Category: Articles

“We give thanks to You, almighty God, that You have refreshed us through this salutary gift, and we implore You that of Your mercy You would strengthen us through the same in faith toward You and in fervent love toward one another; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.”

At each Divine Service, we pray a Collect of thanksgiving following the Holy Supper. Did you realize that that you are praying to the Lord about your vocations?

This prayer thanking our heavenly Father reminds you that the saving Gift of Christ’s Body and Blood continues to forgive and sustain you after the Supper is over. In addition, it reminds you that your whole life is one of continual worship, as you serve the Lord in faith and serve your neighbor in love. That’s right! The Divine Service is primarily about God’s giving His Holy Gifts, and you receiving them by faith. Outside of the Divine Service, your actions to serve others (wherever you are) give worship to Him.

How is this service done? That depends. Each of you has been given a number of different vocations. Service as a son or daughter usually includes household chores or helpful acts your parents ask you to do. Service as a student involves paying attention to teachers and professors, doing your homework to the best of your ability, and encouraging fellow students to do the same. Service in extracurricular activities means conscientiously training, keeping the schedule, and being helpful to all involved. Service as an employee means showing up on time, doing your best, and cheerfully helping co-workers and customers. Service as a newly-licensed driver means being especially careful to practice the safe, responsible, and defensive driving techniques you learned. You get the picture.

In these ways (and in your many other roles of service) you are actually serving God! Your worship goes beyond faithfully receiving Jesus in Word and Sacrament on Sunday. It means carrying out your faith in daily life. It means being a willing servant to all and doing your best to put others first, out of love and service to God and others.

Everything you do has its foundation in the faith He has given you in Baptism and nurtured with His Supper and His Gospel. In your vocations, you live your life as one giant “thank you” to the Lord. It all continues through the week as you lovingly serve others around you, just as our Lord Jesus would have you do.

Will you live out your vocation perfectly? Absolutely not! But that’s where Jesus Christ’s vocation as your Holy Savior makes all the difference. He cleanses the stain of your sin. He changes your unwilling and obstinate heart, granting joyful service to your neighbors. He sends His Spirit to fill you with His Means of Grace, that you may overflow with the Light of the World to all in your various vocations.

God has placed you in your “station” in life. You probably have a variety of different roles or responsibilities. These are your many vocations. And in each and every one of them, as a baptized child of God you honor and worship your heavenly Father. All that you say and do, you do it “in faith toward [God] and in fervent love toward one another.”

So continue in your sacramentally-centered life – flowing from and returning to Christ’s altar every chance you get. Serve “in faith toward God and in fervent love toward one another. ” Live a life of worship, rejoicing in the One who serves you forgiveness, life, and salvation in His Divine Service!

by The Rev. Rich Heinz

This article originally appeared in the Winter 2016 Issue of Higher Things® Magazine. For more great articles like this subscribe today!

Rev. Mark Buetow

And above all things have fervent love for one another, for “love will cover a multitude of sins.” – 1 Peter 4:8

You’ve probably seen them on the interwebs: people exposing those awful people who do mean things. The waitress posts a copy of the receipt where there is no tip, just a nasty note. Or those oh-so-helpful social media posts “to the person who took up two parking spots outside my apartment.” It’s a dangerous move to attempt to shame someone publicly because there’s a good chance you’ll be shamed right back and with a vengeance! This is the way our warped world thinks: If you are mean and nasty to others, that’s really awful and the just punishment is that others get to be mean and nasty to you. But it’s wrong to bully the bullies. And it’s wrong to shame the shamers. The new man in Christ is not called to expose the sins of others but to cover them with love, as the Apostle directs us to do. But that’s pretty difficult. It’s hard not to rejoice when some jerk gets his just desserts by having his jerkiness exposed for all to see. That’ll teach ‘im! But it doesn’t. What’s really going on is what Jesus was exposing when He told the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector (Luke 18:9-14).

There, the Pharisee prayed, “God, I thank you I’m not like all the other sinners out there, especially that I’m not like this tax collector.” Usually our first reaction to hearing that story is to laugh at the Pharisee’s hypocrisy and say, “I’m glad I’m not like that Pharisee!” Do you see what Jesus did there? He got us! He exposes in us what we hate in others-namely, that we, too, are hypocrites and shamers.

If we mess up or do something stupid, we don’t want it made known to everyone. But if someone else does, it’s so easy for our sinful flesh to attribute horrible motives to him and go for the jugular in shaming him and showing everyone what a bully and fool he is. But ask yourself: What could God expose about you? What does He know about what you’ve done that He could bring to light and make you the butt of a nasty social media post? What bullying and shameful behavior have you done that deserves to be spread abroad and mocked?

But the Lord doesn’t do that, because He doesn’t see your faults. His love covers a multitude, and more-all of your sins! In fact, Jesus goes the way of the cross to do that. And if there was ever a shaming to be had, it was of Jesus. “He saved others! He can’t save Himself!” Can you just see the clickbait headlines? “Son of God gets nailed to a cross and can’t get down.” “This Guy saved everyone else but what happens next will blow your mind!” “You’ve never seen anything this gross and shameful: Jesus!” And so it could go. And that’s exactly what happened. Jesus let all the shame and mockery get heaped upon Him by a world that loves to point out how bad other people are. We do that to hide our own behavior and to make ourselves look good and popular. But Jesus takes it on to save you. He wears all the shame the world has to pile on Him to take away your shame. Because of the cross, you will never, ever, have to stand before God, ashamed of what you’ve said or done. Not a single sin will cause God to mock you because all your sins are paid for.

Even the sin of shaming the shamers and bullying the bullies and picking on others for their differences and mistakes and faults and inadequacies has been wiped out by the blood of Jesus. And so it is with YOUR sins in laughing at the sins of others. So are your sins of pointing out the sins of others. The love of God in Christ Jesus, washed on you at the font and given to you to eat and drink with the flesh and blood of Jesus – this love covers a multitude of sins. Covers their sins. Covers your sins.

Now you are so free in Christ you can pause when you’re out and about in the world for real or on line. Don’t take pleasure in someone’s meanness being exposed. Don’t pass on that juicy story about the jerk who got what they deserved. Don’t passively-aggressively vaguebook about the person who wronged you in some way. Instead, as the new man in Christ, speak well of others, defend them, and explain everything in the kindest way. Not only will that go a long way in making you a happier person, it will be a great blessing to others who no longer have to fear becoming an object of ridicule because of your reaction to something they’ve done.

And if that doesn’t work? If the shame you would cover comes back to you? If your patience and covering of someone’s sins backfires and they let loose on you? So what? You’re covered by the perfection of Christ. You can never be shamed before God. And even if you are shamed before the world, you are so free as to rejoice in suffering and bearing the name of Jesus that way. Jesus died and rose. What can bullies and shamers do about that? Nothing.

There is a place in this world for shame and scorn. That place is upon Jesus. All the shame and the scorn are His. That way all the smiles and good things to say are said about you by God the Father for Jesus’ sake. And, by extension, in confessing our sins, we lay our shaming on Jesus and go joyfully to the work of speaking well of our neighbors and covering their offenses with the love of Christ. Jesus’ tomb is empty! You won’t believe what happened next: Their sins were forgiven and they loved their neighbors and were kind to them.

Rev. Mark Buetow is pastor of Bethel Lutheran Church in DuQuoin, Illinois and serves as the deputy and media services executive for Higher Things. He can be reached at buetowmt@gmail.com.

My husband and I began our journey as foster parents more than two years ago. After many conversations and prayer, we decided that fostering would be something that would be good for our family to do. Our children were growing up, we had space for one child and taking care of children was something we have naturally done over the past 21 years. Our county was (and still is) in need of foster parents, so we decided to attend an informational meeting.

It is not easy to be licensed by the state, although there are people to help you achieve that goal. We had to fill out many detailed questionnaires about our entire lives, provide the address of every place we lived since the age 18, provide copies of birth certificates for the entire household, release school transcripts on all our children, go through physicals, provide detailed income and spending information regarding our household, sign forms on what we will do and not do regarding a child placed in our care, and provide proof of insurance on the house and our vehicles. On top of all that, my husband and I had to go through 36 hours of training. After all these things were done, we became licensed, and within a few days, we received our first placement, a six-week-old boy.

I cried the moment he was placed in my arms. He was to be our first foster son. I was so happy to have him and also filled with such sorrow that such a tiny little child could already be in need of foster care. I wondered how I would respond to having someone’s child entrusted to my care 24 hours a day. Would I be able to love this child as my own while he was with us? My answer came in the wee hours that first night. On that first night, and many nights after, as I fed him, I sobbed, and prayed, and knew in my heart that it would not be a burden to be this child’s mother, for a time.

As a new foster mom, those first months were very hard. I was very emotional and cried many times for our foster son. I cried being thankful for my own children. And I cried when the van driver would pull up in front of our house to pick up our foster son for a visit with his parents. Sometimes there would be other children in the van . . . beautiful children of all skin colors, boys and girls, infants and teens and everything in between. It broke my heart to know there were so many children staying with so many foster families and I also knew I wasn’t the only foster mommy sending a child on a visit.

Many new people entered our lives in the months to come. We were assigned a social worker and our foster son had his own social worker. These people would need to meet with us to get to know us and would provide us with details of our foster son’s case. There were van drivers assigned to picking him up and dropping him off after visits. There were therapists providing care for him when he failed to achieve milestones. And there were many lawyers helping to sort out the things that were going on in the court room. And, finally, we were able to get to know his parents and a sibling.

This was, perhaps, one of the hardest things I ever had to do, but also one of the most fulfilling. It requires trying to stay in control of one’s emotions when you really just want to scream. You have to be nice, even when you don’t want to. I still have my moments, but for the most part, I am glad that I can speak with both of his parents. Sometimes I write notes about their child; sometimes I send pictures. Both of his parents are genuinely thankful for the kindness extended to them and they, in return are kind to me and my family. If our foster son is ever returned to their care, I will know them and hopefully be allowed to have some contact with their son. And if we are able to adopt their child, they will already have a relationship with us.

Our greatest privilege and joy, though, has been bringing our foster son to the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ. Since he was a tiny baby he has consistently heard the Word of our Lord in Divine Service. He says, “Amen” and is learning to fold his hands in prayer. He is learning Luther’s Evening Prayer and Luther’s Table Prayer. He joined my class for Sunday School and loves to listen to Bible verses set to music. It is my fervent prayer that he is raised knowing Christ is his Savior . . . and finally this month (it took awhile to get permission) he was baptized into God’s family by his foster father with his father and myself witnessing this gift of God. Whatever the future holds for this little one, it is good to know he had a good start in life and has become God’s child in baptism.

We have just renewed our license and have also been approved for adoption. (If a child came into our home and became available for adoption, we would be able to adopt.) That little boy that came into our care at six weeks is still with us and is now a talking two-year-old. Our entire family (and our friends) have grown to love him.

In human knowledge, his future is uncertain. Yet God knows, and He will determine just where this child should live out his days. It is not easy, at times, watching that plan unfold. Sometimes things happen and we wonder why? But, like many things in life, the Lord uses these situations to lead us to trust in His good and gracious will. He “gifts” us to treasure the days we have with a foster child . . . which also reminds us to treasure our time with each other as well. Thanks be to God, who in Baptism has adopted us, treasuring us as His own dear children!

by Laura Koch, Foster Mom