Dear Friends in Christ,

It is right to thank and praise those who give so much!  It’s been a year since God brought my wife Shauna and me to Calvert County Maryland and First Lutheran Church in Huntingtown.  It’s been a year since He had me ordained and installed as the pastor to His people here.  It’s been a year that we’ve been privileged to experience God’s blessings through His people.  They’ve been a people of mercy and grace through – kind words and encouragements, patience as I sometimes forget words or mix them up, enduring absences at inopportune moments (like two days before five Christmas Eve and Day services), and helping us grow into their lives.  Thank you all, God’s people in His church, very much for allowing God to work through you to make this first year, a gift we’ll never forget!  God has done much to us through you!

Paul wrote to the church in Ephesus to help them understand what God had done for them through Christ, the head of the church.  It was God the Father who chose them … since before the dawn of time … to be His people through His son Jesus Christ.  He didn’t do this because they were so good looking, nice, and fun to be with though … reasons we might choose to be with someone.  Rather, He chose them because He loved them and desired for them to be with Him.  It’s a “grace thing” … an undeserved gift from God.  Then He redeemed them through His Son Jesus and sealed them through the Holy Spirit.  God has lavished these same gifts on us …the chosen, redeemed, and sealed!

Of course, once our Father has chosen us, He teaches us what it means to be His chosen people … how He wishes for us to respond to His love for us by loving Him and our neighbors.  Throughout His word, including Ephesians, He tells us how to live this life of love within our families, our communities, and our jobs.  He also tells us how to live our lives in His church. 

Back to thanks … I thank God that through His church He has brought His word of truth to me and, by the power of the Holy Spirit, enabled me to believe it (Ephesians 1:13).  Through His church, He has done the same thing for you and all who believe in Him.  It is only in Christ’s church, not the building, but the people who believe and confess the gospel of Jesus Christ through words and deeds that any of us can come to hear God’s word and ultimately believe in it.  Once we believe, we live in His promise of “the guarantee of our inheritance (eternal life in the Kingdom of Heaven) until we acquire the possession of it.” (Ephesians 1:14) 

Paul continues Ephesians 1 with these words, “I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers” (Ephesians 1:16) to God our Father.  I too give Him thanks for you all as I remember you in my prayers.  I ask you to continue to remember Shauna and me in your prayers as we continue living together and serving God, each other, and His creation.

                                                                                    In the Love of Christ,

                                                                                    Pastor Jim