Happy Birthday to You!

Happy Birthday to You!

Happy Birthday dear Tina!

Happy Birthday to You!

Many happy returns to my mother and dear nephew as well!

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My godmother presented me with another gift this morning when I arrived at church.  Such a surfeit of care from her and her husband!  Honestly, I was a bit embarrassed, but then when I realized what she had given me, I was humbled. 

The first day we spent time together outside of the nooner bible study was the day after her daughter A was born, the first day I officially became the "baby hog"!  It was the first time I saw her great heart, sacrificing precious time with her newborn daughter so I could bask in the comforting peace of holding a baby. 

On that day, I had brought Mary Kay's satin hands to so that I could cleanse and massage her hands as a pampering treat after having just given birth.  I had purchased it several years ago, so one of the three steps (cleanse, exfoliating scrub, lotion) had separated a bit.  I didn't think about it much since I could still use it, but really it had really gone beyond its shelf life. 

Today, she brought me a new package and told me that I couldn't use it on someone else until I had done my own.  My first thought was that I could do hers again, since chasing after four children, one being a recent arrival, she could certainly use another massage.  But my godmother didn't purchase it for herself, she purchased it for me!

It is a sweet gift and a timely reminder of all that God has given me in the past four months.  The doctrine alone is such an amazing gift that I could spend the rest of my life trying to articulate its wonders and never approach completion of the task.  But it is more than the doctrine.  I have been given pastoral care from an undershepherd.  Care that is so far outside what the world would expect that only Christ can be the reason.  And though I still struggle with feeling the interloper--the conflicts I have about prayer being a perfect example--I have also been given a church home.  Such riches for a poor miserable sinner.  Such lessons heaped upon my heart of the greatness of our Lord and Saviour that truly do transcend this world in which we must travel. 

Though oft hard and confusing, my pilgrimage is not made alone, even when I am deaf and blind and dumb.  He is not.  He is able.  And I am His sheep.

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Pastor had the week off for grad school work, so I do not have a sermon today, but I do have a snippet from an email he sent me yesterday:

Thought you'd like to know that the classic Lutheran phrase for pastoral care is the German seelsorge = cure of souls. This is what we use in place of the more secular word "counseling." So a pastor is a seelsorger, that one who brings the cure to the sheep which he has been called to serve as undershepherd by the Good Shepherd. And the cure he brings is the one provided by the Good Shepherd, the Word and Sacraments.

And if you want to pronounce it, it sounds like "zail - zorge."

 

I am in the care of a seelsorger!  How merciful and gracious is our God!