Joel 2: 21-32 (links validated 4/26/22)

Illustrated Resources from the Archives

  • Pentecost (B)(2015)

    by Brendan Byrne
    ("In 1897, the British writer H G Wells published his classic science-fiction story, The Invisible Man. It tells the story of a rejected and disgruntled man, Griffin, who invents a way to make himself invisible; and who then tries to use his invisibility to become a kind of Nietzschean "superman", ruling through the force of his will and the power over others which he thinks being invisible will give him. What he fails to realize that being invisible has adverse consequences of its own...")
  • Hooray for the Pumpkin Pie!

    by Kathy Donley
    “The locust invasion started seven days ago and covered the sky. Today it took the locust clouds two hours to pass over the city. God protect us from the three plagues: war, locusts, and disease, for they are spreading through the country. Pity the poor.”[1] That was recorded in the diary of a soldier stationed in Jerusalem in 1915. He was describing the worst infestation of locusts in recent history. As the locusts approached, the sun was darkened. The locusts were so numerous that they were killed by the ton without any appreciable effect. In April of that year, the government issued a proclamation requiring every man between 15 and 60 years of age to gather 11 pounds of locust eggs every single day and deliver them to government officials for destruction. One eyewitness of this plague said “nothing we did prevented the locusts from coming down and devouring everything green, even the bark of trees, in a matter of minutes.” That widespread devastation, with the destruction of crops and the blockades of WWI led to three years of famine and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people...
  • Sermon Starters (Proper 25C)(2022)

    by Scott Hoezee
    As Frederick Buechner notes, the word “spirit” gets drained of meaning through over-use. We hear about “school spirit,” the “spirit of ’76,” “team spirit,” “the Christmas spirit.” A sign by a local high school in my area regularly posts the hours of operation for something called “The Spirit Shop.” But it can be difficult to define just what “spirit” means for any of those things...At the same time, again as Buechner observes, we cannot deny that for all its vapory, insubstantial features, the “spirit” of something can be strong and contagious. It is remarkably easy for even a very calm and quiet person to get whipped up into enthusiasm by the “spirit” of a political rally, a football game, or (more grimly) of a lynch mob...
  • Proper 25C (2016)

    by Scott Hoezee
    Some years back I saw a movie which had a scene which was at once somber and yet funny. In the scene two good friends are seated in the stands at a New York Giants NFL football game. But they are not really watching the game because one of the two men is deeply sad since his wife had left him the day before. With a crestfallen expression on his face, he tells his friend all about the events that had led up to this tragedy in his life. It is a very serious, unhappy conversation... The funny part is that while these two men are talking, “the wave” is sweeping through the stadium.
  • Proper 25C (2010)

    by Scott Hoezee
    ("As Frederick Buechner notes, the word 'spirit' gets drained of meaning through over-use. We hear about 'school spirit,' the 'spirit of '76,' 'team spirit,' 'the Christmas spirit'. The new electronic sign by East Grand Rapids High School regularly posts the hours of operation for something called 'The Spirit Shop'...")
  • Sermon Starters (Proper 24C)(2019)

    by Stan Mast
    Discerning the times is a tricky business. I remember a seminary prof illustrating that by referring to mountain ranges. That resonated with me because I grew up in Denver, Colorado, looking at the Rockies all the time. I knew that as I looked at those majestic mountains from my kitchen window, I was seeing many successive ranges, beginning with the foothills and the Front Range and culminating at the Continental Divide. Between the gentle foothills and the jagged peaks, there were many miles of ups and downs, but you couldn’t tell how far each range was from the other. What is true of distances in the mountains is true of years in God’s calendar. We can’t tell how long the last days will go on and how far we are from the peak.
  • Grasping God's Promises

    by Jim McCrea
    It seems to me that it takes a special soul to see beyond the dangers and disasters of life to the grace of God moving below that surface. You can see a a similar thing in the Rev. Jody Felton’s description of her father’s slow descent into the grasp of Alzheimer’s Disease. •She writes, “Over the years Dad lost all five of us. He was always delighted to see us, but he did not know we were his children. Dad was the epitome of ‘forgetful love.’ He loved […] us even though he did not know we were his children. Dad forgot all the times we were disrespectful, the times we disappointed him, the times we neglected to be grateful for all he was to us. […] He forgot the less than wonderful in us, but remembered the love. “That is the way God treats us. God loves us...period! God practices ‘forgetful love.’ We know there are times when we disappoint God, when we turn away from God, when we fail, when we are less than loving, yet God continues to love us. More than that, God forgives us, then forgets what we did and continues to love us. “I am thankful this Thanksgiving season that God practices ‘forgetful love.’ I know that we can keep going, even when we fail because God will continue to love us. […] God is continually reaching out to enfold us in arms of love. In fact, God totally forgot himself in Jesus...
  • Seeing Visions

    by Jim McCrea
    •Fifty-seven years ago this month, in the heart of the Cold War, the world came as close to nuclear annihilation as it ever has. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was concerned about the American arsenal of nuclear weapons based in Europe and Turkey which were aimed at the Soviet Union. So he decided to balance things out a bit by installing a group of Russian nuclear missiles in Cuba. Once the American government became aware of what Khrushchev was doing and realized that those missiles were so close to the United States that they could devastate the entire eastern seaboard in a matter of 13 minutes, an ultra-tense 13-day standoff began, an incident which is now known as the Cuban Missile Crisis. President Kennedy ordered a blockade of Soviet ships heading for Cuba. That meant there were a number of pressure-packed confrontations between American and Russian ships on the high seas during which any false moves had the potential of kicking off World War III. That, in turn, could have been the shortest and deadliest war in history. In the midst of that crisis, an American U-2 spy plane took off from its base in Alaska for an eight-hour flight to the North Pole and back. The plane carried scientific equipment to measure radiation coming from a Russian base along its flight path...
  • Visions of Thankfulness

    by Jim McCrea
    Johannes Tauler was a priest, mystic and theologian who lived in medieval Germany. He met a beggar one day and greeted him by saying, “God give you a good day, my friend.” The beggar answered, “I thank God I’ve never had a bad one.” Then Tauler said, “God give you a happy life, my friend.” The beggar relied, “I thank God. I am never unhappy.” In amazement Tauler asked: “What do you mean?” “Well,” said the beggar, “When it is fine, I thank God; when it rains, I thank God; when I have plenty, I thank God; when I am hungry, I thank God; and since God’s will is my will, and whatever pleases him, pleases me, why should I say I’m unhappy when I am not?” Tauler looked at the man in astonishment. “Who are you?” he asked. “I am a king,” said the beggar. “Where is your kingdom?” asked Tauler. And the beggar answered quietly, “In my heart.”...
  • Olive Oil and Grasshoppers

    Art and Faith by Lynn Miller
    Vincent Van Gogh's painting "Olive Trees" shows olive trees in full leaf against a brilliant blue sky. The coolness of the painting is further enhanced by the blue shadows cast by the trees. The ground is a greenish-gray mixed with white. This is a time of plenty. This is the time of repayment. But what about the grasshoppers? How are they "repaid" for the destruction they left in their wake?...
  • Thanksgiving Is Thanks Living

    by Garth Wehrfritz-Hanson
    Martin Rinkart, a Lutheran pastor in Eilenburg, Germany, wrote the hymn during the Thirty Year War which raged in Germany during the 1600's. Eilenburg was a walled city and was a place of refuge for thousands of refugees fleeing the war. As it filled with helpless victims, the city became overcrowded and was under-supplied with food, sanitation, and medical care. Instead of a place of refuge, it soon became a city of death. Plagues raged through the city claiming hundreds of victims. In the midst of misery and pain, Reverend Rinkart wrote sixty hymns of faith and hope. His hymns helped turn the people’s eyes from their despair to the power and love of God. Rinkart encouraged them to look beyond their circumstances to the eternal blessings of God. With this confidence, Rinkart was able to minister to thousands. In the terrible plague of 1637, other pastors fled or died, and Rinkart was left alone to bury close to 4500 men, women, and children. Some days he would conduct 45 funerals. As the war drew to a close, Eilenburg was overrun by several armies. At one point, the Swedish army occupied the city, and the general in charge demanded that the people pay a large tribute. On behalf of the people, Rev. Rinkart spoke to the general and begged for mercy. The general was unyielding. Facing possible death, Rinkart called his companions to kneel and pray. “Come my children, we can find no mercy with (humans); let us take refuge with God.” He led the prayer and the singing of a hymn. Stunned, the general watched. When Rinkart rose, the general ordered the levy reduced, and he spared the city. It was with this faith that Rinkart wrote, “Now Thank We All Our God”...

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