A Psalm 34 Morning

As we ready to listen for the Word of the Lord in Psalm 34, let us again be together in a place of prayer –

Startle us, O God, with your truth, and open our hearts and minds to your wondrous love.
Speak your word to us; silence in us any voice but your own. And by your Spirit be with us – as our attentions, our minds, and our hearts focus on nothing but you, in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.

By several measures, last Wednesday dawned the kind of day that many of us live for: Crisp-yet-moist early-autumn air, fall colors beginning to pop and sizzle, rays of morning sun struggling to poke through the mist. And from a comfortable front-porch chair, coffee in hand, I drank it all in – nature’s brew of comfort for the soul, Creation’s feast percolating through all of one’s senses, inviting space opened for tasting and seeing the goodness of the Lord. It was, I rather surmised, a Psalm 34 kind of morning –

I will bless the LORD at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth.
My soul makes its boast in the LORD; let the humble hear and be glad.
O magnify the LORD with me, and let us exalt his name together.
I sought the LORD, and he answered me, and delivered me from all my fears.
Look to him, and be radiant; so your faces shall never be ashamed.
This poor soul cried, and was heard by the LORD, and was saved from every trouble.
The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them.
O taste and see that the LORD is good; happy are those who take refuge in him. (v. 1-8)

Last Wednesday, on my front porch, on that Psalm 34 morning, I labored to polish my message for the next day’s funeral service for Jean Hagen. Next door, at the church, the women were near-breaking sweat as they fired up the roasters for our fall harvest dinner. But my neighbor boys and their middle-school chums were footloose and fancy free, flitting the sidewalks and side streets atop their 10-speed bikes like youthful wards of adolescence. On this Psalm 34 morning, the gang had the day off from school. On this Psalm 34 Wednesday morning, life was good. Active and hectic, yes; but good. At least until the alarming parade began to roll past:

All three of our hospital’s ambulances.

Then a bright-red rig with “Waterville” stenciled on its flanks.

Behind the EMTs and paramedics came two of Waukon’s safety-green fire engines. And the department’s hulking rescue truck dubbed “Little Jewel.”

Though emergency lights were off and their sirens silent, the procession caught the attention of both me and the neighbor boys, who together watched everything roll west on Main Street, first-responders heading to the high school for an active-shooter drill.

Don’t ever think something like that can’t happen here. Because it could. Whether we’re ready to admit that or not. So, active-shooter drills – however chilling and frightening – are good uses of time and resources. Even the community pastors – from time to time, in hushed tones – rehearse our plans for responding to such a tragedy. Yet, it remained a Psalm 34 morning –

O fear the LORD, you his holy ones, for those who honor and revere him have no want.
The young lions suffer want and hunger, but those who seek the LORD lack no good thing.
Come, O children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear, honor, and reverence of the LORD.
Which of you desires life, and covets many days to enjoy good?
Keep your tongue from evil, and your lips from speaking deceit.
Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it. (v. 9-14)

Such reverence goes hand-in-hand with worship, part and parcel of praise and thanksgiving. Bowed in humility before the majesty and holiness of God, praising God’s glory: It’s all right, good, and proper. But mostly, God intends that sense of awe and wonder – that sense of “fear” of the Lord – to be the “special sauce” that we daily carry, whether in actual Sabbath postures and gestures, or just moving through the routine ebbs and flows of our days.

The primary manifestation of our everyday “fear” is the moral shape of our lives – the moral fabric of our living, moving, and breathing.

Do you, as promised in baptism and confirmation, indeed turn away from evil? 

Do you, with baptismal integrity, discipline your speech – choose your words prayerfully – so as to speak truth, and avoid lies and slurs, shun slander and gossip?

Do you, recognizing that the Kingdom of God has come near, live gladly inside the boundaries of God’s moral fences? Or, sadly, in league with thieves, are you always trying to move those fences to be more convenient for how you want to live?

If we rightly and properly fear the majesty and holiness of God – when worshiping God, well then, that same fearful image of God must carry over into our attitude and behavior. As another observes, Scripture makes crystal clear that God is nauseated by sacrifices made on the Sabbath by people who then turn right around and go back to lives of corruption and abuse. In God’s sight, you cannot paper-over lives shot-through with injustice with a few pious actions here and there when the bell calls to worship.

Indeed, Psalm 34 sounds the call to worship: If you want life abundant, fear the Lord and then act accordingly – every day, all day. If you expect God to come through for you in times of distress – as Psalm 34 so plainly affirms, then display your gratitude for such grace, such undeserved favor, in all your daily walking, talking, acting.

The Holy Spirit calls you and me to pursue peace – not the peace in the sense of an absence of conflict. But rather shalom –that place and space of being in which every person, and every creature – not only senses how connected he or she is to every other living person and creature – but so also actively cultivates mutual enlightenment of relationships in which we all strive to build up one another. In a world shot through with shalom, the only competition will be who can out-shalom whom!

And maybe, just maybe, in a space of such shalom, drills for active shooters in schools, workplaces, theaters, and shopping malls might just become a thing of the past – if we truly do “fear” the Lord, if we truly do pursue those kinds of shalom relationships.

If we pursue shalom relationships, then the fear of the Lord will shine in all directions from more of us. And then it also becomes true that our worship is not restricted to Sundays here in this place but rather worship becomes our daily reality. Near as I can tell, God delights in that kind of non-Sunday worship: When we do our jobs well, and help take care of others. Almost as much – and maybe even more, does God delight, on Psalm 34 mornings –

The eyes of the LORD are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their cry.
The face of the LORD is against evildoers, to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth.
When the righteous cry for help, the LORD hears, and rescues them from all their troubles.
The LORD is near to the brokenhearted, and saves the crushed in spirit.
Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the LORD rescues them from them all.
He keeps all their bones; not one of them will be broken.
Evil brings death to the wicked, and those who hate the righteous will be condemned.
The LORD redeems the life of his servants; none of those who take refuge in him will be condemned.  (v. 15-22)

If nothing else – and definitely not the least, we abide in the consolation of God’s ultimate and enduring promises in Christ Jesus.  In the reflection of another, we do believe that, in the cosmic long run, wrongs will be righted, unjust suffering will be reversed; those who for now are getting away with murder will face a reckoning. As a Middle Age mystic of the Church declared, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”

Pie-in-the-sky, cotton-candy optimism? Well, maybe. But that’s no excuse or reason to not at least try to encourage the downtrodden with the eventual assurance of restoration and justice. Because in that longest-possible run, the final verse of Psalm 34 rings true in eternity: The Lord will rescue his servants; no one who takes refuge in him will be condemned.

Until then, along life’s earthly way, look for the helpers: the first-responders, the church ladies, the teenage boys, and all the many others who pass by in solemn procession on Psalm 34 mornings.

Redeemed lives redeeming others! To God be the glory!

Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message during worship on Sunday, September 28, 2025, at First Presbyterian Church in Waukon, Iowa, USA. Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by Scott Hoezee and Julian of Norwich inform the message.

Psalm 90

Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message on Thursday, September 25, 2025, during the funeral service for Jean E. Hagen. Martin Funeral Home recorded a full video of the service.

Psalm 90 is an intriguing poem. Its Old Testament verses open with lyric thought and fond reflection on home, sweet home: How, for time immemorial, God has provided God’s people a dwelling place.

“Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations,” the psalmist begins. “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.” (v. 1-2 NRSV)

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, Psalm 90’s tone shifts to quite-fearsome consideration of Creation’s brokenness. You nearly sense the psalmist quaking in his boots at the bracing thought of God readily able to see every sin we commit, spy every trespass we make, and note every debt we incur. The psalmist continues –

“You turn us back to dust, and say, ‘Turn back, you mortals.’ For a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past, or like a watch in the night. You sweep them away; they are like a dream, like grass that is renewed in the morning; in the morning it flourishes and is renewed; in the evening it fades and withers.

“For we are consumed by your anger; by your wrath we are overwhelmed. You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your countenance. For all our days pass away under your wrath; our years come to an end like a sigh. The days of our life are seventy years, or perhaps eighty, if we are strong; even then their span is only toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away.

“Who considers the power of your anger? Your wrath is as great as the fear that is due you.” (v. 3-11 NRSV)

However sobering and humbling as is the inescapable notice of an angry, disappointed God, the bold thread that weaves together Psalm 90 is the fleeting nature of earthly existence. Life flies by in the blink of an eye. Whether the consequences of sin sweep us away, or whether you and I just get flat-out blown apart by the gale-force winds of another’s storm – either or both, or any other way: The years allotted to us – the days that God formed for you and me before any of us were even born – come and go with breathtaking speed.

In Psalm 90 the poet observes that sooner or later everyone dies. And it usually feels sooner rather than later to most people – even if by grace one manages to live to what most would consider a ripe-old age measured in triple digits. With cruel sensation, the years tend to speed up the older one gets. And so, in wisdom, you recognize this and wonder, “Given the rather short nature of my earthly existence, how ought I behave? How would Father, Son, and Spirit have me live, move, and breathe? What should I count as very important, and what should I count as very unimportant?” Returning to the psalm –

“So teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart. Turn, O LORD! How long? Have compassion on your servants! Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, so that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Make us glad as many days as you have afflicted us, and as many years as we have seen evil. Let your work be manifest to your servants, and your glorious power to their children.” (v. 12-16 NRSV)

Hopefully, in the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, we discover that serving God must be our highest priority and mightiest calling. In letter and spirit of what Jesus calls the first and greatest of holy commandment, loving God with everything we’ve got, then loving likewise friend, neighbor, and stranger; forgiving as we have been forgiven of sin, debt, and trespass; abiding together in the dwelling place of the eternal Lord God Almighty. Thus the foreboding dead ends in the long run of cosmic history are these: only living for short-term personal gain, and forever trying to nudge and cajole life’s moral boundaries into more personally convenient places.

In the final stanzas of Psalm 90, the poet near-begs the Lord to be good and kind to his people. The psalmist wants to wake up each morning basking in the goodness and blessing of God that by grace alone bring to earthly life: Healthy measures of satisfaction, and happiness, and peace. With God’s blessing resting upon us, we can sing; we can have joy. Even as tears well up the eyes and flow down the cheeks.

Yes, life is short and all-too-soon comes to an end, but in the meantime, better to be serving God and God’s people, singing to God with God’s people, and experiencing the shalom of God’s love and God’s community, rather than sitting alone and forlorn in the helplessness of grief’s fear and loathing. Which is why Psalm 90 famously concludes with a prayer to God to establish our flourishing:

“Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and prosper for us the work of our hands – O prosper the work of our hands!” (v. 17 NRSV)

It ought to go without saying that we cannot ask God to firm up and make fruitful our hands if their work is motivated by sheer selfishness, or if that work builds one up at the expense of another’s downfall. God will not establish as something of lasting value that which is short-sighted or ruinous for others of God’s creation and image. When you set God as the standard for the value of your work – and if you expect God to “establish” it in some approving way, then that cuts off a whole lot of the ways too many people choose to live their lives.

So, we continue to pray with the psalmist: “Let the beauty of the Lord be upon us. Establish and prosper the work of our hands. Yes, bless our hands for holy work.”

In the hours before the end of Jean’s earthly journey, her granddaughter Sarah posted this lovely photograph to social media. The honest poignancy of Sarah’s accompanying text further swelled a growing lump in the throat: “Getting her ready to go home.” From both image and text rise a testimony to the moment, and to all the many other moments that came before; testimony to all the sweet memories tenderly swaddled in those moments.

Spend a few moments with the wedding band still wrapping the ring finger of Jean’s left hand, its circle confirming that love knows no ending – as much for her beloved Walter as it does for cherished children and grandchildren. Like a circle, love has no defined beginning or ending. Love always has abided, and love always will abide. Love forever and always abiding. So thanks be to God for establishing and prospering the love of family in its many expressions. Perhaps Jean so loved her jewelry, because Jean so loved each and every one of us.

Zoom out now to wider view: the vivid, fuzzy warmth of fleece, the blue-spotted bed jacket, those fingernails polished pretty in pink. Ah, yes, Jean never left with house without being properly outfitted, coiffed, and accessorized – reflections of beauty within and without. So thanks be to God for prospering Jean’s gifts of beauty: her polite ways, her grateful heart, her endless hospitality. O yes, Lord, establish now and forever polish the lively work of our colorful hands.

Finally, now, ponder the grand panorama of hands that have done so much to glory of God: Hands trained in classic piano. Hands that held a tennis racket on the championship court; hands that held hot, grand-slam cards at the bridge table. Hands that wrote an award-winning essay and later clung to the deck rail of an ocean steamship bound for Europe. Hands that did farm chores, hands that fed farm family and hired hand. Hands that kneaded dough for bread to be broken; hands that rolled and dropped dough for after-school and Christmastime cookies. Hands that tailormade clothing for growing littles, hand-in-hand leading them to church on Sundays in praise and honor of the Lord’s Sabbath day.

Let the beauty of the Lord be upon us.
Establish and prosper the work of our hands for holy work.
Take my hands, and let them move
At the impulse of Thy love.
Ever, only, all for Thee.

Our work here on earth – in whatever form, by whatever means – never disappears like a transient bubble that in a heartbeat pops into non-existence. No, if God can somehow establish our work – if what we do bears the stamp of God’s approval and blessing, then indeed the work of your hands really does matter after all. And it endures, plenty of sizzle to accompany flame: Surely surviving no less than in the heart and memory of Almighty God, no matter what happens to the works of our hands in this life. Indeed so also enduring and surviving in the hearts and memories of the saints gathered here in this moment, in hands well trained in holding fast to a legacy of prosperous, holy work.

Psalm 90 seeks not our sadness and distress at the prospect of the relative brevity of our earthly moment. It seeks the teaching of wisdom and prudence. And if by the Holy Spirit we manage to attain to these, then our lives – whether long or short – will glorify God and, just so, enrich the world. And as an added bonus, we likely might experience our own lives more fully filled with that sense of shalom that surpasses all understanding.

Lord, you are our dwelling place! May it be so. Amen, and amen!

How Are You?

A treasured friend popped in to see me last week. She was concerned about me and wanted to know how I was doing.

What followed was a wide-ranging, hour-plus-long conversation in which I traced the wavy, blurry, confusing lines of being a husband, a father, a pastor – and a man of a certain age. The resulting picture was not entirely rosy. My friend listened actively to my rambling doodle of “how I’m doing,” and when I’d shared what I had to share, her reply was simple and honest: “I thought I was the only one.”

An empathic heart and mind, a sympathetic soul and spirit, had come into my midst unexpectedly yet blessedly. Our minds were cut of whole cloth: entwined thoughts and feelings weaving a collective fabric of stunned disbelief, and anxious emotion, and outright fear. And she thought she was the only one, as I too thought my dark nights of the soul were mine to endure alone. To echo the author of Psalm 88 – the first of this morning’s Scripture lessons, I sometimes feel – in these our conflicted and confusing days – like darkness is my only friend.

Depending on how you count them, between one-third and one-half of the Old Testament’s 150 psalms are expressions of lament. In this angry poetry of weeping and gnashing, writers pour out their hearts to God in powerful expressions of grief, sorrow, and regret. Voices choked with raw emotion agonize over God’s apparent absence, God’s seeming lack of concern, God’s outward detachment from the long, dark, uphill slog of their days.

The lament psalms are bold expressions of strong emotions, men and women articulating their frustration and anger with themselves, their situations – and with God. But usually, in their final stanzas, speakers of lament psalms express some measure of calm assurance that God really has heard their cries, that God indeed does care, that God ultimately will step in and save the day.

Except for Psalm 88. By its end, the psalmist cannot even begin to imagine even the remotest of possibilities for better days ahead: “My only friend is darkness.” Period. End of sentence, end of story. Hear now these ancient words that sadly remain true –

LORD, you are the God who saves me; day and night I cry out to you. May my prayer come before you; turn your ear to my cry.

I am overwhelmed with troubles and my life draws near to death. I am counted among those who go down to the pit; I am like one without strength. I am set apart with the dead, like the slain who lie in the grave, whom you remember no more, who are cut off from your care.

You have put me in the lowest pit, in the darkest depths. Your wrath lies heavily on me; you have overwhelmed me with all your waves. You have taken from me my closest friends and have made me repulsive to them.

I am confined and cannot escape; my eyes are dim with grief. I call to you, LORD, every day; I spread out my hands to you. Do you show your wonders to the dead? Do their spirits rise up and praise you? Is your love declared in the grave, your faithfulness in Destruction? Are your wonders known in the place of darkness, or your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion?

But I cry to you for help, LORD; in the morning my prayer comes before you. Why, LORD, do you reject me and hide your face from me? From my youth I have suffered and been close to death; I have borne your terrors and am in despair. Your wrath has swept over me; your terrors have destroyed me. All day long they surround me like a flood; they have completely engulfed me.

You have taken from me friend and neighbor – darkness is my closest friend. (Psalm 88, NIV translation)

“My only friend is darkness.” That’s how the psalmist ends. Because that’s how the psalmist feels. The news is all bad; assurance and re-assurance are nowhere to be found; nothing but hopelessness and godlessness abound. You surely have to wonder why the distressing, woe-is-me, pity-party of a psalm is even included in the Bible in the first place. Yet, with full throat, we declare it “the Word of the Lord.” Thanks be to God!

Psalm 88 acknowledges that being a believer is not all happiness and “hurray for God!”

By decision, circumstance, or accident, bad things happen in our lives just as they do among non-believers. I’ve been a baptized Christian all my life: 20-or-so years a Roman Catholic, 40- or-so a Presbyterian. Yet my life hasn’t always been perfect, nor my attitude constantly positive, nor my moods entirely bearable.

At times, yes – even for a pastor – God feels distant, difficult to see, through the lingering fog of my own weaknesses and limitations, through the oftentimes-dim social and political realities of daily living in an imperfect, fallen world. If the writer of Psalm 88 isn’t battling full-on clinical depression, she or he full-well knows the sensation of intense sadness: So much so that even the very presence of God feels like inky blackness!

But as both theologian and clinician affirm, depression is a liar. It tells you that you are worthless, that you have no friends, that you are beyond hope, that you have no future, that you are only a burden to others.

Psalm 88 reassures that struggles with depression and other forms of mental illness arise not from a lack of faith. With Psalm 88, the writer exhibits faith both deep and wide in continuing to cry out to the Lord, even when God seems distant, or absent, or downright cruel. Though you sometimes cannot hear or see the Lord’s response, you ever-enjoy the full privilege of prayer that empties the pain of your heart and mind unto heaven – even if, and especially when, it feels like you’re just shouting and screaming in thin air.

Psalm 88 declares that doubt and difficulty are not signs of lackluster faith. “I’ve been there,” the psalmist assures. “The dark times are simply part of the earthly journey.”

One of the most harmful misconceptions about depression and other mental illness is that they are signs of weakness. Believing they are being helpful, Christians will tell someone dealing with acute, prolonged sadness that they’ll soon recover and feel better – if they just pray more, or just read the Bible more, or just be more thankful, or just be more positive and optimistic!

Those are not bad things – certainly praying, reading Scripture, practicing gratitude, and manifesting abundance are healthy behaviors and solid spiritual disciplines, especially during times of trial and tribulation. But depression is an illness. And you’d never dream of telling someone with the flu, or a severe head laceration, cancer or paralysis, to just pray more and think good thoughts.

Indeed, it is more challenging to reach out to someone battling depression or other mental challenge than it is to help someone suffering physically. You can see a deep cut, stitch it up, and cover it with a bandage. An x-ray reveals a broken bone that’s healed with application of a cast. You peer down someone’s throat, have the doctor take a swab and culture the sample, to diagnose strep throat and prescribe an antibiotic.

Not so much when it comes to mental illness, which is not always as apparent and obvious as physical trauma and disease – especially to the man, woman, teen, or child experiencing it!

Here’s how I sense the Holy Spirit moving among us toward healing and wholeness –

For starters, the Spirit is urging us to purge the stigma of depression and other mental illness. Instead of saying or implying that mental illness merely is a matter of faith or lack thereof, the Holy Spirit – I believe – would have us acknowledge mental illness as a medical challenge to be diagnosed and treated as with diabetes or diverticulitis. And following the pattern of Psalm 88 helps stir the courage to admit one’s struggles with short-term or chronic mental health. You are not the only one!

There is no more shame in seeking expert care of your mental health than there is in asking a surgeon to repair that torn cartilage in your knee. Sure, you could just deny that your knee is injured, or pray harder while thinking happy thoughts. But none of those things – filled with the power of faith as they are – will do thing one to improve your mobility. They might even attack and diminish your faith, as you linger in daily frustration and pain, until that moment when you realize ignoring your buggered-up leg is foolish. Surely God, the Great Physician, has been answering your prayers for relief all along: “Go see the doctor!” But you’ve been too hard of hearing and too stiff of neck to listen to the Lord’s gracious reply.

As always God’s grace is sufficient. And by grace God gifts doctors, PAs, nurses and other medical professionals with the skills and talents to deal with our physical ailments, and God so also gifts physicians, therapists, and counselors to treat injuries and wounds to our mental health. To seek professional help does not deny God’s power or ability to heal. God works in, with, and through those whom God has called and equipped to heal. God’s power works through therapy they provide and medications they prescribe.

God also can and does work through the people of God, just as God works through us when we come to the aid of those physically ill or injured. The church, the Body of Christ, stands as source of strength and support for those dealing with depression, anxiety, addiction, and other mental health challenges.

You and I have the power and obligation to stop the contagious lie that mental illness likes to spread – as to the writer of Psalm 88 – that you have no friends, that no one cares about you, and that you’re not worth caring about anyway. As a community of faith – in thought, word and deed, we disprove those lies not just by reminding each other of God’s unconditional love and presence, but by living, moving, and being the incarnate, embodied presence of love – God’s love and presence first made flesh in Christ Jesus, love and presence with us still, in our flesh, through the Holy Spirit.

Rather than telling someone to “cheer up,” let me suggest that you listen up. Let me suggest that you acknowledge the other’s pain – even if you don’t understand it fully or can’t relate to it personally. Encourage the other to reach out for help. Point them toward help, and even accompany them when the other gets help.

How do you know if you or another needs help?

If your depression or anxiety is keeping you from doing the things you need and want to do, if it is keeping you from being the person you want to be, if it is separating you from the ones you love – then I pray you’ll consider getting help.

If you are having trouble finding hope and believing that things can be better, then I hope you’ll consider getting help.

If anxiety is causing you to worry constantly, to believe bad things are going to happen if you don’t do things a certain way, if anxiety won’t go away, then I urge you to consider getting help.

If you feel you’re not worth helping, then I want you to consider getting help. You are worth it!

If you feel like hurting yourself or someone else, or like the world would be a better place if you or someone else weren’t in it, then time has come to get help right away. Call 9-8-8 or one of the other hotlines. You might need someone to help you get that help, or even get you to the emergency room. That’s okay. We are here for each other in the same way that God is here for all of us.

No matter who you are, no matter what you have or haven’t done, you are a beloved child of God, fearfully and wonderfully made, knit together in your mother’s womb, God’s masterpiece re-created in Christ Jesus to do the good work that God has planned for you. No matter who you are, no matter what you have or haven’t done – even when you can’t see or sense your inherent dignity and worth, because your illness is lying to you, you nonetheless remain among God’s beloved gathered into the Body of Christ.

God holds no desire for your eternal suffering, physically or emotionally. There is help. There is hope. We are here for each other. You have friends, even in the darkness. Let’s turn the page from Psalm 88 to selected verses of Psalm 89 and revel in slivers of light that pierce the darkness.

I will sing of the LORD’s great love forever.

With my mouth I will make your faithfulness known through all generations. I will declare that your love stands firm forever, that you have established your faithfulness in heaven itself. You said, “I have made a covenant with my chosen one, I have sworn to David my servant, ‘I will establish your line forever and make your throne firm through all generations.’”

Once you spoke in a vision, to your faithful people you said: “I have bestowed strength on a warrior; I have raised up a young man from among the people. I have found David my servant; with my sacred oil I have anointed him. My hand will sustain him; surely my arm will strengthen him. The enemy will not get the better of him; the wicked will not oppress him. I will crush his foes before him and strike down his adversaries.

My faithful love will be with him, and through my name his horn will be exalted. I will set his hand over the sea, his right hand over the rivers. He will call out to me, “You are my Father, my God, the Rock my Savior.” And I will appoint him to be my firstborn, the most exalted of the kings of the earth. (Psalm 89:1-4, 19-27 NIV translation)

In her classic essay “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” author Maya Angelou turns back the clock to the Deep South of the 1930s and ’40s. In that American time and place of segregation and oppression, her parents ran a small grocery store.

One day, when Maya’s mother was sitting in a rocking chair on the store’s front porch, a group of white girls came by and decided to mock Mama. The mean girls laughed at her for being black. They spewed nasty, racially wounding words. At one point, a 13-year-old girl did a handstand, allowing her dress to fall down around her shoulders to reveal her total lack of underwear, thus mooning Mama with her bare bottom.

Watching the cruel scene unfold from a corner of the porch, young Maya was furious that her mother said nothing, did nothing to shoo away the teen-age gaggle of verbal abuse and slander. Mama stayed calm, and as Maya moved a little closer, she could hear her mother singing softly, “Bread of heaven, bread of heaven, feed me till I want no more.”

The girls eventually tired of the putrid antics and slithered away. As Mama stood to return into her store, Maya could hear her singing softly again, “Glory hallelujah, when I lay my burden down. Glory hallelujah, when I lay my burden down.”

Maybe, then, spiritually speaking, it is at least a little helpful, in seasons of genuine and legitimate lament, to do what we can to praise the Lord for his faithfulness, for his awesome and majestic power on full display in his Creation. That won’t bubble-wrap God’s people from the jarring shock of seismic difficulty. But such postures of praise and adoration do fan embers of hope in our souls: that God is in charge, that God can and will do something, that God can and will still bring all things to where the Lord wants them to be, when the kingdom of Christ fully comes.

Perhaps, then, it really is so, that a broken mirror really does reflect light. You are not the only one. Perhaps, then, you and I enter the brokenness of another only to the extent that we’re willing and able to enter our own. You definitely are not the only one.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit: God loves you, and so do I.

Amen, and amen!

Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message on Sunday, September 7, 2025, during worship at First Presbyterian Church in Waukon, Iowa, USA. Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by Maya Angelou, Scott Hoezee, and Dave Simpson inform the message.

The service tied into the Monday’s observance of “988 Day.” Sept. 8 (9/8) intends to raise awareness of the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. Dial 9-8-8 from any phone for 24/7 access to help when dealing with emotional distress, substance use and abuse, or simply loneliness. The 988 Lifeline is a national network of more than 200 crisis centers that combine local care and resources with national standards and best practices.

You are encouraged to reach out to a family member, friend, co-worker, classmate, neighbor, clergyperson or other professional when life’s daily challenges overwhelm. If none of those folks is available, or if you simply can’t find or don’t have anyone — for whatever reason, please dial 9-8-8 to reach a compassionate voice and a helping heart.

A Labor Day Meditation: Called to Worth and Work

Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight – why the bush does not burn up.”

When the LORD saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!” And Moses said, “Here I am.” “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” Then he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.”

At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God. The LORD said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey – the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”

But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” And God said, “I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain.” (Exodus 3:1-12)

On a day long past, as Moses tended his flock on a mountainside, the Lord appeared to the solitary shepherd in a burning bush. And God called out to Moses: “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.”

Jesus taught us that all ground is holy: All of life for our Master is a sacrament dedicated fully to God. Each of us is the temple of the Holy Spirit. We are on holy ground in our work as teachers, lawyers, volunteers, doctors, parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles; as secretaries and students, business owners and construction workers; as partners and caregivers in the fullest expressions of love, and in every other blessed vocation that God gives us.

Today we affirm before God and one another that work and worship are interwoven: Our work growing out of worship, and our worship growing out of work.

So, teachers, let your classrooms be places where your light and your truth shine in all learning, and where we celebrate and nurture the varied gifts and abilities of each student. Student, let your minds, your talents, and your characters be shaped more and more in the Lord’s image, as you learn to use your gifts in the service of your kingdom.

Workers and day-laborers, in your workplaces, may mutual respect govern your relationships, and integrity govern your contracts and finances, as you produce useful goods and services.

Caregivers, of children and family, the sick and the aged, remember the Lord’s example when Jesus washed the feet of his disciples. Treat each person entrusted to your care as one of the ones who bear God’s image.

Scholars, writers, and artists, let the Holy Spirit inspire and govern the work of your minds, and transform the professions in which you work to the glory of God!

Retirees, after many years of work, hopefully enjoying some measure of rest, encourage one another and pray for the Church. Mentor the next generation, and raise up new leaders for a new day.

Children of God and all God’s people: In all your daily labors, even amid routines that dull and demands that frustrate, may you forever hear the call to serve the Lord and tend his flock.

Take a few moments now to pray and meditate on your daily work: Its joys, challenges, worries, and relationships – and how these might be more fully dedicated to God in the weeks and months ahead.

[Keep still in silent prayer and reflection]

“Who am I that my labor should set free the oppressed?” you ask the Lord. “I will be with you,” says the Lord. “And the sign that I have sent you shall be this: In your worshipful praise and your worshipful work.”

The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this meditation during worship on Labor Day weekend, Sunday, August 31, 2025, at First Presbyterian Church in Waukon, Iowa, USA.

Raw Power

Like the familiar tales of Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost, preachers like me sometimes wonder what else is left to say about the Bible’s other well-known and beloved stories – like this morning’s Scripture lesson: the parable of the prodigal son, his jealous and resentful older brother, and their graciously forgiving father.

This classic narrative rather seems like your grandma’s time-honored recipe for oatmeal-raisin cookies. At some point you’re tempted to tweak the recipe to freshen up the taste. Adding chocolate chips might be fun, or using golden raisins in place of purple; maybe sprinkle in a little more cinnamon and nutmeg. But when your kids bite into the resulting, oven-fresh cookies, they crinkle their noses in disgust and chide you for messing with an already-good thing. “We liked ’em better the old way!”

Perhaps so also with Luke’s telling of the prodigal son. When all is said and done – when you’ve preached it from all the angles and character perspectives, and heard all the various interpretations and takeaways, you’ve still got the same basic story that Jesus tells to make a very-basic Gospel point: Honest repentance of self always leads to authentic restoration of relationship. So maybe, in our Spirit-inspired listening for the Word of the Lord, we shouldn’t mess with an already good thing. 

But let’s not lose sight of some important details: like the many unfaithful ways that the younger son loses himself – estranged from his family, living “according to the flesh,” choosing a life that shatters the integrity of his faith and identity. Then there’s the way the older son’s words reveal the festering of his heart: his opinion of the just desserts his naughty, little brother deserves; his own feelings of entitlement; his jealous fear of losing out; his implication of how his father should feel and respond.

The details also reveal the father’s character. He’s always been a closer companion to the older son, probably by virtue of being the firstborn but also because the older son – at least in recent months – has been more physically present!

But Dad proves his unconditional love for both sons by what he says and what he does: throwing preference to the wind by running out to welcome home the younger son, even while the wayward boy is still stumbling along the humbling path of repentance. The father shows compassion and forgiveness, even while his younger son is yet a sinner. That alone is the Good News of the Gospel in a nutshell! And the opening verses of Luke 15 prime the pump for the outpouring of such amazing grace –

“Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus,” Luke writes. “And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’” Jesus then explains himself with stories of a shepherd’s persistence in the seeking of lost sheep and a woman’s doggedness in searching for valuable lost coins. “Just so, I tell you,” Jesus next proclaims, “there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

What follows is the Lord’s parable of the prodigal, and his brother, and their father – a story of sin and judgment to be sure, but also one of personal repentance and the grace that always befalls a changed heart and mind. On earth as it is in heaven, it matters not how far and wide the heart and mind have gone astray. Grace always abounds!

Click to watch the Parable of the Prodigal Son from the LUMO Gospel

Back in the day, I once believed that the two most powerful sentences in the English language were “I love you” and “I’m sorry.” I’ve learned personally and pastorally that such phrases can wound with the deepest of trauma, when such words contradict one’s actions. “I’m sorry” can even insult our intelligence if regret never leads to repentance.

An unlikely source quickens reflection and discernment: the TV show “The Bear,” a hit Hulu drama about a Chicago restaurant and the small community of cooks and servers laboring to transform a family-owned sandwich shop into a top-tier culinary destination.

The series centers on a young, talented chef named Carmen Berzatto. Carmy, as his friends and fellow workers call him, moves home to Chicago after his brother dies by suicide.

Carmy is left to manage the family business, a sandwich shop called the “Original Beef of Chicagoland.” Running the tiny eatery is an eccentric crew of employees, and Carmy is charged with keeping the place alive. The twist is that Carmy is no ordinary cook; he’s an elite chef who’s sautéed and flambéed in the world’s finest restaurants.

As your employment history might prove, restaurant work is stressful, and “The Bear” reveals that reality with brutal honesty. At the restaurant tables in “The Bear,” customers enjoy scrumptious meals and nourishing conversation, and they bask in the finest hospitality. But in the kitchen, the pace is brutal. Emotions run raw, and even the best of friends will occasionally stand nose to nose, toe to toe, screaming profanities at each other.

Mostly, the anger is quickly forgotten. Mostly, everyone is able to push through the stress and retain their bonds of family and friendship. But not always. Sometimes people go too far. Sometimes the chaos is too great. And sometimes a boss like Carmy crosses the line from pushing an employee to breaking one. Sometimes friends do more than test friendships. They fracture them.

That’s the moral challenge of watching “The Bear”: How do we live together when someone always seems to be going too far? The answer we ultimately get is that we can’t. Neither you nor I can sustain a community when the pain grows too great. In binge-watching “The Bear,” I cannot help but seeing ourselves; I cannot avoid the echoes of the primal anger that’s ripping apart our families, communities, and nations.

Carmy’s raw talent creates around him a field of distortion. He’s the kid from Chicago who became a global talent. When he returns home, he’s not just Carmy, the guy they’ve known their whole lives; he’s near celebrity, a man so gifted that people are willing to forgive his flaws just to be in his presence, absorb his knowledge, and savor his cuisine.

That’s exactly what threatens to destroy the restaurant. His arrogance is overwhelming: He changes the menu every night just because he’s that good. Though you can see his fundamental decency, his ambition and temperament threaten his relationships, his restaurant, his family bonds.

A couple seasons in, you can clearly see the damage Carmy has done. He has made something great, but each person in the restaurant — each person in his professional and personal family — endures under terrible stress and strain. Something has to give. More precisely, someone has to give, and that someone is Carmy.

That awful tension and agonizing emotion are what make “The Bear” so difficult to watch. Because relationships are splintering across America. It’s hard enough to live in a community; we are all, after all, inherently flawed. Normal human failings create persistent frictions, and unless we learn to deal with and reduce that friction, even the best of friendships can sometimes crumble to dust.

But we’re living through something else: A furious anger in which it seems people actually want to end friendships, where they want to inflict pain with their words. It’s one way to demonstrate your commitment, your great and high ideological, or religious, or political calling. The cause demands it, and you serve the cause. We create relational rubble and find that it’s hard to live in the ruins.

In the latest episodes of “The Bear,” Carmy abides in those ruins, but he decides to rebuild. And his blueprint overpowers the strongest of human reactions to sin and loss: Carmy repents. Carmy realizes that he is the problem. Yes, other members of his family and other people at the restaurant have their own problems, but Carmy is at the epicenter of the chaos. And in a single, extended scene of the finale, he makes that clear not just by saying he’s sorry but also by turning, by changing.

Spoiler alert: He gives the restaurant back to his family, to his most valued colleague and to his closest friends — to the people he has harmed the most. The star decides to fade so that others might shine. For a time, he seems to say: I must diminish. I must become less, so that you can become the more that you are supposed to be.

At first, no one sees what Carmy is doing. The mistrust is so great and the pain so deep that his colleagues only see his actions as another betrayal — abandoning them when the restaurant needs his talents the most. When Carmy tells his brother and co-worker Richie that he’s leaving, Richie feels angry, abandoned, and hurt.

But then there’s the instant when Richie realizes what is really going on. Carmy isn’t abandoning anyone. Instead, he too is hurting and needs help. And the gift of his stake of the restaurant isn’t a decision to wash his hands of a failing enterprise. Instead, it’s an expression of hope and confidence — a sincere declaration that his friends and family can do better than he.

As clarity dawns on everyone — as they slowly understand what Carmy is doing, warmth and love start to spread across their faces like a slow-breaking dawn. “I missed you,” says Carmy’s brother, Richie. And when Richie knows the new partnership is real, he nods, agreeing to the deal, using words for emphasis that I cannot share from the pulpit: “Yes. It is an honor.”

Personally, I’m so fallen that, when I watched that scene, I admit my first thought was of the people who needed to repent to me. But thankfully, that moment passed. Instead, I came to feel a profound sense of conviction. I asked myself, “Who have I harmed?” and — more importantly — “How can I change?”

At a time of extraordinary fury, we all live in a degree of pain. We all live with regrets. But hope can come from unexpected places — and perhaps a show that features pan-seared scallops, hand-rolled pastries, and old-fashioned Chicago beef also teaches with emphasis that only repentance can heal our broken hearts.

Visualizations of the parable of the prodigal son are many, but uncanny is one that particularly catches my gaze: James B. Janknegt’s depiction of the older son’s anger in “Two Sons.” The older son is so angry about the celebration of his brother’s return that he breaks his own guitar. Anger destroys his ability to share the joy of the moment.

Not exactly the same situation, but I sense a lot of anger in these our days, and one aspect of our shared moment feels eerily close to the anger of the older brother. These are not simple questions to answer and emotions to resolve. But what is clear is that for the older son – and for those of us angry at how someone else is getting treated better than we think they deserve, our anger likely says more about ourselves than the other.

What convicts is that our inner dreams for justice are really all about grace, about our views of ourselves, and our motivations for what we do, and how we want the world to work. The anger itself isn’t necessarily the problem. The problem is whether our anger leads to continued and greater sin against God or neighbor: If it hardens us against the Lord’s love and grace, if it makes us turn from seeking the fullness of life for any- and every-one, if it makes us blind to our own experiences of grace, and how we get much more than we deserve. If anger shuns us from the party, and the joy that infuses the kingdom of God, then we likely are going to end up pouting, bitter and alone – as is the sorry state of the older brother.

In an era of revenge movies and cultural cries for karma, what a profound reminder that the way of being a disciple of Jesus is different. The Lord does not make us grovel, nor does God give us what we deserve. Instead, the Lord restores us. And true repentance is coming to our senses about reality. And yet, in our lesson, the older son’s response also reminds that repentance before God is only part of the process of restoration. We so also need God’s help to mend relationships with one another.

Even if the older brother joins the party, we all know that the rebuilding of his relationships will take time, and that awkward, uncomfortable process will be difficult for everyone involved. It will take a community — like the one the father gathers for the party — to support both sons.

In the end it is the father who is the truly prodigal, in his willingness to lavish mercy and love upon an undeserving child. The son’s prodigality, such as it is, focuses on himself and living “the high life.” His waywardness lies in indulgence, of draining away life’s vitality and goodness. The father’s prodigality goes the other way: Thickening life, restoring lost goodness, and ensuring a better future. That, my friends, is the essence of Easter resurrection!

The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message during worship on Sunday, August 17, 2025, at First Presbyterian Church in Waukon, Iowa, USA. Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by David French, Chelsea Harmon, and Scott Hoezee inform the message.

For the Love of God

The apostle Paul was a prolific letter-writer. But he doesn’t merely scribble informal notes to friends and family in faraway places. Paul’s letters – at least the ones that ended up in the Bible’s New Testament – are situational documents that speak to problems he thinks need prompt attention in a particular community of believers. And Paul has serious concern for the church in the ancient Greek city of Corinth.

From start to finish, Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians commands unity that honors distinctiveness and diversity. Paul urges those first believers to proper care for one another, to the formation and nurture of faith in Christ that leaves out no one. First Corinthians is a textbook on moral reasoning and on the relation of the individual to the larger community. And this morning’s lesson is laser-focused on re-enforcing the foundation of Christian community: love. Listen to the Word that God has spoken –

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.

But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part. But when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.

For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three, and the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:1-13)

This passage is often a go-to Scripture for weddings, because it offers some helpful advice about the kind of love for which those entering the covenant of marriage must strive. But Paul waxes poetic not just about romantic love between wife and husband. His message to the Corinthians urges unconditional love: the kind of deep affection that endures between God and each of us, even though our words and actions aren’t always very endearing or honoring to God. Yet, despite the self-centered sin and brokenness that make us hard to love, God nevertheless loves us still with gracious love that is total, absolute, and unreserved.

In response to such great, unconditional love – in response to such amazing, undeserved grace, God calls us to love each other in the same way: To love not just those who look like we look, or think like we think, but also to love those who are different that we are, and those who have different ideas and opinions than we do; to love friends, neighbors, and strangers who are irritatingly different or frustratingly contrary. God calls us to show these folks the type of self-giving, self-sacrificing love that God shows us in coming to dwell among us, and taking human form in the person of Jesus, and fully giving himself on the Cross, and sacrificing himself fully unto death that each of us might live.

Despite their claims to extraordinary spirituality, Paul tells the Corinthians to get their act together: You are incapable of making the Spirit of God in Christ evident in your life, Paul in as much reckons, unless the focus of your life is grounded in genuine, unconditional love for each other.

For you and me, our best response to these ancient-but-ever-true words is exercising the practices that reveal the Holy Spirit present and active within our hearts and minds – exercising the Spirit-led practices that embody unconditional love. On the active side, that is the stuff of demonstrating goodness, kindness, gentleness, and justice. On the avoidance side, that means relying on the Spirit’s power to overcome the grips of envy, arrogance, rudeness, self-centeredness, irritability, resentment, and rejoicing when others fail or fall short.

I call these “practices” for good reason: We cannot change ourselves overnight. It takes conscious effort – submission to the Spirit of Christ – to bring about meaningful change. As any athlete or musician knows, the more your practice, the more you learn, and the better you get. And eventually practice pays off! Those practiced actions that began with the requirement of conscious effort in time become unconscious response, second nature, part of your spiritual muscle memory, innate part and parcel of who and what you are as disciples of Jesus and members of Christ’s body.

And when you let the Spirit hone your unconditional commitment to love as you yourself want to be loved, well, then, you become more fully able to participate in God’s efforts to heal the wounds of the world, repair its malfunction, and declare with full throat that indeed the Kingdom of God has drawn neigh.

It is unconditional discipleship to Jesus that calls us to participate in God’s efforts to let those who feel forgotten and despised know that they are remembered and loved: the abused spouse, the battered child, the homeless man, the hungry woman, the forgotten neighbor; the alcoholic, the drug addict, the prisoner, and yes the immigrant. It is unconditional discipleship to Jesus that calls us to participate in God’s efforts to bring hope to places where all hope seems lost, and these days, that feels just about everywhere!

Whenever we give money, or donate time, or offer skills – to close friends and total strangers in places near and far, we do so not to draw attention to ourselves, or to make ourselves feel good, or to experience the excitement of travel, or to gain a tax advantage. We do these things unconditionally, because the Holy Spirit has conditioned us in the practice of being the hands and feet of Christ, whose hands and feet were pieced for us and our salvation in an act of unconditional love.

Let me leave you with this cinematic picture of unconditional love. I’ve shared it before, but it bears repeating in our social and political moment.

Noah Calhoon and his wife, Allie, are the lead characters in the movie and novel “The Notebook.” Allie suffers with dementia, and the disease is slowly erasing all memory of Noah and their long, loving marriage. Day by day, lost memory by lost memory, Noah is becoming more and more isolated from Allie.

Their adult children urge Dad “to just let the folks at the nursing home take care of Mom” so Dad can get on with his life. But Noah refuses to abandon Allie, even though there’s really nothing in it for him. The marriage that once was so rich and powerful has, no thanks to dementia, become poor and anemic. Whatever joy they once shared as husband and wife is all but gone.

Yet, Noah stays. Noah abides with Allie even though severe, chronic memory loss keeps Allie from abiding with Noah. Their kids don’t understand this glorious, magnificent, splendorous, beautiful, wondrous, grand love. But here’s how their Dad explains it:

“I am nothing special; just a common man with common thoughts, and I’ve led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me, and my name will soon be forgotten. But in one respect, I’ve succeeded as gloriously as anyone who has ever lived: I’ve loved another with all my heart and soul; and to me, this has always been enough.”

Love always prevails, doesn’t it! Indeed, love never ends! Hold fast to that Good News!

The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God!

Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message during worship on Sunday, August 10, 2025, at First Presbyterian Church in Waukon, Iowa, USA. Scholarship and commentary by J. Paul Sampley informs the message.

You Never Know

People of good conscience and well-grounded faith can engage in respectful debate over the merits of public food programs like last month’s ecumenical Feed the Kids summer nutrition program.

On one hand, struggling to put healthy food on the table is a daily challenge for many, and the faith community’s efforts to address those needs reflect a quite-faithful and -thankful response to the life-saving grace with which God feeds us. In Christ and by the Spirit, God’s people receive grace upon grace; like Christ and with the Spirit, we hoard not that grace for ourselves but pass-on that unmerited nourishment to others in need of similar blessing. Through ministries like Feed the Kids, we join our sisters and brothers in faith to build a community that reflects Christ’s love for all.

On the other hand, efforts like Feed the Kids raise questions about the healthy boundaries of personal and community responsibility. And more practicality, do our well-intentioned labors reflect God-pleasing stewardship of time, talent, and treasure? Volunteering at Feed the Kids last week reminds me that children are picky eaters with eyes often bigger than their stomachs, and concerning amounts of food and drink went to waste.

Help to resolve my moral dilemma comes in the words that our brother Danny Schlitter shared in worship last Sunday. In encouraging our participation in Feed the Kids, Danny observed, “You never know.” Of that little, or grade-schooler, or teen-ager who enjoyed a noontime meal, “you never know” what that child will grow to become.

Perhaps we fed the next groundbreaking medical researcher, or a future designer or builder of grand bridges and soaring skyscrapers, or the pioneering farmer or agri-business leader who ends up figuring out how to better feed a hungry world while exercising better stewardship of the environment. Or perhaps more importantly, maybe we simply nourished a budding involved citizen, a some-day loving spouse, or nurturing parent. “You never know”– with a plate of spaghetti or a slice of pizza, and a glass of milk – how we will have contributed to the fullness of developing gifts and aspiring talents of that hungry kid from down the block.

In that sense, we are tillers and cultivators, sowers and seed-planters. And the seeds we scatter in the name of the Lord are not always ours for the harvest. No, “you never know.” But that doesn’t mean our present labors are in vain.

Hear, then, the Parable of the Sower in the Gospel of Matthew, the Lord’s teaching about how – or even if – we come to understand these things of God and God’s Kingdom. God, of course, is the generous sower, and God seems more concerned about the seed getting out than making sure it lands in fertile places where its chances of success are best. Heaven’s seed bag appears endless – a mind-bending prospect to be sure. And instead of calling the sower foolish for wasting it, the farmer simply sows the seed in which he or she believes.

That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea. Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat there, while the whole crowd stood on the beach. And he told them many things in parables, saying:

“Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell on the path, and the birds came and ate them up. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched, and since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some 60, some 30. Let anyone with ears listen!” (Matthew 13:1-9)

According to Matthew, Jesus next offers a sidebar about why he teaches in parables. Jesus tells parables in order to confuse, because they are confusing. Jesus says he tells parables, because somehow this teaching style matches the spiritual cluelessness of most listeners.

He preaches these confusing parables so folks reflect more deeply about what the Good News of the Gospel is all about. He apparently doesn’t want hearers to grab hold of the Gospel too quickly, because haste almost always results in anemic faith that never takes firm hold in the human heart.

As we’ll hear in moment, Jesus really does seek understanding for the hearers of parables. But the kind of understanding that the Lord seeks isn’t just factual head-knowledge. Jesus seeks heart-knowledge. His learning goal is understanding so sufficiently deep and firm as to challenge human thought, attitude, and behavior. To understand on Jesus’s terms brings changes in our action – our very ways of living, moving, and breathing. Jesus then unpacks the understanding buried deep in the confusing Parable of the Sower –

“Hear then the parable of the sower. When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in the heart; this is what was sown on the path. As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet such a person has no root, but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away. As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing. But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another 60, and in another 30.” (Matthew 13:18-23) 

Jesus unwraps the gifts of understanding within his parable. But it all still sounds rather silly.

Imagine watching a farmer hook up the planter to the back of his John Deere and firing up the tractor’s engine. But then the farmer immediately throws the power-takeoff switch to activate the planter even before leaving the driveway! There he goes, putt-putting down the dusty, gravel road: seed scattering hither and yon, bouncing on the road, flying into the ditch. When he finally nears his field, he cuts through a patch of thorny weeds with seed still flying loosey-goosey!

No sensible farmer would be so careless in the scattering of such valuable seed. It’s wasteful: a spectacle of sheer stupidity that no frugal, economically minded farmer would ever tolerate lest he become a laughingstock. Yet the seed-sower of the parable apparently has more than enough to go around and so throws seed everywhere and tosses it anywhere, the odds of harvest success mattering now a whit. Maybe if the whole world existed as God intended in its creation, maybe the seeds would face better odds – maybe even sprouting 100 percent of the time, with every heart carefully plotted on fertile ground that’s eager to capture the loving seeds of the Creator and yield a bin-busting bumper crop of grace and peace, healing and reconciliation.

But as it stands, people build roads in fields of their hearts, six-lane freeways packed down by daily life’s rush-hour traffic, by the cynicism and arrogance of our day, by those who sneer at the very idea of God, religion, and faith. The seed of the Gospel bounces off such well-compacted, steam-rolled hearts. Maybe a bird of the air will eat the seed. Or maybe it’ll just get smushed under the weight of the next vehicle to whiz through that heart. Either way, the seed won’t sprout; it won’t grow, not this time around anyway.

Others are not that bad off, not so stubborn and stiff-necked. But they nevertheless have been made fiercely and dangerously shallow by a get-rich-quick, instant-gratification culture of fad and indulgence – forever on the lookout for the shiny bauble or fancy trinket that’s “new and improved,” believing that the next best thing to come along is always lurking just around the corner and thus theirs for the snagging. Sometimes the seed of the Gospel shoots up in the human heart like a fast-growing weed, but then withers just as quickly as it appeared, when the shallow, me-first craving for novelty once more takes hold.

Still other hearts – and you’ve met these folks, too – are just plain crowded and crazy-busy: hearts neither calloused nor shallow and, in fact, blessed with some measure of depth. Lots of stuff grows there, but in the end, it’s too much. The seed of the Gospel comes in and sprouts just fine but faces stiff competition for light, warmth, and nutrients. Because just over there grow the plants of profit and loss. Concerns about the 401(k) fund, the children’s college funds, and the growth of their stock market portfolio suck a lot of nutrients from the soil of the heart. As Scripture elsewhere proclaims, the love of money is the root of all evil.

Also struggling for growing space in the garden of these hearts are the plants of community involvement: the PTAs at school, the booster groups of extracurriculars, the club sports and traveling teams, the affinity groups of politics and activism, and on, and on, and on. It’s all good stuff – or a lot of it is, but it sure makes for long to-do lists and overloaded planning calendars. And so, when the pastor calls looking to recruit some new church elders and deacons, or a committee chair reaches out in hope of finding a helping hand – well, what can one say?  “Sorry, but I just don’t have time for everything.” Which is an ironical response given that, as Scripture reveals, the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is everything.

There is, of course, that final heart where the soil is rich and the seed of the Gospel does splendidly well. Thanks be to God! Literally! Because given the apparently long odds for Gospel success, you have to assume that the heart whose soil is deep, wide, and free of weedy encumbrance is a field cleared by the Holy Spirit herself. Only the power of Almighty God’s Holy Spirit can overcome the obstacles that the world throws before us: the hindrances of cynicism and despair, of media hype and incessant novelty, of sheer busyness, fame, and greed.

He who has ears to hear, let him hear; she who has ears to hear, let her hear: The sowing of seed and its success – when that happens – is all about grace. Maybe that’s why the brave, intrepid farmer keeps lobbing seeds at even the unlikeliest of targets. It’s not that the farmer doesn’t understand the long odds. It’s just that, when you’re talking about salvation by grace and grace alone, it’s not finally about the odds but about the persistence of the Holy One who won’t stop. Ever.

Indeed, Danny, you never know!

Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message in worship on Sunday, August 3, 2025, at First Presbyterian Church in Waukon, Iowa, USA. Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by George Buttrick, Chelsey Harmon, Scott Hoezee, and Tom Long inform the message.

Saved by Angels

Words like “neat” and “clean,” “heartwarming” and “lovely,” fit this morning’s Scripture lesson to a tee. This Word of the Lord from the prophet Isaiah is a delightful snippet of Old Testament poetry that commemorates what the Lord has done to save and sustain his people.

Problem is, its context is anything but a scene of blessed rest. These precious sentiments of divine praise and thanksgiving emerge amid a long, heartfelt prayer for deliverance – a community lament spread over two chapters of Isaiah.

Just prior to this glad recital of salvation stands a bloody picture of the Lord coming to judge all the nations who oppose and oppress his chosen people. The other bookend is bloody punishment for the evil ways and actions of God’s people. The prophet Isaiah is reminding a humbled and restored Israel of all the much-needed, but undeserved kindness that God has shown them over the centuries.

Isaiah credits that lovingkindness to the presence of angels and rather likens such grace, in my mind anyway, to a piggy-back ride. I’ll unpack that in a bit, but for now, listen to the Word that God has spoken. Listen even if you don’t fully understand, as Isaiah declares –

I will tell of the kindnesses of the LORD, the deeds for which he is to be praised, according to all the LORD has done for us – yes, the many good things he has done for Israel, according to his compassion and many kindnesses. He said, “Surely they are my people, children who will be true to me.” And so he became their Savior. In all their distress he too was distressed, and the angel of his presence saved them. In his love and mercy he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old. (Isaiah 63:7-9 NIV)

The intermingling of divine toughness and tenderness – memories of God’s love mixing with God’s wrath – challenge our faith and tempt the shaving off of Scripture’s rough edges. How can a loving God also be so violent?  Perhaps the plot of the movie “Taken” helps resolve the crisis of faith.

Starring Liam Neeson, “Taken” is an exceedingly violent film about a one-time Army Green Beret turned CIA agent, whose lovely but vulnerable teenage daughter is kidnapped by sex traffickers while she is vacationing in Europe. When the girl drops the phone on which she has been talking to her dad, the kidnapper picks it up. Neeson’s character, Bryan Mills, hears the kidnapper breathing and demands his daughter’s release. “If you do, I will forget about this and let you go. If you don’t, I will find you and kill every one of you.” The sneering kidnapper laughs and says, “Good luck.”

Well, this anguished father doesn’t need luck. He employs his stealthy training and clandestine experience with lethal results. In the end, every single member of the sex trafficking gang is dead, and the determined father frees his daughter. The final scene captures a sobbing daddy holding his daughter in the loving arms of relief.

If you’re squeamish, I don’t recommend watching the movie. But its plot raises a moral question for both fathers and mothers: How far would you go to save your children from mortal danger? Would your intense love stir violent action? 

If a sinful father with special skills would risk his life to save his kidnapped daughter, how much more would a holy Father risk violence to rescue and restore his foolish, sinful children? Apparently, given the grim scenes of judgment and vengeance before and after our lesson, God will pull no punches. No means of deliverance are off the table.

Perhaps it’s easier to wrap your head around the last verse of our lesson – that tender image of a father lifting up a little and carrying that child on a long journey. Remember, as a child, being tired, sad, or hurt, and daddy bends down, scoops you up, and piggybacks you on his strong shoulders? So also with God our Savior: the Lord eagerly wraps little children in his arms and blesses them, even when the kids have been very naughty.

We are saved, as it turns out, because “God so loved the world” (John 3:16), even though our sin and brokenness breach the boundaries of being lovable. When talk of God’s wrath upon evil and Jesus’s suffering on the Cross tightens the gut and braces the mind, Isaiah reminds that God’s fierce love and liberating mercy drive the whole enterprise of salvation! 

God abides with us not just as an encourager of better times ahead but so also as a fellow mourner who warmly embraces the brokenhearted, a liberating parent who never flinches when evil messes with God’s people or schemes to mess up God’s plans.

And here’s the difference that makes God so good and great: Where we are crushed, God is not overcome. Where fear cripples the human spirit, God charges ahead with redemption. Where you and I see life’s end, God envisions life’s new beginning. To the one who frets “this can’t be the end,” God confirms that it isn’t. And it is through such hopeful assurance – in Christ who everlastingly lives and loves in and through the Holy Spirit – that you and I can face every tomorrow.

It is precisely as Isaiah declares: “The angel of his presence saved them.” Indeed, sometimes we entertain angels unaware; other times, the Holy Spirit calls and empowers us to be the ones doing the entertaining. For among heaven’s many mysteries are physical rescue and spiritual relief through the work of human hands. And thus we sing –

We will work with each other, we will work side by side;
And we’ll guard human dignity and save each one’s pride.
And they’ll know we are Christians by our love.
Yes, they’ll know we are Christians by our love.

The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message during worship on Sunday, July 27, 2025, at First Presbyterian Church in Waukon, Iowa, USA. Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by Derek Caldwell, Scott Hoezee, Stan Mast, and Stephen Reid inform the message.

Special Blessing for Konnor Krambeer

In worship on Sunday, July 20, 2025, Pastor Grant offered member Konnor Krambeer a special blessing as he departs for 20 weeks of training at the Iowa Department of Public Safety Basic Training Academy in Johnston. Upon graduation, Konnor will serve as a state trooper based in Chickasaw County. In May he graduated from Coe College in Cedar Rapids, where he earned his degree in criminal justice and played defensive back on the Kohawks football team. Konnor is the son of members Brad and Becky Krambeer and grandson of members Ken and Gloria Krambeer.

Protector God, your saints have long cleared your premises of its undesirables, so please look kindly upon all those who protect and serve.

As your child Konnor leaves this place to be trained in the work you now call him to do, give him a cool head, a stout heart, an uncanny flair for investigation, and wise judgment. Make him the terror of burglars, a friend of widows and children; enable Konnor to be kind to strangers, polite to bores, and impervious to temptation. In troubles and riots, give him sheer muscle without temper; give him love for truth and evidence without thought of self.

Stir within Konnor’s heart and mind not only loyalty to the law of the land but also loyalty to your statutes to love and serve friend, neighbor, and stranger, as you have taught him here in this place. Thus we pray with St. Francis –

Empower Konnor to be an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred let him bring your love.
Where there is sadness let him bring joy.
Where there is darkness let him bring light.

May he seek not just to be consoled but to console;
to be understood in equal measure to his understanding;
not just to be loved but to love.

Amen, and amen.
 

Rise, Be Fed, and Go

The saying is true and worthy of acceptance: When the going gets tough, the tough get going.

When problems demand solutions, when dire circumstances require commanding response, the spiritually strong step in to fill the void. But human energy and creativity are finite resources, and doing the work that God calls you to do can be discouraging, exhausting – and sometimes even lethal.

Consider the plight of the Old Testament prophet Elijah, who serves God with boldness and bravery, facing down the prophets of pagan gods and living in defiance of corrupt governing royalty. As we enter his story this morning, the throne has pronounced upon Elijah a death sentence, and he is running for his life.

He is scared to death. Indeed, Elijah wishes he could die and thus escape an impossible, no-win situation involving the nasty King Ahab and Queen Jezebel. Elijah now languishes in the wilderness – biblical code for places in which sin and brokenness are running roughshod. He feels abandoned by the God for whom Elijah has been zealous in faith and action.

But in his self-pity, a strange thing happens. While his visible world is failing him, Elijah gains access to the invisible world of faith that lives “by the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). An angel, an other-worldly messenger to whom Ahab and Jezebel have absolutely no access, comes to Elijah in his sleep. The messenger issues an imperative of care and nourishment: “Get up and eat.”

Ancient words, ever true: Listen to the Word that God has spoken.

When Ahab got home, he told Jezebel everything Elijah had done, including the way he had killed all the prophets of Baal. So Jezebel sent this message to Elijah: “May the gods strike me and even kill me if by this time tomorrow I have not killed you just as you killed them.”  Elijah was afraid and fled for his life. He went to Beersheba, a town in Judah, and he left his servant there.

Then he went on alone into the wilderness, traveling all day. He sat down under a solitary broom tree and prayed that he might die. “I have had enough, LORD,” he said. “Take my life, for I am no better than my ancestors who have already died.” Then he lay down and slept under the broom tree.

But as he was sleeping, an angel touched him and told him, “Get up and eat!” He looked around and there beside his head was some bread baked on hot stones and a jar of water! So he ate and drank and lay down again. Then the angel of the LORD came again and touched him and said, “Get up and eat some more, or the journey ahead will be too much for you.”

So, he got up and ate and drank, and the food gave him enough strength to travel 40 days and 40 nights to Mount Sinai, the mountain of God. There he came to a cave, where he spent the night. But the LORD said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” Elijah replied, “I have zealously served the LORD God Almighty. But the people of Israel have broken their covenant with you, torn down your altars, and killed every one of your prophets. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me, too.”

“Go out and stand before me on the mountain,” the LORD told him. And as Elijah stood there, the LORD passed by, and a mighty windstorm hit the mountain. It was such a terrible blast that the rocks were torn loose, but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake there was a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire there was the sound of a gentle whisper.

When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his cloak and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. And a voice said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” He again replied, “I have zealously served the LORD God Almighty. But the people of Israel have broken their covenant with you, torn down your altars, and killed every one of your prophets. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me, too.”

Then the LORD told him, “Go back the same way you came, and travel to the wilderness of Damascus. When you arrive there, anoint Hazael to be king of Aram. Then anoint Jehu to be king of Israel, and anoint Elisha to replace you as my prophet. Anyone who escapes from Hazael will be killed by Jehu, and those who escape Jehu will be killed by Elisha! Yet I will preserve 7,000 others in Israel who have never bowed down to Baal or kissed him!” (1 Kings 19:1-18)

“Get up and eat!”

Not once but twice: Rise and eat, says the angel, whose first course serves up no heavenly words of reassurance, no reminder of God’s command. The angel instead ministers to Elijah’s basic bodily needs – food and water – to prepare him for the journey that lies ahead, to Mount Horeb, where Moses received the Ten Commandments, where Elijah knows the hidden holiness of God abides.

“Get up and eat, you must go!” Back to your roots, back to the holy ground where God established a binding covenant with the people. Upon that sacred mount, Elijah judges himself zealous, at risk, and all alone.

The divine response to Elijah’s self-pity is a quite-fresh revelation of divine presence – without all the drama. Instead of grandeur like the stone tablets of Moses, all Elijah gets is “sheer silence,” as though the utter force of God’s holiness is sufficient; too deep, too dreadful for sound or speech. “What are you doing here?” heaven’s voice asks again, as if God is asking, “Are you still here?” or “Why are you still here?” Elijah answers again from self-pity: I have been zealous; I am alone; they are trying to kill me!

God then issues Elijah his marching orders: Go, return. Confront the enemy. Re-enter the fight. Get back into the fray. God’s specifics are downright chilling: Engage in political subversion, and anoint a new king, even though Ahab and the wicked Jezebell are well-established on the throne. The Lord’s emotional comfort, encouraging words, and spiritual assurance – what the woe-is-me Elijah likely sought from the get-go – come almost as an after-thought: You, Elijah, are not alone. There are still 7,000 faithful; you are not the only one. You have allies, comrades, and colleagues in your hard-fought fight of doing justice and loving kindness. (Micah 6:6-8)

That same blessed work rather seems routed and under attack these days, so we ought see ourselves and our times in this ancient scene. My first inclination is to self-pity, a sickening sense of loss and failure. My propensity is to imagine that the good Lord God of all time and place should be working harder to prosper our good efforts at humane justice and peace-making, the loving and serving of friend, neighbor, and stranger.

You, too, might – for a moment – claim the role of Elijah for yourself: so also feeling abandoned and alone in an exercise in self-pity. You do well to acknowledge such a moment – that’s just healthy self-awareness, even if the sense is fleeting. And then, you might quite innocently imagine the good gifts of God given you in your neediness. Such physical and spiritual nourishment likely are given through human intervention, through those who care for you and wish you well. Such food as a “baked cake” and a “jar of water” might be a gesture or a note; a casserole or dish of fro-yo; a smile, an embrace, a kind word – any and all things that signify solidarity and spread healing balm upon your feelings of abandonment.

If that’s where you’re at, please seek out such support and affirmation. If not, let the Spirit of God in Christ Jesus steer your course: “You must go!” It is amazing how a singular, inexplicable gesture can reframe our lives when we find ourselves on the glad receiving end of generous grace. The offer and reception of food and care come first. Only then, after that, comes the haunting question, “What are you doing here?” What are you doing in this place of self-pity and weeping discouragement?

The question in its ancient form and in its present delivery is in fact a hopeful assertion: “This is not your rightful place.” You do not belong here. You are not destined to languish in self-pity. The prophet is twice-permitted the luxury of naming and claiming his abandonment. But the hallowed voice of God turns answer to imperative: Go and stand on the mount before me. Then go back to your proper and rightful place in my long story of redemption. You can linger here in self-pity only so long, then you must remember your call and perform your duty.

Thus Elijah is freshly dispatched back to his dangerous work by the One who extends lordly authority over him. Elijah’s only encouragement is the assurance that 7,000 others stand alongside in solidarity, slow-but-certain articulation of divine intent in the public process. We are, sooner or later, returned to the good work of humane justice and loving kindness. But first, get up and eat.

Which is why, shortly, the Lord will extend you gracious invitation: Come to the table.

Which is why, later in the service, we will commission Konnor Krambeer as he leaves our midst to begin his long-dreamed career in law enforcement – the noble labor of doing justice and loving kindness. So, Konnor, when the time comes, get up and eat. Then go in peace, and get to work.

Which is why, next Sunday, we will be commissioning our volunteers who will be offering time and talent in the compassionate, ecumenical labor of feeding the kids at Zion UCC. If you are among them, among those cooking up nutritional justice and serving up loving kindness, come and eat at the Lord’s Table. Then go in peace, and get to work.

The invitation is for all, in whatever role the Lord calls you to play: Come to the table, get up and eat, be sustained for the many uphill challenges that lie ahead. Get up and eat. Then get up and go, even if – and especially when – your task is surely exhausting and potentially dangerous.

The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message during worship on Sunday, July 20, 2025, at First Presbyterian Church in Waukon, Iowa, USA. The service included celebration of communion at the Lord Table. Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by Walter Brueggemann and Roger Nam inform the message. Artwork is by Ally Barrett and Daniele da Volterra.