Dear Friends in Christ,

Leymah Gbowee, a Liberian activist is an active member of a Liberian Lutheran congregation. She was instrumental in bringing her country of Liberia out of a brutal ten year civil war. She was awarded the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize for her work. Gbowee says the best way to achieve global peace is to start in local communities. She said at a presentation at the Interchurch Center in New York City on October 7th, 2011 that "It is time for us to do justice in our communities. . . . One day the world's problems will meet you at your doorstep.”
Gbowee, citing the examples of Christian peace and justice advocates such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, said she does not believe it is possible to practice nonviolent action without some connection to a higher power. "My faith has really helped me," said Gbowee citing her Lutheran faith. "When you move so quickly from innocence to a world of fear, pain and loss, it's as if the flesh of your heart and mind gets cut away, piece by piece, like slices taken off a ham. Finally, there is nothing left but the bone."
In 1996, six years after Charles Taylor began the rebellion that toppled the government of Samuel Doe and led to multiple struggles for power among warlords, Liberia lay in ruins. The entire infrastructure—roads, hospitals, schools, electricity—was gone. Soldiers had shot up anything left standing, including light poles. More than 80 percent of the population was living below the poverty line. Little boys were toting AK-47s that they could hardly lift but knew how to shoot.
During this time, Gbowee was forced to survive any way she could. She accepted protection from a man who fathered her children but also beat her often. She went from a young bright student, to survivor, to abused woman, to mother and protector of many children, to peacemaker, to activist, to spokeswoman for all women and an international traveler, speaker and award winner. Gbowee was part of a group called the Women in Peace-building Network. One night she had a vivid, disturbing dream without images but with a clear voice speaking to her in the darkness: "Gather the women to pray for peace!" At 5 a.m., when she awoke, Gbowee was shaking. Her first thought was of the unworthiness she felt.
As Gbowee began to act on the vision she had been given, her lack of confidence began to fall away and her confidence increased. In April 2002, about 20 Lutheran women gathered and formed the Christian Women's Peace Initiative. This small initiative, funded by church benevolence, grew into a Christian-Muslim national movement of women who demanded and eventually wrested peace from the war’s leaders.
Gbowee's life is a classical spiritual journey. At first the disruptive forces of war causes Gbowee to lose her untested faith. Later she finds great strength in prayer, in hymn singing and in the promise of Isaiah 54:11, a verse she returns to over and over again: "I will lay thy foundations with sapphires." She supports her Muslim sisters in their peacemaking journey. The image of Jesus as Prince of Peace and as peacemaker gives Gbowee strength as she joins other women in confronting the powers and principalities in a prolonged and costly war. At one point in the battle for peace, women wearing white begin to appear in a field near a fish market where Gbowee had played soccer as a child. As the women appear, she gives voice to the words they need to hear: "In the past, we were silent, . . . but after being killed, raped, dehumanized and infected with diseases, and watching our children and families destroyed, war has taught us that the future lies in saying no to violence and yes to peace! We will not relent until peace prevails!"
Pastor Harding
*Ash Wednesday falls on February 22nd. Services will be at 11:30 a.m. and 7:00 p.m.

JANUARY 2012

Dear Friends in Christ,

The staff at St. Paul’s wishes you a very Merry Christmas. Thank you for your blessings of gifts and prayers and well wishing during the season. We appreciate and value your support and help throughout the year and we try to be as responsive as we are able. The Council continues to be sharp and purposeful in their leadership which is a wonderful gift to all of us. God bless you as we enter this year of our Lord 2012. We are all a year older, a year wiser, and a year better looking. We look forward to 2012 as you do with our Celebration Hall up and running with an official Certificate of Occupancy. See you on Sunday as we give thanks to the Lord for his support, his graciousness, and his daily bread.
Yours in Christ,
Debby Tanico, Joanne Albertson, Mildred Kleiber, Ray LaBar, Laura Pride, and Pastor Harding.

Dear Friends in Christ,

I received an e-mail that is being passed along on the Internet about a man who lives a very busy, purposeful life. I’ll summarize it: He worked 50-60 hours a week and had just missed his daughter’s dance recital and son’s soccer game. He took a hard look at his wife, children, and himself and decided he was wasting a good part of his life. As he explained to another person, “I sat down one day and did some math. On average, folks live about seventy-five years. I multiplied 75 times 52 and came up with 3900 that is the number of Sundays the average person has in their entire life. It took me until I was fifty-five years old to think about all this and by that time I had lived through 2800 Sundays. I only had about a thousand Sundays left to enjoy. So I changed my priorities. I went and bought a thousand marbles. I take one out of a jar every Sunday. Now, I go to church with my family; we go out for brunch and then do a family event in the afternoon. I finally figured out that a good part of the good life is saying thanks and I realized I was living a thankless life. Now I’m living a thankful life.” (author unknown)
Worship is all about giving thanks: Thankfulness for daily bread, friends, family, a tree, and cable. Deciding to worship and give thanks for God’s benefits is not part of our culture like it used to be. It is just one option or choice among many. We have hundreds of cable stations, the big box stores, the laundry, the bed, and the yard as competitors for worship. The only one of the choices that is specifically a choice of thanks is worship. “Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good” writes the psalmist. Paul writes to the church in Colossae, Greece “Our life should be characterized by thankfulness to God” and to the church in Thessalonica, Greece “We are called to give thanks in all circumstances.”
Eucharist means “giving thanks” and is one of the words you learned during First Communion/Confirmation classes that describes Holy Communion. Epiphany is the time in the Church Year when we give thanks to God for His presence in life, and for the way He makes the world work. Think about it—we kill each other in huge numbers, we abuse the dickens out of the creation, we threaten each other with nuclear annihilation, we impoverish each other on purpose, but somehow, we are unsuccessful as a human race in destroying the world. It is depressing to recite the daily litany of horrors that the human race inflicts on the world. Yet, here we are waiting and watching for leaders to take us to a promised land and future. That leader would be Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit who causes us to change and mend our ways, to become more virtuous in our thoughts and behaviors, who influences officials in business and government to move ever so slowly to more reasonable and thoughtful policies. The Book of Genesis tells us that God limited our abilities after the sins of Adam and Eve. He limits our self love, and the destructiveness of pride and envy.
Thankfulness is anchored in the love that God has for you. Your calling and mine is to mature as much as we can so we can enter each day with thanks as a daily quality of our character. With thanks to God for His strength and wisdom, we call a cantankerous world into a new way of life: Appreciation, teamwork, empathy are words which are descriptive of that new way in Christ. With thankful hearts we are able to appreciate and marvel at the glorious world in which we live. Even more, we see its possibilities.

Pastor Harding

I believe in God,
the Father Almighty,
Creator of Heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died and was buried.
He descended to the dead.
On the third day, He rose again.
He ascended to Heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again to judge the living and the dead.