Word from Wiese

Ripped Apart (Happy 2025, Ugh)

Ripped Apart (Happy 2025, Ugh)

15 January 2025

We were shocked.

Our three-year old rescue dog, Breezy, has proven an exceptionally well-behaved canine.  Even in her first year with us,Happy 2025 Ugh Christ Our Shepherd Lutheran Church Word From Wiese she only chewed up two little items before figuring out what was kosher for gnawing.

So, when I came home from church two Sundays ago, LuAnne broke the news to me gently that Breezy had re-fashioned my fresh new calendar book.  The new year wasn’t even one week old and my calendar was mangled.  Was this Breezy’s way of asking for more scheduled time for neighborhood walks?  Was I updating my itinerary with roast-beef sandwich smelling hands, leaving an aroma too tempting for Breezy?   I pray this devastation is not a harbinger regarding how my 2025 will unfold!

Note:

(For over 30 years, I’m one of the ELCA pastors who treasure these “little red books.”  I literally have a stack of 30 of them in my office, chronicling my ministry and life over these last 3 decades.   Although some pastors have shifted to electronic calendars, I’m convinced I still can find any date faster with this clever book than any smart phone.  These books, packed with info on the lectionary and liturgical festivals, are terrific.  But this year is the last year the ELCA publishers will provide them.  Along with a shift to online calendars is our pastoral shortage, experienced by just about all U.S. Christian denominations, so the lower quantities translate into prohibitive production costs.  So, I was savoring my final year with the faithful little red book.)

While I hope to replace my 2025 calendar ripped to smithereens, I recognize that some brothers and sisters in God’s family feel their 2025’s are coming apart at the seams much more horrifically.

More than 12,000 homes, businesses, schools and churches have burned in the fires raging across the Los Angeles area.  Happy 2025!  Ugh.

The trauma of living in Haiti continues to escalate.   As we remembered last Sunday in worship, Sunday marked the 15th anniversary of the devastating earthquake that extinguished the lives of 300,000 of God’s children.  The quake flattened not only homes but the infrastructure, momentum, and hope that was building in that country, from which it never has rebounded.  Happy 2025!  Ugh.

How about you?  Have your nicely-crafted plans for 2025 been challenged at all?

In these situations, let us claim that more important than our plans are God’s promises to be with us.  When it comes to fires, Isaiah 43.2 promises that in those times when we “walk through the fires,” even though our homes may be engulfed, God is there with us.  For “I have called you by name, you are mine.”  In regard to the proverbial earthquakes of our lives or real ones which devastated Haiti, Psalm 46.2 reminds us that even if “the earth gives way and the mountains fall into the sea we should not fear, for the Lord Almighty is with us.”

In addition to your difference-making prayers for our fellow humans in California, Haiti, or beyond, we know are dollars can be blessed by God and transformed into real hope.  Regarding the fires, you can share hope HERE.   Regarding Haiti, please know that your contributions at last year’s Hoops for Haiti and 80 for Haiti are bringing hope, food, and faith-in-action.  Thank you!

Maybe as our 2025’s are already being challenged, we put into action the promise of the Christmas season.   For even though we’ve just put away the Christmas ornaments, the work continues.  Here’s how it’s captured in the poem by Howard Thurman puts it, in his poem, The Work of Christmas:  

“When the song of the angels is stilled,

when the star in the sky is gone,

when the kings and princes are home,

when the shepherds are back with their flock,

the work of Christmas begins:

To find the lost, to heal the broken, to feed the hungry, to release the prisoner, to rebuild the nations, to bring peace among others, to make music in the heart.”

 

In Christ’s hope,

Pastor Fritz

Let us pray:  Dear heavenly Father, when our curated calendars are ripped apart, help us remember more important than our plans are your promises to be with us whatever we face.  As you show up to us, help us to show up for one another.  In Jesus’ name, Amen.