April 22, 2026

April 22, 2026

by | Apr 22, 2026 | PS from PS

ps from ps

If you’ve ever tried to pick out one voice in a crowded room, you know how hard it can be. A restaurant full of conversations, an arena during a Sabres game, or the chaos of a family gathering—voices everywhere. Yet somehow a parent can hear their child call from across the room. Something about that voice cuts through the noise.In John 10, Jesus says, “My sheep hear my voice.” It’s a comforting image, but it’s also a challenge. Because the truth is, our world is full of voices competing for our attention. Voices telling us what success looks like. Voices telling us what we should fear. Voices telling us we never quite have enough, never quite are enough.Jesus names another voice in the passage—the thief. The thief steals joy, drains hope, and convinces us life is smaller than it really is. But Jesus says he came for the opposite reason: “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”Abundant life isn’t just about having more stuff or fewer problems. When we look at the early church in Acts, we see what it looks like. People sharing what they had. Eating together. Supporting each other. Faith lived out in community rather than isolation.And the good news is that the shepherd doesn’t call to us from far away. Jesus walks with us through the valleys too—the moments of suffering, uncertainty, and healing. The shepherd stays close.  He’s in the room.So maybe the spiritual task for today is simple: pause long enough to listen. In the middle of all the other voices, the shepherd is still calling out with love.And when we learn to recognize that voice, we discover the life God intends for us—fullness present, tangible hope, and grace incarnate.Lord, I’m listening.  Amen

Still in One Peace,
PS
April 22, 2026

April 15, 2026

by | Apr 17, 2026 | PS from PS

ps from psI forget people’s names a lot.  I’ve either (a) maxed out the number of people’s names I’m allowed to retain, (b) killed off two many brain cells at Bills tailgates or (c) getting old and experiencing some memory loss.  Or maybe a combination of all three.

It’s frustrating when someone is standing right next to you and you know you know them from somewhere, but not sure where and are too afraid to talk.  Sometimes I’m out in the world and sitting right next to someone that I know and don’t even realize they are there.  I’m either distracted, on my phone, deep in thought or spaced out and I don’t even see them.

It happened to the disciples too.  Except they had a valid excuse.  Jesus, their mentor, rabbi and savior, had just died.  All their expectations had just been shattered.  And while they walked to the town down the road, the risen Jesus walks right up to them and they didn’t know who he was.  They can’t blame Bills tailgates, but they can blame grief, confusion and hopelessness.  

The story continues that Jesus shares the whole Biblical plan with them, gets invited to their house, while there breaks bread and communes with them and only then do they figure out who he is.  

And then they say one of my favorite phrases in Scripture: “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking with us on the road?”

Jesus didn’t wait for them to recognize him before he walked with them and communed them.  He didn’t shame and say “don’t you dopes know who I am?”  He just walked along side them in their grief.

Were not our hearts burning?

Not only do I struggle with names, I struggle with seeing God in live time.  During wars.  During crazy verbal fights between Presidents and Popes.  During the loss of really good young people who die too soon.  During the super hard moments of life.

But in every instance, when I pause, pray, commune and reflect, I can see that I never went through the toughest moments of life alone.  God was on that rough road with me.  Sometimes it was a short walk and sometimes it was a damn long dangerous superhighway.  But I wasn’t walking alone.  

Were not our hearts burning?

Wherever you walk today, you are not alone.  Wherever you take your confusion, grief and shattered expectations, you are not alone.  No matter how long this road looks to be, you are not alone.  

May your hearts burn in live time today to recognize Jesus walking with you.

Lord, thanks for finding me on the road.  AmenStill in One Peace,
PS 
April 22, 2026

April 1, 2026

by | Apr 1, 2026 | PS from PS

ps from ps/pk

Read Mark 11:1-11You Better Recognize! – reflections from Rev. Dr. Brian Blount

You better recognize! You better pay attention and respond as if lives depend on it.  Attend to the truth: Jesus is Lord. The prophet Malachi (3:1) declares that the Lord whom the people seek will suddenly come to the Temple.  As Jesus does. Entering Jerusalem, in word and deed, he identifies himself as Lord. He has prophetic foreknowledge about the location and state of a colt. He possesses the regal authority to requisition that colt for his royal purpose.

At Passover, pilgrims were expected to walk into the city. No doubt Jesus’ followers expected him to do exactly that, since he always walked wherever he went. This time, he chooses instead to ride the kind of colt a king in a processional would ride, one that had never before been ridden. In so doing, he brings to realization the prophecy of Zechariah: Your king, Jerusalem, comes to you triumphant, riding on a colt (Zechariah 9:9).

Appropriately, the people respond. The disciples throw their cloaks onto the colt. Their draping is a makeshift throne. The people suddenly crowded around Jesus follow suit. Jettisoning their cloaks onto the ground along with leafy branches, they lay before him a makeshift red carpet. And they sing the Hosanna of the Hallel Psalms23 (see Psalm 118:25) that celebrates the coming of their Davidic King.

Jesus is that King. But in an astonishing way. We know that he is ultimately on his way to the cross. His kingship, symbolized by his station upon a humble colt, is one of sacrifice and service. And yet, as Lord, he is not a helpless victim. He is in charge. He is working out God’s plan in this demonstration of royal authority. Even in the process of letting go of his life, he is in charge of the liberation of God’s people. He puts our lives before his own life.

Our calling, having recognized Jesus’ Lordship, is to emulate his regal imperative. To live our lives as he lived his, in service to—and perhaps even in sacrifice for—the lives of God’s people.

Reflect

How might we emulate Jesus through acts of service and sacrifice?Blessings,

PS and PK
March 25, 2026

March 25, 2026

by | Mar 26, 2026 | PS from PS

ps from ps/pk
John 8:2-11; Matthew 23:23The Inconvenience of Mercy – reflections from Rev. Lizzie McManus-Dail


The inconvenience of mercy is that it’s hardly ever merited.But good grief, does Jesus talk ad nauseam about mercy in the Bible; perhaps most famously telling his disciples—to their great chagrin— they must forgive their siblings seventy-seven times for the same sin (Matthew 18:21-22). He calls the merciful blessed in the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:7). And then there are his words as he is dying, on a cross, surrounded by criminals and his weeping mother and the mob that lynched him: “Father, forgive them” (Luke 23:34). In John 8:2-11, he embodies mercy with a woman whom I am rather inclined to think has received little mercy in her life, but that’s my own protective instincts kicking in for women in patriarchal places. It’s entirely possible she “deserves” little of what Jesus is offering her.Mercy—unmerited, inadvisably offered, and brimming with foolish hope—is the making of a Christ-follower.It’s not that I think practicing mercy is particularly easy.I doubt Jesus would talk so much about forgiveness and mercy if it were easy—God tends to repeat what we struggle to listen to. No, mercy is brutal.Mercy is what we ask for when we have messed up so mightily in our relationships, our marriages, our parenting, our friendships, that we face either the death of that relationship or the death of who we thought we were. Perhaps this is the kind of death this woman had experienced in her home, and the anger of the crowd was merely reflective of how hurt they were to see a home torn apart. Maybe she had been dealt a death-dealing marriage and was looking for escape. How dare she, then, receive. . . mercy?And yet, mercy makes no sense. It is not logical, or equally beneficial.  Mercy does not make us money or make us look good. But mercy is what makes us God’s own.The receiving and extending of mercy in the most awful and improbable of places is what makes me know that God is still at work in this world.Mercy is a practice of hoping and knowing that there is more than the thing that hurts us—more than the thing that haunts us. This, too, is how mercy is part of God’s justice, for God’s justice is God’s joy. God’s justice does not align with our human metrics of justice and punishment. God’s justice is the delight God feels at the lost sheep coming home, the coin being found. God’s goodness is not retributive.  God’s goodness is rooted in goodness propagating in the face of death.Which is, perhaps, why Jesus tells her: Go. Sin no more. And live.ReflectRecount a time when you received mercy. How did it feel?Blessings,PS and PK 
March 18, 2026

March 18, 2026

by | Mar 18, 2026 | PS from PS


ps from ps/pk
Matthew 19:13-15; Deuteronomy 24:17-22 For the Children – reflections from Rev. Dr. Brian Blount
For children, we would do anything. Children are the closest thing to a miracle in most of our modern human lives. They are blessings we indulge with the best of our energy, support, protection, attention, and acceptance. We not only welcome them into our company—we make them the center of our attention. We watch what they do. Marvel at how they grow. Attend to what they say. It was not always so. In Jesus’ time, in the company of adults, particularly adults with a sacred agenda, children were an invasive distraction. Humble in both physical stature and emotional maturity, children occupied one of the lowest rungs of social status. Leaders like Jesus were not expected to climb down to their level, and parents ought not to presume lifting them up into his presence. That was the attitude of Jesus’ disciples. They mirrored the ethos of their time when Jesus so desperately wanted them to challenge it—by treating children the way they would treat him. Earlier, Matthew 18:1-5 records an incident where Jesus warns that only those who humble themselves like children will receive entry into the reign of God. He follows up that startling revelation with the even more striking declaration that in welcoming the lowly child, one welcomes Jesus himself. Just a brief time later in Matthew 19:13-15, the disciples attempt to bodyguard Jesus, pushing away every child in range of Jesus’ sacred space. In rejecting the children, they are rejecting Jesus. So Jesus rebukes, not the parents and their children, but his dull disciples. They refuse to entertain the radical truth about God’s reign that Jesus is trying so desperately to teach them. The reign of God belongs to children and everyone who, like children, is not granted polite society’s respect and acceptance. The children, then, are a metaphor for all who lack societal status, who so-called decent folk find distasteful and undesirable. The migrant worker. The immigrant. The alien. The homeless. The powerless. The undocumented. Harking back to Deuteronomy 24:17-22, where God commands the people to care for the socially downtrodden because they themselves had been beaten down in Egypt, Jesus issues a clear, if not controversial, command for his followers. They are to live as an ekklesia, a “church.” And this church is to exist in this world as a refuge of radical welcome. In this season of Lent, the good news is that God, through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, extends the same radical welcome even to us.  Because we are all lowly sinners, we are all unworthy of acceptance in God’s reign. And yet, God promises to receive us as if heaven is our home. Jesus wants his church to offer the same hospitality—to greet those of the lowest stature with the grandest welcome. Reflect What’s one way your church or community can extend radical welcome? Blessings, PS and PK   Twitter Facebook Website     Copyright © 2026 St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, All rights reserved.
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