Busy Nothings

Tonight as I was driving home I noticed a sign in front of a church that read “Prayer–like having Trump’s credit card.” I pondered what could possibly be meant by that and came up with several theories. My two best explanations are:

1) There is no limit on how many prayers we can send up. This theologically makes sense, but doesn’t fit the whole “Trump’s credit card” analogy. But if it means there’s no limit on how many prayers we can send up, it would better read, “Prayer–like a roll of stamps that never ends” or something similarly cheesy. A credit card enables you to get stuff, and assuming Trump doesn’t have a credit limit, he can get whatever he wants. This leads me to my more disturbing theory:

2) We pray for stuff, we get stuff. There’s no limit on the stuff we’ll get when we pray for it.

What do you think?

Welcome to Lutheran Carnival LI!! I’m honored to pitch in and help my brother-in-law keep this carnival going, although I must admit that I have not regularly visited the carnivals until recently.

Being a church musician and holding a B.A. in Music from a Lutheran college, I would be remiss in my duties as host if I did not select as my little known Lutheran contributor a church musician. Every “in-tuned” Lutheran knows J.S. Bach, of course, and though at times I will select an organ work by the famous Baroque composer, my favorite organ piece is by another, lesser known Baroque composer.

Meet Dieterich Buxtehude.

Diderich Buxtehude was born about 1637 in his native country of Denmark. He later Germanized his name by signing all documents Dieterich Buxtehude. He served as organist in Helsingborg and Elsinore, but most notably serving over 40 years at St. Mary’s Church in Lübeck. Although much of his music was performed in ordinary Lutheran worship, Buxtehude presented a variety of often-dramatic sacred choral and organ music in his late afternoon Abendmusiken concerts, for which he is most famous. So influential were these concerts to budding composers of his day (including Handel and Telemann), that they would travel hundreds of miles to meet Buxtehude and witness his musical genius. J.S. Bach traveled more than 250 miles on foot to experience these concerts and worship first hand.
Buxtehude’s organ works comprise a central part of the standard organ repertoire and are frequently performed at recitals and church services. His style strongly influenced many composers, including Bach. He is definitely a Lutheran to note!

On with the Carnival…

Jason Evans of Geekspaces.net submitted his post entitled “Contributing to Salvation�: a brief comparison of the Lutheran/Reformed view of who works in salvation and the Armenian view. One of the commenters also points out the difference between these views and the EO view.

Pastor Walter Snyder of Ask the Pastor presents two posts: “The Pastor and Funeral Visitation” in which he responds to the question of a minister from another church body, providing practical advice concerning The Pastor and Funeral Visitation, and “Mental Health Help” in which Ask the Pastor fields another question about generalized anxiety disorder and focuses his reply on the spiritual dimension of Mental Health Help.

Then my dear sister-in-law who is currently “growing” my 14th niece or nephew, writes about “Pregnant Women and Food” on Random Intolerance. She also describes all the neat stuff that can be done in Kansas without driving too far from Wichita in “Things I Want to Do This Summer”. It looks like the combine demolition derby is a winner.

The Aardvark featured several commemorations and celebrations over the past couple weeks. Included among these were “The Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary” and the commemoration of “Justin, Martyr”.

Dan at Necessary Roughness submits two posts: “Musical Piety” in which Dan discusses listening in Christian liberty to music that seems to be anti-Christian, and “Pentecost and the Holy Spirit” where Dan offers an anecdote from Pr. Wokoma in Houston, discussing the work of the Holy Spirit.

Theresa of Be Strong in the Grace reflects on the very visual concept of drowning one’s self daily in the water of their baptism in “Drowning Myself Daily…”

Confessing Evangelical submitted “Praying the Catechism”. The Small Catechism has been called “the only catechism that can be prayed”. John H picks up on that suggestion by proposing an office-style form of daily devotion based on the Catechism.

Hummie’s World gives us “I do not like change!” Hummie remarks, “I am always writing about my daily life and how I see God in it…this is my recent writing. If you would like to see others, hit the “God and Me” tab at the top. Also, I would like to highlight my new site of Christian writings ..www.looktolord.blogspot.com…great for church secretaries…I’m still trying to get stuff up there.”

My own contribution is the significance of spiritual adoption in the post “The Best Adoption Ever!!!”

In addition, Dan at Necessary Roughness recommended this post regarding women in today’s society to the carnival.

So that’s it for Carnival LI. Sorry I did not initially get all the submissions due to a filter mix up. Thanks to all the contributers, and thank you for allowing me to host.

As we re-start the international adoption research, it’s amazing to me how in tuned I am to anything regarding adoption. I was reading Ephesians this morning and ran across these verses from Ephesians 1:

For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will

I think about how much I want a child–so much so that I’m willing to pay tens and thousands of dollars to adopt from a different country that not only doesn’t have nearly the economy we have, but has a government and society that we as Americans probably could never survive in. I want to pay thousands of dollars to that country to bring one baby home to love and nurture and make a part of my family. I want to take that baby out of the third world country it’s currently struggling in, make it mine, and give that baby all of the love possible. I want to invest in that baby (maybe I should say spoil?) and give it everything we have, including any inheritance we may have to pass on someday. That’s adoption.
How much more beautiful, then, is the reference God gives us to being adopted as sons (daughters get no inheritance). I know the love and life I want to give my Moses or Phoebe is nothing compared to the perfect love and life God wants to give me. He didn’t just pay $20,000–he gave up his only son! That’s a much bigger sacrifice than any money my husband and I might be required to pay. God wanted so much to take me out of my “third world” sinful world that He gave everything just to bring me Home someday and give me my inheritance of eternal life. And just as I can’t wait to finalize our adoption, whether in India, Africa, or wherever we end up adopting from, God can’t wait to finalize our adoption when we get home to heaven!

In recent years I have come to question Confirmation—not the need for instruction before Communion but rather what it’s developed into.
As a teen my classmates and I treated it as something we had to do between the ages of 12-14. Two of my classmates went to public school until 7th grade when they transferred to our church’s school so they would get the confirmation instruction without having to come to an evening class. Confirmation was then marked with a big party for friends and relatives with cake and presents celebrating more the confirmand it seems to me now than the public declaration of faith and desire for membership and participation in Holy Communion. I regard those vows I took as serious as my wedding vows, yet I don’t believe I fully understood what they meant at the time. And in the years after, I only saw a few of those classmates in church. In my adult life I have witnessed the confirmation of those whose public actions defied what they professed to believe and promised to be faithful too. The most disturbing was the confirmation of a girl who was involved in Pro-Choice and Gay Rights activities at her school. And, of course, there are the startling statistics of the dramatic drop in church attendance and membership in the years after confirmation. Are we confirming too young? Are we not stressing enough the seriousness and significance of the vows and profession of faith? I don’t have answers, but every year during “Confirmation seasonâ€? I seem to ask the same questions.