Today is the last day of the Florida Strawberry Festival. We are so blessed to live less than an hour away from some of the best strawberries in the world. We can go and pick them at the height of their perfection, or we can buy them at a local grocery store when they are only a day or two old. Connor Updike, one of our former members, who grew up in this congregation just like you, makes his living growing strawberries, doing everything he can to make them as fresh and delicious as possible for us.
Read MoreAt yesterday’s service for Canon Dalton Downs, the Rev. Allison St. Louis spoke of how he would always ask her, “How is your soul?” It is such a simple question, so very clear and so very deep – never-ending depth. It is a most important question. It brings to mind Psalm 43:5:
“Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you disquieted within me”
Truly, if our souls are disquieted, everything else about our being is affected.
Read MoreThe years after World War I, or The Great War as they called it, was a very unstable and vulnerable time in Germany. Their economy was a disaster under the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War One, and Germany resented it. Nefarious political forces – Soviet Communists and Nazis – were preying on their economic troubles, the fear and the resentment hoping to gain control. Once Adolph Hitler was elected Chancellor, the Nazis began to systematically turn every institution toward the singular focus of strengthening Germany to dominate the world.
Where was the Church? The Nazis pressured and eventually took over leadership of the German Church to make it turn away from this whole notion of a suffering savior in favor of Hitler’s Aryan ideal. They literally turned the German Church into a neo-pagan shrine to the state. Many pastors and other church leaders signed on to The Barmen Declaration, which reaffirmed Christian belief. The Nazis used every means they could to silence opposition. Those who signed onto it were pressured. Many left, some were arrested.
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