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“For what shall we pray?” is a weekly post inviting individuals, groups, and congregations to lift up our world in prayer. This resource is prepared by a variety of leaders in the ELCA and includes prayer prompts, upcoming events and observances, and prayer suggestions from existing denominational worship materials. You are encouraged to use these resources as a starting point, and to adapt and add other concerns from your local context. More information about this resource can be found here.   Prayer prompts: For justice and peace among nations where war and violence rage, especially Ukraine and Russia, Palestine and…

Catalyst Question If you were living on a desert island for a year, with enough food and water to last indefinitely, what is one thing you would want to bring to make it the best life possible? Peace with a Purpose In John 20:19-31, a resurrected Jesus appears to his disciples twice. Often, when we read this passage, we focus on Thomas. He wasn’t present the first time Jesus showed up, and so was skeptical until Jesus appeared a second time. Some call him Doubting Thomas. Others emphasize Thomas’s devotion because he would only settle for the real Jesus and…

Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth. –II Timothy 2.15 For a long time, I’ve thought of reading and doing theology as an act of sanctification and discipleship. How else is the Christian supposed to act rightly (orthopraxis) without knowing rightly (orthodoxy)? These are bound together in a dialectical bundle whilst the one implicates the other, and vice versa. In short: without the work of prayerful and worshipful study before God there cannot be any Christian growth. When the disciple does a word…

“For what shall we pray?” is a weekly post inviting individuals, groups, and congregations to lift up our world in prayer. This resource is prepared by a variety of leaders in the ELCA and includes prayer prompts, upcoming events and observances, and prayer suggestions from existing denominational worship materials. You are encouraged to use these resources as a starting point, and to adapt and add other concerns from your local context. More information about this resource can be found here.   Prayer prompts: For justice and peace among nations where war and violence rage, especially Ukraine and Russia, Palestine and…

Catalyst Question What kind of evidence do you need to believe something is true? Evidence of Life Recently, the possibility of life on another planet hit the news. While studying a planet 124 light years away from Earth, scientists made a surprising discovery. Thanks to NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and an advanced understanding of physics, scientists identified two gasses in this plant’s atmosphere that, in our experience, are only produced by bacteria and phytoplankton. How could anyone know that these particles exist from such a distance? The telescope can identify the composition of the planet’s atmosphere by studying the…

God’s Existence in Cosmic Relief Is there any need to explain why there is a universe at all? Would God be an explanation? This is the question the rest of this essay will engage with. 1) This essay will reason on the moral need for an explanation of universe’s existence vis-à-vis human teleology. 2) Based on the affirmative of point one this essay will further attempt to reason from the universe’s apparent contingency concerning God’s existence as the best inference to an explanation, regarding the universe’s existence in general, and human existence embedded in the universe in particular. 3) For…

Catalyst Question How do you identify the heroes in your life? Joy Amidst the Sorrow We’re at a turning point in the season. The long journeys we’ve been on are finally coming to a conclusion, identifying the heroes and champions, as well as the wannabes and villains. Though the wait has been long, we can finally see the finish lines. This could be about sports. After all, we just wrapped up both the Men’s and Women’s NCAA tournaments, crowning two champions (Florida and UConn, respectively). With few cinderella stories and the top-8 seeds in both Final Fours, these playoffs felt…

“For what shall we pray?” is a weekly post inviting individuals, groups, and congregations to lift up our world in prayer. This resource is prepared by a variety of leaders in the ELCA and includes prayer prompts, upcoming events and observances, and prayer suggestions from existing denominational worship materials. You are encouraged to use these resources as a starting point, and to adapt and add other concerns from your local context. More information about this resource can be found here.   Prayer prompts: For justice and peace among nations where war and violence rage, especially Ukraine and Russia, Palestine and…

It is artificial and anachronistic for people to look back at the economy of God in the Old Testament, and presume that God Himself is subject to our modern ethical sensibilities (whatever those might be). The Old Testament took place in the Ancient Near East (ANE). And God’s dealings with humanity at that time were in those conditions (sitz im leben). Often modern and postmodern people look back at the OT, and its “violence passages,” especially the ones where God commands His covenant people to wipe out whole people groups and nations, and wince. They try to explain it away…

The following is shared from the Lutheran Advocacy Ministry in Pennsylvania (LAMPa) newsletter for Wednesday, April 9, 2025.  Commemorating Bonhoeffer, Living into his Legacy Today, April 9, marks the 80th anniversary of the death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor-theologian who resisted the Nazi regime and was executed at Flossenbürg Concentration Camp just weeks before the end of WWII.   Over the past year Lutherans, advocates, and those committed to justice on behalf of their neighbor have been steeped in the legacy of Bonhoeffer and the lessons his theology and life have to offer us as disciples also working at…