Really Seeing Other People - Empathy

This video is a powerful insight to the lives of people sitting around you in the pews at church, walking by in the mall, and your neighbor across the street. It is Christ who can empathize with our pain, our suffering, our hurts and our sin.

Although the video is for Cleveland Clinic, it is something that most people learn about only too soon. Sitting next to you or walking by you is the cancer survivor, the lonely widow, the broken-hearted, the single mother, the depressed... the answer is in the mercy of God. Christ knows it all, suffered it all. He knows your individual story of sorrow and pain. It all begins in His suffering, pain, and forgiveness.

He gives you strength. The strength He gives you, you give to others in the same forgiveness and strength He gave you.

God's Comforting Words

God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. (1 Cor. 1:9)

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.  (Romans 5:1-4)

A Prayer

This bread is our Lord Jesus Christ who feeds and comforts the soul [John 6:51]. Therefore, O heavenly Father, grant grace that the life, words, deeds, and suffering of Christ be preached, made known, and preserved for us and all the world. Help that we may find in his words and deeds an effective example and mirror of all virtues for every phase of life. Help that we may be strengthened and comforted in suffering and adversity in and through his suffering and cross. Help us through his death to overcome our own death with a firm faith and thus boldly follow our beloved Guide into the life beyond this one. (Luther's Works, v. 43, p. 34-35)

Fresh Start for Pastor Sell

Here we go! This was a subject line in an e-mail with one of the elders of Our Savior last week. This Sunday Our Savior will install me as her pastor. What an honor it is to serve you with God's Holy Word.
His Word and the sacramental life of the Christian is what brings comfort, peace, and unity in Christ. It is Jesus who gives the forgiveness that He earned in His perfect life as a sacrifice for our sins at Calvary. He gives forgiveness and His Holiness to each believer by faith, that is, when we trust in His work.

So this Sunday the Holy Ones of Our Savior will install her "new pastor." However, please remember that the Holy Ones of Our Savior are Holy by faith. Christ forgives your sins. My sins. My faith in Christ brings His forgiveness and holiness to me too.

In other words, the Holy Ones of Our Savior elected a poor miserable sinner. During Lent, we fully accept our responsibility for our sins. Yet we prepare to celebrate the death of God, the sacrificial Lamb upon whom our sins were placed. As I wrote in my acceptance letter to you,

Immediately upon making my decision, I offered up prayers of thanksgiving, repentance, and mercy. Prayers of thanksgiving for the innumerable blessings God gives through His creation and His holy Word: Prayers of repentance because Our Savior elected a poor miserable sinner to be her pastor. Prayers of mercy because only God’s death on the cross for our sins provides the mercy I need to serve Christ and His sheep.

Thanks be to God.
Pr. Sell
Mt. 28:19-20