TLH #362 - My Soul's Best Friend, What Joy and Blessing

 

"My Soul's Best Friend, What Joy and Blessing"
by Wolfgang C. Dessler, 1660-1722

Tune: "Wie wohl ist mir"

1. My soul's best Friend, what joy and blessing
My spirit ever finds in Thee!
From gloomy depths of doubt distressing
Into Thine arms for rest I flee.
Then will the night of sorrow vanish
When from my heart Thy love doth banish
All anguish and all pain and fear.
Yea, here on earth begins my heaven;
Who would not joyful be when given
A loving Savior always near!

2. For though the evil world revile me
And prove herself my bitter foe
Or by her smile seek to beguile me,
I trust her not; her wiles I know.
In Thee alone my soul rejoices,
Thy praise alone it gladly voices,
For Thou art true when friendships flee.
The world may hate but cannot fell me;
Would mighty waves of trial quell me,
I anchor in Thy loyalty.

3. Through deserts of the cross Thou leadest;
I follow, leaning on Thy hand.
From out the cloud Thy child Thou feedest
And givest water from the sand.
I trust Thy ways, howe'er distressing;
I know my path will end in blessing;
Enough that Thou wilt be my Stay.
For whom to honor Thou intendest
Oft into sorrow's vale Thou sendest;
The night must e'er precede the day.

4. My soul's best Friend, how well contented
Am I, reposing on Thy breast;
By sin no more am I tormented
Since Thou dost grant me peace and rest.
Oh, may the grace that Thou hast given
For me a foretaste be of heaven,
All anguish and all pain and fear.
When I shall bask in joys divine!
Away, vain world, with fleeting pleasures;
In Christ I have abiding treasures.
Oh, comfort sweet, my Friend is mine!

Hymn #362
The Lutheran Hymnal
Text: Song of Solomon 5:16
Author: Wolfgang C. Dessler, 1692, cento
Translator: composite
Tune: "Wie wohl ist mir"
1st Published in: Geistreiches Gesangbuch
Town: Halle, 1704

TLH #615 - A Rest Remaineth for the Weary

"A Rest Remaineth for the Weary"
by Johann S. Kunth, 1700-1779

Tune - "Wie wohl ist mir"

1. A rest remaineth for the weary;
Arise, sad heart, and grieve no more;
Tho' long the way and dark and dreary,
It endeth on the golden shore.
Before His throne the Lamb will lead thee,
On heav'nly pastures He will feed thee.
Cast off thy burden, come with haste;
Soon will the toil and strife be ended,
The weary way which thou hast wended.
*Sweet is the rest which thou shalt taste.

2. The Father's house has many a dwelling,
And there will be a place for thee.
With perfect love His heart is welling
Who loved thee from eternity.
His precious blood the Lamb hath given
That thou might'st share the joys of heaven,
And now He calleth far and near:
"Ye weary souls, cease your repining,
Come while for you My light is shining;
*Come, sweetest rest awaits you here!"

3. O come, come all, ye weak and weary,
Ye souls bowed down with many a care;
Arise and leave your dungeons dreary
And listen to His promise fair:
"Ye bore your burdens meek and lowly,
I will fulfil My pledge most holy,
I'll be your Solace and your Rest.
Ye are Mine own, I will requite you;
Tho' sin and Satan seek to smite you,
*Rejoice! Your home is with the blest."

4. There rest and peace in endless measure
Shall be ours thro' eternity;
No grief, no care, shall mar our pleasure,
And untold bliss our lot shall be.
Oh, had we wings to hasten yonder--
No more o'er earthly ills to ponder--
To join the glad, triumphant band!
Make haste, my soul, forget all sadness;
For peace awaits thee, joy and gladness,--
*The perfect rest is nigh at hand.

Hymn #615
The Lutheran Hymnal
Text: Hebrews 4:9
Author: Johann S. Kunth, 1730, cento
Titled: "Es ist noch eine Ruh' vorhanden"
Tune: "Wie wohl ist mir"
*Variant tune
1st Published in: Geistreiches Gesangbuch
Town: Halle, 1704

 Norma A. Boeckler's Art Books

Request for More Nutritional Insights

 

I post my weight every so often on the Internet calendar. The key is lb since the numbers change, drifting down and fattening up for a time, starting in 2020. The key was my diabetic blood sugar, as predicted years before, and the perfect cholesterol number due to walnuts. A doctor told one of our church members that a handful of walnuts was required daily, and I complied with a side order of ice cream. The cholesterol went down as the blood sugar went up, so I identified the culprit with ease - me.

Dr. Joel Fuhrman, though a bit fanatic, as many prophets are, woke me up with his book Eat To Live. His Super Immunity book is perhaps even better with descriptions of how foods become medicine when allowed. Fuhrman shocked me with the overwhelming and inexpensive nutritional bonanza of frozen chopped greens, frozen vegetables, fresh fruit, nuts, seeds, and Ciceros in a can. Americans love lots of bread and hummus but go YUK! about chick peas in a can. Silly - Cicero's Latin name is chick pea.

A grocery store provides all the worst kinds of food that hurts us, because highly processed foods are loaded with salt, fat, and sugar, simultaneously removing the medicine God created - leafy greens, vegetables, fresh fruit, nuts, and seeds. Guess which group costs the most per ounce!

I grocery shop now - no more Schwan's -for salt. Beans and pizzas are good for salty shock and awe. I can get canned Ciceros with 120 mgs of salt per serving. Many beans sold by Bush are at 480 mgs per serving. One new rogue can of beans (which I own but do not eat) is rated at 1050 mgs of salt per serving. Our bodies store excess salt, which promotes high blood sugar. Walmart sells Dr. Pepper beans at a very high level, though not as saline as 1050 mgs. 

This Fuhrman-centric change really has to be a long-term project, gradually removing certified sugar-salt-fat Ft. Knox products - expensive by definition, protected against any threat. Go down the frozen vegetable display - IGNORE THE NEARBY CHOCOLATES! - you will find many frozen vegetables and fruits, highly priced and loaded with added sugar and salt. The frozen, low cost vegetables are often SEASONED SEPARATELY! Yes, the cash cost is ginned up for a few pennies of added salt, added sugar, and various spices. 

We do not crave food so much as we crave food we are used to eating. Therefore, slipping out of the clutches and bad health of Dames Sugar-Salt-Fat will entice us to go back and plunge into the Slough of Despond (Pilgrim's Progress). I went back to pizza and some ice cream when I was driving someone almost daily to the hospital. However, Herr Schwan helped by making a lot of their frozen foods excessively expensive and salty, fat taken for granted. I told the the very nice driver to her face that they were delivering very unhealthy and fabulously overpriced food, combined with really bad management - not at her level, but above. I bought one more package of "good" chocolate ice cream at the grocery store and discovered it was one of those fake ice creams, so bad that squirrels would not touch it. Thank you Stinko Corrupted Fake Ice Cream. 

Needless to say, Herr Ronald McDonald is now an orphan. I found unpleasant symptoms from the salt-sugar-fat and a repeat of the symptoms with Kettle Corn at the store (salt- corn sugar-fat). 

Good Craving

Now that I have confessed so much about toxic unhealthy food, let me encourage people who are trying to shift to greens, beans, vegetables, fresh fruit, nuts, and seeds. 

Changing food choices at once is impossible, but that has made many individuals criminally wealthy by promoting rigid, fanatical, trademarked formulas. My opinion - drop one terrible food at a time or reduce a favorite in amounts eaten in a week, substituting greens, beans, and fresh fruit - all three are nutritious and non-fattening.

Super Secret Stew

1. I include one meat serving per day, because omitting meat makes one weak and slow. Not having breakfast is dumb - not as foolish as eating at McDonalds or Starbucks - but still dumb, promoting raging replacements to serve a cavernous hunger.
2. Charlie Sue and I have one egg each morning, one tiny toast for me (no butter) and Science Diet for her. That is good for many hours.
3. I started greens and beans lunch with Dr. Fuhrman and have continued it - daily - for two years. I now slice some sausage into the stew and Charlie gets some from me by hand while we eat. 
4. One smoked sausage sliced is the beginning, and they flavor the stew, heated with a little water. Daily.
5. Frozen greens, daily, are currently chopped spinach and turnip greens, sometimes collards. Laugh all you want, they have almost no calories, no fat, not sugar, lots of fiber, and a lot of nutrition.
6. Ground flax seed, daily, is early since I am prone to forget this ingredient unless it is overdone. Ground flax seed is considered anti-cancer. 
7. Anise is wonderful in stew, and so is Italian seasoning.
8. Blueberries, daily, are anti-cancer and all around good. Three handfuls.
9. Anti-cholesterol walnuts are daily, one handful and sometimes repeated as an evening substitute for ice cream. 
10. Mushrooms, daily, are anti-cancer and delicious in stew. 
11. Lima beans, daily, are good and add to the nutritional mix.
12. Onions, green and red peppers were foundation when I began make stew, and I still favor the mix, which is considered anti-cancer and part of the rainbow collection of vegetables.
13. Tomato paste, daily, provides a base for the stew and is possibly help for the eyes.
14. The last is a can of Ciceros. They are worked into the stew, which is heated up during the additions.
15. I use a two-quart pan and usually eat all of it, with the very bottom being shared by Charlie.

Downloaded from the NSA

Tom Fisher Knows the Biblical Evidence Better Than Seminaries

 

 Sheep from Tom Fisher's farm are threatened by the upcoming severe cold weather. May God watch over those flocks, In Jesus' Name. Amen.

Dear Pastor Jackson,

Please pray God will protect me and my animals during the bitterly cold temperatures of the next several weeks. 

I am purposely stuck on page 189 of your book on the King James Bible. God grant us all the faith of Yale's Nils Dahl who said, "The text! The text! We have the text!" 

The greatest danger of 2024 is the persistent "Lutheran" liars who say we cannot be certain of any text. 

We MUST be certain of the text if we want to be Christian!

God chose the text during the reformation: the TEXTUS RECEPTUS, King James Bible, Luther's Bible.

In contrast the "Lutheran" liars choose the corrupted text that God REJECTED during the reformation: VATICANUS and its corrupted offspring: NIV, ESV, NKJV, Beck's, NASB, RSV, etc. And SINAITICUS was a 100% forgery.

I think these persistent liars are not afraid to speak a word against God the Holy Ghost and the text He has chosen: TEXTUS RECEPTUS, King James Bible, and Luther's Bible.

In Christ,

Tom Fisher

Daily Luther Sermon Quote - Water into Wine - "Hence the highest thought in this Gospel lesson, and it must ever be kept in mind, is, that we honor God as being good and gracious, even if he acts and speaks otherwise, and all our understanding and feeling be otherwise., For in this way feeling is killed, and the old man perishes, so that nothing but faith in God’s goodness remains, and no feeling."

 

Click here -> Complete Sermon - Changing Water into Wine - Second Sunday after Epiphany 

Wedding at Canna - Paolo Veronese, 1563

16. This is where faith stands in the heat of battle. Now observe how his mother acts and here becomes our teacher. However harsh his words sound, however unkind he appears, she does not in her heart interpret this as anger, or as the opposite of kindness, but adheres firmly to the conviction that he is kind, refusing to give up this opinion because of the thrust she received, and unwilling to dishonor him in her heart by thinking him to be otherwise than kind and gracious-as they do who are without faith, who fall back at the first shock and think of God merely according to what they feel, like the horse and the mule, Psalm 32:9. For if Christ’s mother had allowed those harsh words to frighten her she would have gone away silently and displeased; but in ordering the servants to do what he might tell them she proves that she has overcome the rebuff and still expects of him nothing but kindness.

17. What do you think of the hellish blow, when a man in his distress, especially in the highest distress of conscience, receives the rebuff, that he feels God declaring to him: “What have I to do with thee?” Quid mihi et tibi? He must needs faint and despair, unless he knows and understands the nature of such acts of God, and is experienced in faith. For he will act just as he feels, and will not think of God in a different way and mean the words. Feeling nothing but wrath and hearing nothing but indignation, he will consider God only as his enemy and angry judge. But just as he thinks God to be so will he find him. Thus he will expect nothing good from him.

That is to renounce God with all his goodness. The result is that he flees and hates him, and will not have God to be God; and every other blasphemy that is the fruit of unbelief.

18. Hence the highest thought in this Gospel lesson, and it must ever be kept in mind, is, that we honor God as being good and gracious, even if he acts and speaks otherwise, and all our understanding and feeling be otherwise., For in this way feeling is killed, and the old man perishes, so that nothing but faith in God’s goodness remains, and no feeling. For here you see how his mother retains a free faith and holds it forth as an example to us. She is certain that he will be gracious, although she does not feel it.

She is certain also that she feels otherwise than she believes. Therefore she freely leaves and commends all to his goodness, and fixes for him neither time nor place, neither manner nor measure, neither person nor name. He is to act when it pleases him. If not in the midst of the feast, then at the end of it, or after the feast. My defeat I will swallow, his scorning me, letting me stand in disgrace before all the guests, speaking so unkindly to me, causing us all to blush for shame. He acts tart, but he is sweet I know. Let us proceed in the same way, then we are true Christians.

19. Here note how severely he deals with his own mother, teaching us thereby not only the example of faith mentioned above, but confirming that in things pertaining to God and his service we are to know neither father nor mother, as Moses writes in Deuteronomy 33:9: “He who says of his father and of his mother, I know them not, observes thy Word, Israel.” For although there is no higher authority on earth than that of father and mother, still this ends when God’s Word and work begin. For in divine things neither father nor mother, still less, a bishop or any other person, only God’s Word is to teach and guide. And if father and mother were to order, teach, or even beg you to do anything for God, and in his service that he has not clearly ordered and commanded, you are to reply: Quid mihi et tibi? What have I and you to do with each other? In this same way Chris there refuses absolutely to do God’s work when his own mother wants it.

20. For father and mother are in duty bound, yea, God made them father and mother for this very purpose, not to teach and lead their children to God according to their own notions and devotion, but according to God’s command; as St. Paul declares in Ephesians 6:4: “Ye fathers; provoke not your children to wrath: but nurture them in the chastening and admonition of the Lord;” i.e. teach them God’s command and Word, as you were taught, and not notions of your own.

Thus in this Gospel lesson you see the mother of Christ directing the servants away from herself unto Christ, telling them not: Whatsoever I say unto you, do it; but: “Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it.” To this Word alone you must direct everyone, if you would direct aright; so that this word of Mary (whatsoever he saith, do it) is, and ought to be, a daily saying in Christendom, destroying all doctrines of men and everything not really Christ’s Word. And we ought firmly to believe that what is imposed upon us over and above God’s Word is not, as they boast and lie, the commandment of the church. For Mary says: Whatsoever he saith that, that, that do, and that alone; for in it there will be enough to do.

21. Here also you see, how faith does not fail, God does not permit that, but gives more abundantly and gloriously than we ask. For here not merely wine is given, but excellent and good wine, and a great quantity of it. By this he again entices and allures us to believe confidently in him, though he delay. For he is truthful and cannot deny himself; he is good and gracious, that he must of himself confess and in addition prove it, unless we hinder him and refuse him time and place and the means to do so. At last he cannot forsake his work, as little as he can forsake himself — if only we can hold out until his hour comes.

ELCA's United Lutheran Seminary Graduate Preaches without Faith or Christ

 

"She was the director of a Wabash grant exploring the use of deliberative dialogue in congregations and theological education.  An ardent advocate for faith-based climate and environmental activism, Dr. Schade has partnered with organizations such as ecoAmerica’s Blessed Tomorrow, the BTS Center, Creation Justice Ministries, and the Interfaith Center for Sustainable Development to create resources and programming to support clergy preaching about environmental issues  Dr. Schade is also conducting a longitudinal research study about ministry, preaching, and social issues that has surveyed thousands of clergy and laity since 2017."

Preaching builds bridges in a divisive time

As we get closer to the annual meeting, we will share more details about the other topics we will address, particularly around building bridges with the LGBTQIA+ community and with preachers in emerging and non-traditional settings (e.g., itinerant preachers, chaplains, lay preachers, etc.)

In the meantime, if you are a preacher or a teacher of preachers, I invite you to think about the many ways in which preaching builds bridges. Especially as we are heading into another presidential election year that portends to be divisive, building bridges is essential. Sermons already link the biblical text, theology, and context in organic ways.  As we expand and deepen our work toward diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice, we welcome the multiple ways that our members and practicing preachers will build bridges through their ministries of pastoring, preaching, teaching, and research.