Daily Devotions

So we are always confident; even though we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord— for we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we do have confidence, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him.  For all of us must appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive recompense for what has been done in the body, whether good or evil.  2 Corinthians 5:6-10

Certain passages of scripture are difficult for me.  Two pieces of these four verses hold such difficulty.

Yes, there is a deep confidence in these verses.  Yes, we do walk by faith rather than by sight as children of God and there is deep comfort in that.  There is the assurance that we don’t have to see the end of the trail to know we are following the right path.  There is the promise that there is more to life, more to our destiny in Christ, than the difficulties we experience in life today.

But the dark side of such confidence is the temptation to quit.  To bail out.  It is the temptation to despair and hopelessness for this life.

The other troublesome passage is the reminder of our scheduled(?) appearance before the judgment seat of Christ and the declaration that, once there, we will get what we deserve based on the good or evil we’ve done in this life.

Here too is cause for despair.  This is how I saw the faith before I came to faith.  This is how Christianity worked for me as a child – God was like Santa, he saw everything and only gave me good things when I did good things.  All was right with God if I was nice, and all I got from God was bad if I was naughty.

99% of the time I was naughty.

But then I discovered this good news called “grace.”  I discovered that the mercy of God would trump the justice of God.  And I discovered that, when Jesus came to do for us what we cannot and will not do for ourselves, I was included in that number.  And everything changed for me.  My life, my passions, my goals, my future.

But I’m still naughty.

Lutheran theology helped me there.  It pointed out passages like Romans 7 and wrapped it in a doctrine called “simul ustus et peccator” which holds the tension that we all experience as being wholly both saint and sinner, naughty and nice, at the same time.

But then Paul tells me again that there is a big ledger book in heaven with a full list of my merits and demerits.  I’m pretty sure which column will turn out longer.  And again comes the temptation to despair.

Until I think about my children.  Nothing could stop me from loving my children and my stepchildren.  Even the list of their demerits.  And, I hope at least, that it would bring them joy to know that they can live their lives in such a way that will also bring joy to their parents.  But we’re here to help them grow up.  Being “graceful” parents does not mean that anything goes or that everything is OK.  It means being honest parents, helpful parents, self sacrificing parents.

Which changes everything and drives the despair away.  Because it allows me to see that moment before the judgment seat as the time for my last confession, the final experience of clearing the air, knowing that Christ truly and deeply knows me – and welcomes me home anyway.

That vision, strangely enough, makes THIS life holy and worthwhile.  Heaven can wait even as we strive for it each day.

Let us pray:  Dear Lord, sustain us in the midst of the difficulties of this life with the promise of your presence and the hope of your love.  Forgive us our shortcomings and our fears, fill us with purpose and power to live fully and freely.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

He also said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it?  It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”  Mark 4:30-32

Maverick Welsh (his real name) is running for a city council position in my old neighborhood in Houston.  He has spent his working career as a history teacher at Jeff Davis High School.  I was just at a meeting across the street from that school last Saturday at Iglesia Evangelica Luterana El Buen Pastor, one of our Latino congregations in town.

One of the stories that he has been telling on the stump is about an email that he received from a fellow teacher in the Houston Independent School District.  She wrote to thank him for the encouragement he had given her.  It seems that one day, many years before, a young girl who came to Welsh at school one day, distraught that she had found out she was pregnant.  She feared her life was over.

Welsh listened to her story and then assured her that her life wasn’t over at all.  She still had a world of opportunities open to her.  He told her what a good student she was and suggested that she consider a career in education.  He told her how helpful it was to be a teacher who shared the same vacation schedule with her child and how teaching would give her a platform to help other young people make good decisions.

And that is how this planting of seeds works.  Often so secretly, so mysteriously.  A word here.  A loving deed there.  A firm correction and a hard dose of reality and a reminder of grace sprinkled in along the way.

Isn’t that how it has worked along the way for us?  We get discouraged and then something happens, or someone happens along, and we remember who we are and Whose we are.  Our faith seems so whispy and weak and then we find it carrying us through troubled waters we never saw coming.

From one strange character who upset everyone’s apple cart to eleven terrified guys hiding out in an upper room to thousands coming into a faith that would sweep the world.  In the big picture, and in the smallest detail like a snippet of consoling conversation that resets a child’s path in life, the Spirit takes the smallest of seeds and grows it into a work of beauty.

You and I have had those seeds planted deeply into the loam of our lives.  The harvest comes when we plant them in others.

Let us pray:  Dear Lord, your eyes are on the sparrows, the smallest and most intimate details and corners of our lives.  Save us from discouragement and short-sightedness as we live as your seed-planting people.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

He also said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.”  Mark 4:26-29

In 1900, roughly 97% of the American economy was directly connected to agriculture and we produced 100% of our food needs.   Today, that percentage has fallen to less than 3% and we produce 120% of our needs and more.  How did that happen?  Innovation, technology and science.  Farmers still work hard but if they want to survive, they also have to have the means to work smarter.

What was once considered a “bumper crop” would be a financial disaster today.  No one saves wheat seeds from 1951 to plant this spring of 2009.  Instead, there are people who constantly and creatively test new hybrids that are more pest and weather resistant.  They test the soil, apply chemicals as efficiently as possible and do everything they can to maximize their harvest.

And yet, given all of this, no one can make the rain fall or quit falling, the hail stay away or make a surprise visit.  Agriculture, the most basic function of providing daily bread to sustain our lives, remains an exercise of faith.  Mystery lies at the heart of the matter.

But Jesus wasn’t merely talking about wheat fields in his parable.  He was also talking about the mysterious planting and growth of seeds of faith in our lives.  People, events, moments all along the way plant those seeds in us.  Word and sacrament, Christian community, people who love us and people who test us, the ebb and flow of life in a broken world – all of this is about planting seeds of faith in the mysterious movement of the Spirit in our lives.

Yet, even given this mystery, how open are we are the people of God to rethink our ministry of planting and growing?  How is it that congregations can still think that doing worship and congregational life just like they did in 1951 will still be effective in the lives of people today?  Evidence tells us – in the experience of those Christian communities that have been open to change and adaptation – that it takes new forms and new styles and new ways of thinking/being to connect the Gospel with new people today.

Are we willing to go there?  Are we first in line to rethink, to experiment, to try and to test, all in the interests of connecting with new people, new fields, new missions?  Or are we content to sit back, knowing that we’ll get plenty to eat, without a thought to those who have long since moved on to other fields?

There is a great mystery in planting and growing.  But there is also a call to work both harder and smarter to reach our God-given potential.

Let us pray:  Thank you, Gracious Lord, for those people and those moments in which you planted seeds of faith in our lives.  Guide us, in our life together as your people, toward an openness to finding new ways to plant those same seeds in the lives of people today.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning.  No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:  ‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.  Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.  And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist.  The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.  Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’” Acts 2:14-21

Last night the Los Angeles Lakes beat Orlando in the first game of the NBA playoffs.  They still have three more, or five more, games to play to final settle the matter.  Some people have opinions, some even have preferences, but no one will know who ultimately wins until the fourth game is won by one team or the other.

Christians believe the game of life is already decided.  It is settled.  It is finished.  Jesus is King of Kings and Lord of Lords and his reign is one of peace, love and joy.  Peter knows that as he quotes Joel, “Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

Paul knows that as he writes to the Philippians, “Therefore God also highly exalt him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.”

John knows that as he wrote in the words of Jesus, “When the Son of Man is lifted up he will draw all men to himself.”

Peter tells us that everyone gets to play.  Sons and daughters, young men and old men, slaves and free – everyone gets to play.  No one gets cut.  No one spends the game on the bench except those stubborn ones who refuse to play.  The angels line the stands, the church of all times and places cheers us on.

The question, for Christians, isn’t “Who is going to win in the end?” but “How do we play in the meantime?”

We play with passion and the relentless pursuit of the unveiling of the Kingdom of God, on earth as it is in heaven.  We play fairly and humbly with a conscious regard both of our sinfulness and our God-graced saintliness.  We play always ready to pass the ball of our faith to the next person, constantly striving both to model and to share a lifestyle of faith that brings joy and peace into a dark and broken world.

We don’t shoot people we disagree with.  We don’t demonize those who differ.  We transform swords into plowshares and we walk daily with God.

At the end of the day, when the game is finally over, we celebrate.  That was Joel’s vision, passed down and through Jesus to us.  Rejoice, come Sunday morning, as you share one more preview, foretaste, of the feast to come.

Let us pray:  Give us, gracious Lord, a vision of the end that will fuel the daily lives we lead.  Use us, as signs of your gracious love, that we might bring light into darkness and hope into every corner of the earth.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”  Acts 2:5-13

We’ve all seen the jokes about change and the Church.  My favorite – for obvious reasons – How many Lutherans does it take to change a lightbulb?  “Change???”

Which is actually pretty weird, isn’t it?  How much sense does it make to be a “change averse” people when we belong to a faith that begins with the commanding invitation of our Leader and Lord, “Repent and believe in the good news.”?  Answer: It doesn’t make any sense at all.

Unless we practice selective hearing and we hear only what we want to hear.  Which is what we do.  So we focus on the Great Commandment and feel good about what a difference we make in the community with our clothing drives, our food drives and our Habitat for Humanity projects (all of which are wonderful and appropriate), but then we shrug our shoulders when asked how we are responding to the Great Commission in walking with new people toward newfound faith in Jesus.  Selective listening.

We talk until we are blue in the face about believing and the gracious love of God poured out in the good news….but we hardly give a thought to repentance, to turning around, to changing our direction and our minds and our actions.  Selective listening.

I know why.  It is easier.  On our own, we can do good works.  On our own, we can say all the right theological things.  But we can’t repent on our own and we can’t conjure up faith on our own.  For that we need the power of the Spirit and we need the movement of God which we cannot control or contain.  So we fudge on the hard stuff and focus on the easy stuff and we’re not alone in that.

The crowd gathered outside the room did the same thing.  That so many were gathered inside wasn’t new.  That so many languages were spoken at once wasn’t new.  But the understanding, the wonder, the joy – all of that was as new as new could get.  But those sneering at the door couldn’t handle it.  They symbolize the change averse, God-unconscious parts of all of us.  They don’t understand it so they put it down.  They dismiss it.  They sneer just as the crowds below the cross sneered at Jesus.

Show me a man who has come to a real faith in Jesus and I’ll show you a man who has changed.  He doesn’t think the same way anymore.  He is profoundly grateful and just as profoundly aware of the brokenness of his life from which he is being saved.

If I didn’t believe in the power of change, I don’t see much sense in the message of Jesus.

Let us pray:  Gracious Lord, keep us open-minded to the power of your Spirit working newness into our lives and the life of the world.  Soften the hardness of our hearts and open our ears and eyes to new possibilities of life.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

“And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.  Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them.  All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.”  Acts 2:2-4

Whether it is a North Dakota tornado or a Gulf Coast hurricane, I can’t hear the little phrase “rush of a violent wind” without at least a little bit of an internal cringe.  The wind, the movement of air, driven by changes in temperature, is like so much of life.  Unless it gets in our way, we take it for granted.

From the air we breathe to the air which cools our skin on a hot summer day, only when we “run out” do we even notice.  And then we realize how fragile life really is and how powerless we are beneath the weight of the natural forces of our lives.

The Spirit comes in a rush of violent wind.  They were waiting but they weren’t waiting for THAT.  They were waiting because Jesus told them something would happen.  How could they have known that the Spirit would blow in on them, the wind blowing into them and then exhaling with the sounds of languages that were at once familiar and strange.

People today can make fun of a word like “multicultural.”  They can put it down like every other expression of political correctness and modernity.  Yet do we realize that the violent appearance of the Spirit was a multicultural event?  A gathering of people from various places, speaking various mother tongues, and yet the coming of the Spirit became an explosion of diversity into a new kind of unity.  People understood one another!

The first new congregation to be born in Houston on my watch is First Taiwanese Lutheran Church.  God worshipped every weekend in Taiwanese.  I joined in the first year celebration of the Oromo Christian Fellowship and sat in a worship service listening to the Word coming to me in Oromo, one of the two chief languages of Ethiopia.  I’ll be joining with the Latino pastors in our synod on Saturday, hoping for someone to graciously translate to help me with my fledgling Spanish.  So it is that the Spirit continues to fill her multi-cultural, multi-linguistic Church with life through the power of the Word being spoken in the languages understood by various listeners.

A violent wind comes and we wonder, “Does this bring threat or promise?  Is it a good thing or a bad thing?”  And the Spirit assures us, from the inside out, it is good.  It is very good.

Let us pray:  Holy Spirit, as you move among us, blow your grace into our midst that we can see past the sinful dividing walls to embrace the vastness of your mercy.  Continue to speak Words that we can hear and understand, that we might be that reconciling Word in the life of the world.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

“When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.”  Acts 2:1

It has been several weeks now that I’ve had the privilege of serving in a different kind of ministry.  My job title is “Interim Director for Evangelical Mission” for our synod and it comes with several different areas of responsibility.  Simply stated, I serve under our bishop as the point person for the areas of evangelism and stewardship. 

Rather than focusing my time and attention on one congregation, I’ve been in a different one each Sunday.  Last Sunday I spoke at the first Lutheran church founded in Texas, First Lutheran Church in Galveston.  I had been in the building a couple of times but this would be my first Sunday morning.  It was a majestic worship experience with marvelous music from the pipe organ, lots of worship leaders who took their roles very seriously, and a senior pastor who clearly loved God and his people, who led worship with a kind of reverence I hadn’t seen in years.  They had greeters at the doors, kindly printed all that we needed in their worship service so it was easy to follow along, opened the service with announcements which freed us to worship without interruption later.  It was just great.

After worship we met in the Parlor, a fellowship space still devoid of walls and flooring.  Hurricane Ike might not be such a present memory for some of us but the folks at First are, some of them, only now getting back into their homes, while others are still waiting for all the work to get done.  And the work continues in the church as well.  They are taking advantage of the opportunities to make some improvements as they go, including matching the floors of the various additions to be more accessible to handicapped people.  They are thinking ahead.

As I stood in the pulpit that day, looking at the crowd that gathered to hear the Word, to receive the Sacrament, to worship God and be strengthened for another week of recovery, I had just a glimpse of the vast reach of God’s people.  So divided by space, time, doctrine, and all the other human divisions which keep talk radio in business, and yet…when the time comes for worship…all in one place because it is the Spirit who is our source and ground of unity.

All in one place.  Waiting for the Power to come.  A good place to be.

Let us pray:  Gracious Lord, you have knit us together into one Body, the mystical Body of Christ our Lord.  We gather together as did your first disciples, seeking power and direction.  Open us to the fresh winds of the Spirit blowing among us.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

Greetings,

I didn’t write a devotion for today.  I’m realizing that this will be a very mixed week for me and for a lot of other people.  Easter Sunday will be my last Sunday in the pulpit of the congregation that has consumed my thoughts, heart and life for the past 15 years.  Given that many of you have been reading the daily devotions for a long time, and you have heard much about my personal life in them, I feel free to tell you that the grief I am feeling has become an ever heavier weight.

I’ve known for some time that my ministry at Covenant would one day end.  But I never imagined what that ending would be like.  There are moments when I’m able to see the good that has been done here, the hand of God blessing us and helping us through, faith that has grown and people who have been well served – but those moments are too often drowned out by my awareness of mistakes I’ve made, time I’ve wasted, leadership needs I wasn’t able to provide, opportunities that were squandered and relationships that were wounded or broken.  Leaving is like a little death, there is so much that can’t be undone or redone and there are now no more second chances.

Covenant Lutheran Church will do fine.  I think my leaving now will prove to be the best exercise of leadership I could do at this stage of the congregation’s life.  My prayer is that the congregation rallies together, the machinery of the larger Church comes alongside them as they discern their future, and that the office of Senior Pastor is filled with just the right person to help Covenant move forward in mission.

I share all of this with you, my electronic congregation of friends, so that you will understand why I won’t be writing devotions for awhile.  I sat at a blank keyboard for a long time this morning, full of the emptiness one feels when they have nothing at all to offer or say.  Writing devotions has been a part of the rhythm of my life, which means the rhythm of my ministry at Covenant, since 1997.  I need some time to adjust to the new rhythms that lie ahead.

I fully intend to resume writing once I get a sense of how my new position will feel.  It represents a new way of doing ministry for me, and that is going to mean a new way of hearing the Bible speak.  I need to live into those changes for a bit without the daily expectation of writing devotions.  Just give me some time and we’ll be back on track.

For now the best thing you can do in our devotions partnership is to pray.  My prayer is that the Spirit of healing and encouragement comes to touch us – all of us – in a powerful  and life-giving way as we move through the memories and meanings of Holy Week.

“He also said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.  The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head.  But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.”  He also said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it?  It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth;  yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”  Mark 4:26-32

Oh, if it were only so simple…

When Jesus tells his stories of seeds growing in the earth, he draws from universal images that cross every culture.  Wherever people gather, seeds and dirt come together to produce that which keeps life moving.  It is ever a mystery.

But dirt does far more than that.  It not only feeds us, it also defines us.  Far beyond the practical fruits of cultivation, there are other roots that reach deeply into the earth as well.

I grew up in the land of rich loam soil.  For thousands of years, the rhythms of life included tall prairie grasses growing, sometimes burning and always dying.  Throw in an appearance as the bottom of one of the largest pre-historic freshwater lakes in the world, and a deep rich topsoil is born.  It was dirt that smelled good.  It was dirt that tasted good.  It was dirt that not only fed us, it defined us as people rooted to the land.

People rooted to the land.

I remember well the images of American prisoners of war walking down steps from the bellies of the airplanes that brought them home from years of captivity.  I remember seeing them fall to their knees and kiss the ground – an eternal symbol of thanksgiving, belonging and home.  They never kissed the airplane or the hangar, always the ground.

The newspapers tell us that an impasse has been reached in the peace talks between the Palestinians and the Israelis.  Among the key issues is the ownership of portions of Jerusalem.  Ever since David first defeated the Jebusites, that has been among the holiest, and bloodiest, piece of dirt in the world.  Surely it is more than an address….

Humanity has always been rooted to the land.  Even those who wandered, did so only insofar as the land continued to make their wandering possible.  Only today, in our quest to master and subdue the earth, rather than simply to live in partnership with it, are we beginning to lose our attachment to place, our sense of connectedness to the land which sustains us.

Many people have told me they get a lot of peace and satisfaction out of digging in the dirt.  Most of those do so only because they can, rather than because they have to.  For while much grows easily once planted, the tending of what has been sown is the real art.

We are extensions of the dirt beneath our feet, filled with the breath of God yet destined one day to return to the soil out of which we spring.  Between now and then, between birth and death, let us tend well the dirt which God has given us.  Let us live thankfully and well upon this dirt.  For in it we will one day take our rest.  And out of it shall rise those who follow us – for their sake, let us use well the time we have been given to tend the soil of our lives.

Let us pray: Lord, your Word reminds us that we are dust, and to dust we shall return.  We are creatures of the earth, tied to its bounties and rhythms.  We pray for those who make their living from the land and those who long for a land in which to find their place.  We continue to pray for those who seek peace and wholeness among the peoples of Israel and her neighbors.  Help us tend well the garden you have given us.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

“Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim.  He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.” So they took it.  When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.”  John 2:7-10

Max Lucado in “When God Whispers Your Name” offers a theory about why Jesus decided to attend the wedding at Cana.  After exhaustive research, drawing upon his many years of experience as a pastor and biblical theologian, Lucado says he believes there was one main reason for Jesus to show up at the wedding – fun.  Jesus figured he was going to have a good time.

Evidently he did.  So much so that he did his part to keep the party going.  He outdid everyone who has ever brought a bottle of wine to the host of a dinner party.  Wine, a symbol of conviviality and fellowship.  That which makes a wonderful meal even better.  But that was a later discovery.  It couldn’t have begun with that in mind.

At some point in time, someone ate a grape.  It was juicy, tasty and tasted like more.  But once picked, grapes don’t last long. 

Someone else liked the juice better than the meat of the grape.  They discovered that if you squished a bunch of them, you could gather enough juice for a nice drink.  But grape juice, apart from refrigeration, doesn’t last very long.

Someone else figured out that you could take some grape juice, add some yeast (or whatever it is you add to the juice), let it alone for awhile and, voila, you have fermented grape juice.  It tastes good.  It lasts a long time.  And it has the added punch of a little added punch.

Jesus made much of wine.

Jesus stood before a group of befuddled servants who were filling jugs with water.  He stepped away, leaving a wonderful vintage behind him.  Jesus reclined at the table in Matthew’s house, wine glass close at hand, friends all around, visitors wandering in and out.  Jesus took the cup of wine, the cup of redemption, and told his disciples it was the cup of the new covenant, in his blood, given and shed for them for the forgiveness of sins.

I began this week thinking about some of the basic gifts of creation – air, water, bread and wine.  Each day, I’ve discovered that each of these holds the mysteries of life.  They are all so simple, yet each holds a surprise.  They are gifts, but they are also tools.  All require the intricate inter-workings of creation.

We talk easily and often about God being around us all the time.  Do we see God in the air?  Do we feel God in the water?  Do we taste God in bread and wine?  Yes, to all of this, but only with the senses and taste buds of faith.

Let us pray: Dear Lord, you sustain our lives with the basic gifts of creation.  Today, as we eat and drink, we pray that we may do so with thankful hearts.  May we enjoy the party of life, a mere appetizer to the life to come.  As Jesus gathered for the fun of a wedding, may we today experience the joy of fellowship.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.