Home

 

WELCOME TO BRITTON LUTHERAN PARISH

PASTORS TERRILL AND SARA SORENSEN

Text Box:   Dear Friends:   Karl Barth is considered by many to be the person who more than anyone else shaped the study of theology in the twentieth century.   His huge work “Christian Dogmatics” fills thirteen volumes.    And yet, when a reporter once asked Barth if he could summarize his work in those thirteen volumes, Barth thought for a moment and then said, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”   Those are humble words from a man who could claim his own work to be the important thing in his life.   May is a month of days, days of memories and milestones like Mother’s Day and graduation days and Memorial Day.  Tucked in May somewhere for kids in this part of the world is the last day of school and the first day of summer vacation.  It would be easy for us as to make a claim to “fame” based on one or more of these important days and what we’ve done to arrive there or what our loved ones have done to arrive there. But woven in and throughout all the milestones and accomplishments of our lives – great and small – is the simple truth that Karl Barth knew in one sentence though he could fill books:  “Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so.”    Our lives are busy with many things, especially this month.  Notes to ourselves can fill a calendar.  Our busyness means nothing, however, if it isn’t hemmed in on every side  and doesn’t boil down to that same truth:  “I am loved by Jesus who has told me so Himself in his Holy Word.”    In this month of days may you know the Giver of those days and milestones and memories:  the God who loves you in Jesus Christ and knowing Him may you be moved to give Him thanks for all the sweet days in May.                                                                                                                  In Christ,                                                                                                           Pastor Sara Sorensen    

 

On our vacation we spent a day in Petoskey, Michigan.  Petoskey sits on the shore of Lake Michigan and is a very attractive tourist town.  It is best known for  “Petoskey stones” which are found along the shore and in the shallow waters of the lake.  These stones, once they have been cleaned and polished, display a mass of hexagonal shapes that were once living coral 350 million years ago in the Devonian period when that area was beneath an ocean.  In the various ages that have followed the corals became fossilized into rocks and were subsequently ploughed up by the glaciers in the last ice age.

       The stones we waded around in the water finding are still where they were when they were living coral,  but they are not that anymore.  The salty seawater that once gave them life disappeared millions of years ago.  Now they are relics, decorative curiosities from eons ago with no life in them.  They stayed where they were but they didn’t survive.

       In Istanbul, Turkey there are a handful of relics from the Church of the Holy Apostles which was one of the earliest churches in New Testament times.  The church is gone, long ago.  All that is left are a handful of relics.  Elsewhere in Turkey there are tile mosaics of scenes from the New Testament in places where churches once stood but where no one gathers to worship the risen Christ anymore.  These relics are in the places where the early church took root when Paul and Silas and Barnabas passed through preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  The relics – like the Petoskey stones -- are still there, but like the stones they have no life in them.  Christianity has virtually disappeared from that part of the world.

       The corals died without the ocean water that gave them life even though they remained in the same place they were.  The church died in Istanbul because the Word, the life-giving, faith-creating Gospel of our Lord, disappeared or was abandoned even though the relics and mosaic tiles are still there.

       There is a lesson in that for us as Christians and as  congregations.  The source of our life and faith is not in a place, an institution, or a building as important and helpful as all those may be.  What keeps us alive and growing is the Word of God.  If we hold on to that, we will survive and grow no matter what storms and upheavals may take place around us.

      In these last weeks of summer we encourage you to spend time in that Word.  Here is an idea for Bible reading during August:  Read a chapter a day from I and II Corinthians through the month.  These two letters of were written to a church he founded to help guide them in the midst of turmoil and suspicion among them.  There are 29 chapters so you can miss a couple of days and still be on track.

       Grow in the Word and enjoy the rest of the summer.

Pastor Terrill