Reflections

Dear Church Family,

I'm currently at Lazy W Ranch for my annual sermon planning retreat. This morning I started the day on the front porch with a cup of coffee, reading for an upcoming series and listening to the sounds around me. 

It occurred to me that the scene looked exactly like one of those carefully curated photos people post on social media — all it needed was a vivid warm filter and a cryptic caption to make me look deep and thoughtful. (I took the photo but resisted the urge to post it online. Mostly because I can't really figure out Instagram.)

But I was reflecting as I read and I thought I'd share what came up.

Scripture Shows Up Where We Least Expect It
I'm reading the Book of Job in preparation for a series this July, and I was struck immediately by Job 14:1-2: "A mortal, born of woman, few of days and full of trouble, comes up like a flower and withers, flees like a shadow and does not last."

Those words sounded familiar. And then it hit me: Principal Edward Rooney quotes a version of that in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. He was drawing from the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, which itself drew from Job. Words written thousands of years ago, traveling through a prayer book, landing in an '80s comedy. That's not just trivia, that's scripture doing what scripture does: weaving itself into the fabric of human life whether we notice or not. (The phrase "escaped by the skin of my teeth" also comes from Job.)

This tells me something important: the human experience has always had the same constants. We've always wrestled with suffering, with fairness, with where God is when life falls apart. Job asked the same questions we ask. That's why these ancient words still land.

Time Changes What We Hear
The first time I taught about Job was in the early 1990s, right here at Lazy W, when I was leading a talk for Senior High Camp. I was around 20 or so years old. But as I read this morning, I realized my 20-year-old self understood that story very differently than I do now.

That's exactly as it should be. Scripture isn't a fixed document with one correct interpretation — it's a living conversation that meets us where we are. The message Job holds for me in my 50s is richer, harder, and more personal than what I spoke about in 1990. That's the power of God's Spirit breathing new life into ancient words across the seasons of our lives. It's why I keep coming back.

God Was There the Whole Time
The third thing that struck me this morning was more of a reminder than a discovery: so many of the people we meet in scripture — and Job is perhaps the most vivid example — go through seasons where they are absolutely convinced that God has disappeared. They cry out into what feels like silence. And then, in one way or another, they discover that God was present all along, even in the hardest moments.

Sitting here in the quiet this morning, I felt that. Not as a theological idea, but as something real. And I think we need that reminder in these days. When you read the news, face your own daily struggles, or wrestle with something that doesn't seem to be getting any better, it can genuinely feel like God is far away. Scripture keeps telling us otherwise.

I don't know how your day started. Maybe everything is fine. Maybe you have a flat tire and a problem you went to sleep with that was still waiting for you when you woke up. Maybe you're carrying something heavy that no one else can see.

Wherever you are, Psalm 139 has always been the place I go when I need to be reminded:
Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. Even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.

Wherever you go today, be reminded that you are not alone - God goes with you. 

With God's Peace,
Pastor Karl