Day, I spent my time expressing my patriotic duty by working on the house. The fascia board on the garage had rotted to where attempting to paint it again seemed pointless. So off I went to Menards for two 12’  pine 1 x 6's. It took a few hours, but now it looks great. I was relieved to find a still usable can of exterior trim paint in the garage, so I had the unusual experience of completing a project with only one trip to the hardware store. That was disappointing.

Now I’m looking at the other three sides of the garage fascia and thinking they need attention too, and although they cannot be seen from the house, I’m wondering if I can have similar success in their replacement. Their substandard finish mocks my sense of accomplishment, and now I see them more clearly than the gleaming new boards.

We just successfully oversubscribed our $9,800 Parlor Kitchen remodeling fundraiser, receiving well over $12,000 in gifts in less than two weeks. And now, even before we begin the Parlor Kitchen project, the Westminster Hall Kitchen looks shabbier than ever; don’t get me started about the Fellowship Hall Kitchen.

My musing today is not about the insatiable sinkhole of house or building repairs, but about my lame capacity to celebrate today’s accomplishments without jumping to tomorrow’s responsibilities.

As you know, I’ve started a five-part series referencing the Lord’s Prayer. Each sermon will parallel one of this summer’s VBS theme days. This past Sunday was “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Never mind how that sermon went; I’m obsessing over what comes next.

This coming Sunday will be, “Give us this day our daily bread,” and here’s what’s got me musing.

We are commanded to pray only for today’s bread, but my energy and anxiety draw me forward to next week’s groceries. I seldom pause to acknowledge how the request for today’s bread has been abundantly fulfilled because I’m focused on my next responsibility, my next job, my next meal. I even claim such thoughts are virtuous by suggesting a forward-looking mindset gets things done, not recognizing how powerfully this attitude renders my heart ungrateful.

I’m thinking Christ’s admonition for us to request only daily bread challenges me to quit gulping my meal to rush off to the next important thing. As my dad used to remind me, “Slow down and chew your food!”

So, thank you for your generous gifts to the Parlor Kitchen Fund! And I’m going to take a moment and admire my new fascia board; it looks great!

Trying to slow down enough to experience gratitude, I remain,

With Love,
Jonathan Krogh
Your Pastor

Featured
The Fading White Dot: Losing a Friend and Telling the Vision
The Fading White Dot: Losing a Friend and Telling the Vision

Dear Faithful Viewers:

Turning off the TV used to be magical. I don’t mean in a sociological sense, where shutting off the television was followed by a command to play outside; I mean in the technical electronic sense. With the old cathode-ray tube there was that haunting glow of a white dot in the center of the old Philco that lingered for several minutes after the set was disempowered. The focusing magnetic coil was still active even after the power was cut, so that a small beam of rays was still striking the phosphor-coated screen; as a child I remember thinking that was as interesting as the show that had just ended.

I thought about that white dot the other day when I received word that my friend Bruce Pangborn had

Selling the Christchild
Selling the Christchild

I’ve been somewhat amused over the past several years as stores have told their employees they should not say "Merry Christmas," but instead greet customers with "Happy Holidays." This, of course, ignores the fact that the derivation of "holiday" is a linguistic mash-up of "Holy Days"; but because the name of Christ is in "Christmas Tree," for a brief while some stores called them "Holiday Trees," as if shifting the name will maximize sales among Christ haters while not jeopardizing robust receipts from traditional Christians. Perhaps we are all generically Holians? 

Call to Prayer: Facing Mecca for the Good Shepherd
Call to Prayer: Facing Mecca for the Good Shepherd

Last week I had a little extra time between clients at the Evergreen Park Care and Counseling Center and our satellite office at Calvary Reformed Church in Orland Park. 159th Street west of La Grange Road has been under construction for the past year or so, making a left turn onto 104th Avenue impossible, so I drive south to 167th and turn back north on 104th. I provide these directions because, if you’re in the area, there is an unintended tri-faith experience stretching from 165th to 159th on 104th Avenue created by the alignment of a domed Islamic mosque, a Roman Catholic cemetery and Calvary Reformed Church, all constructed in the past 15 years. I’ll leave it for you to determine who wins the architectural prize. 

Clueless Enough to Be Grateful
Clueless Enough to Be Grateful

…As lepers, nine of the ten were outcasts. They had lost all community except for the fellowship of other lepers. They were the team of the unclean, forced into communal relationship by a shared curse; they were comrades in quarantine. I say nine because the tenth, a Samaritan, was an outcast before the dread bacterial infection ravaged the protein sheath surrounding his nerves with granulomas that scar the skin and eyes and deaden nerves, leaving one’s body without sensation. Unable to feel pain,…

The Pledge Plight
The Pledge Plight

Sunday is Pledge Commitment Sunday, a moment when we solemnly pray over slips of paper torn from our stewardship brochures, a custom that has me musing over the plight of pledging. There are organizations that research the impact of financial pledging; they are nearly evenly split regarding the usefulness of the practice. Research pointing against pledging claims there is a poor relationship between the annual pledge and actual giving. Fluctuations in household income and expenses work against a flat prediction of contribution capacity; few of us know in November of 2018 that the transmission in the van will fail in August of 2019, or that our company will be bought out in September, forcing a move to Columbus

The Voting Horror Show is Almost Over
The Voting Horror Show is Almost Over

Dear Civil Citizens:

Well, tomorrow it happens! Election Day! Finally!

Still, I am going to miss all the campaign ads. They really helped me focus on the issues and understand the complexity of governing in these days; they also clarified the depth of experience and the qualities of leadership in each of the highly deserving candidates…said no one, ever!

I mused a few weeks back that there’s something amiss in the relationship between politics and faith, not in the suggestion that our faith should draw us to one candidate or another or how individual politicians may or may not be committed Christians (although I suppose we might see one or two in heaven someday); the problem is how politics commandeers the power of anxiety.

Go ahead, leave your shoes on!
Go ahead, leave your shoes on!

Dear Holy Hosts and Hostesses:

It was the early 1970s, and my big brother was getting married in August in Houston, TX. To save on lodging, my father suggested we rent a big RV and make the drive from Omaha in a single vehicle; according to the pamphlet, the Winnebago Chieftain comfortably slept six. There were indeed six places in the land-behemoth to be horizontal, but they lied about comfortably sleeping. 

Take Pledge Card, Write Big Number, Move On.
Take Pledge Card, Write Big Number, Move On.

This year I asked our Session and committee moderators to prepare their budgets before we moved forward with our stewardship campaign. In previous years we’ve asked for your pledges first and then struggled to fit a budget into that amount. Some of you remember the days when Session returned to the congregation asking for a second round of pledges because they were not comfortable trimming expenditures to match projected giving; records indicate that a few generous souls met the challenge, and the year moved forward. For 2019, I was thinking we could use the budget to inspire our pledging; but after 30 years, I must confess, I’ve no idea what works. 

And That's the Way it.... Was: Retirement of Walter Cronkite and the death of the Fairness Doctrine
And That's the Way it.... Was: Retirement of Walter Cronkite and the death of the Fairness Doctrine

Dear Nattering Nabobs and other News Neighbors:

The other day I saw a meme using a photograph of Walter Cronkite. The text pined the days when anchormen read the news and the nation tuned in and trusted. The comments that followed implied a moral decline among those overseeing broadcast journalism; we were just better people when there were only four networks (I include PBS’ MacNeil/Lehrer news report even though it was a latecomer in 1975). But the death of trustworthy reporting comes with a history.

Annoying Others For Jesus
Annoying Others For Jesus

Ethel “Betty” Bettin Bruechart was an amazing woman, at one point serving as senior editor for The King’s Business, the nation’s largest Christian magazine. She was also the executive administrative assistant for Dr. Lewis Talbot, president of Biola University and founder of Talbot School of Theology in Los Angeles, California.

Born in 1903, Aunt Betty’s talent as a speaker, writer and editor was eclipsed by the powerful men in her life. Her diary is filled with the names of her colleagues, a who’s who of mid-twentieth century American Fundamentalist evangelism. She had corrected the grammar and punctuation of the likes of T.C. Horton, Lyman Stewart, Donald Barnhouse, R.A. Torrey and Charles Fuller, names not recognizable today, but in the evangelism circles before Billy Graham they were household words. Honored