Funny how life can turn on a dime, back and forth again.

I look ahead to the festival and I am still bowed with anguish, knowing there will be no good outcome for that day. My knee going loosy goosy is a sign I am dangerously tired and should be sleeping round the clock.  But there are too many tasks left undone and merely two weeks before this festival.

And then there is my longing for a parish...

A long week, a week when I know not the words to write even for myself.  Days I will not remember and cannot come back here to find since I failed to capture them.  Days I wish never to know again.  Days I want to keep close until the day I die and I am taken into the arms of my Savior.

There was a moment of pure joy followed shortly by a moment of true anguish.  So deep was my despair, all the greater because I believed that is how it always is, joy snatched away.  But Pastor F bluntly admonished me, in all manner of compassion, that I am wrong. The joy has not been taken away.  It still happened.  No matter what followed, I did have that moment as a precious gift from God who loves me.

Last night, while we did not get far in the Smalcald Articles, even as excited as I am since he finally parsed the difference between the use of the word "mass" in the Augsburg Confession and in the Smalcald Articles.  But while we moved just a smidge further, we leapt ahead with regard to the Gospel...at least for me!

We were reading about the evil practice of selling the Lord's Supper, when Luther said there were better ways of saving the people.  It struck me in that moment...does the Lord's Supper save?  Pastor F kindly refrained from calling me stupid even as he sort of laughed as he said of course.  It's the body and blood of Jesus Christ who saves us from our sin, Myrtle!  Silly me.  I thought of the Lord's Supper as taking in His forgiveness, as receiving His Medicine, but not as salvation.  It seems logical, but there are those problems with definitions.

In the Protestant church, you get asked:  when were you saved?  Past tense.  A moment in time.  A moment in time when you prayed the "Jesus Come Into My Heart" prayer.  You are saved once.  But I face the assaults and accusations of satan and his dominion every day, not just one day in time.  He is defeated for all eternity, but just because he is defeated it does not mean that he stops his attacks...he's ferocious and relentless that way...and wily in how he goes about it.  His lies...specious...wrapped in the appearance of truth...

I need saving every day.

So, in that moment, the utter longing I have for the Lord's Supper was made clear.  I am not weird for longing so.  And my desire is all the greater.  His gift to me more magnificent than even I understood.

In teaching me this, Pastor F took the opportunity to read from John 6, where Christ speaks of His body and blood.  Even now, even a year into this, I am still surprised and thrilled each time someone reads to me whole chunks of the Living Word.  Pastor F did not stop after a few verses, but kept reading and reading and reading...with great passion and obviously savoring the Living Word as much as I and his Lovely Bride were in that moment.  I simply cannot describe the joy of such for me, the fellowship and the grace and the mercy wrapped up into one sweet ineffable moment.

But that was not the only good Word that he taught me last night.  Pastor F also gave me the beauty of Deuteronomy 32 as my Words of comfort during absolution.  And in doing so pointed out Gospel to me.  He was explaining how when he read the word "judgment" or "judge," his heart would leap toward Law and feel the weight and burden of such.  But the Holy Spirit has taught him that reading of judgement is actually reading of Gospel for those who are Christ's lambs!  Gospel!  How could this be so?

When Christ comes, He will come to judge both the quick and the dead, the living and the dead.  That is true; He will judge.  But we have the promise that He will judge us righteous!  In other words, every time we read that word it is a reminder of the good news brought to us, given to us on the Cross! 

The world shifted a bit then.  And I wanted to immediately read through the Psalter and look upon each time I find the word judge or judgment and see if I could see the Gospel there.


Lord, I believe.  Help my unbelief!