GREETINGS TO THE HOLY PEOPLE OF GOD,
Many thanks to Becky Curtis and our Fellowship Committee for planning this 10th year celebration of the King Park Community Garden at our Octoberfest Event this Sunday. Come and join the celebration and be sure to stroll and tour the garden and greet our gardening neighbors.
Bold Inquisitive Belief Loving Expansively,
Pastor Connie Spitzack
GREETINGS TO THE HOLY PEOPLE OF GOD,
The celebration of the 10th Anniversary of the Community Garden is coming soon - Sunday, the 2nd of October. I hope you will come and celebrate this milestone. Ten years ago, a couple of people thought it would be a good idea to host a community garden. As I went around our neighborhood with VBS fliers that summer, I noticed many tomato plants on patios and agreed that this would be a good idea and a wonderful welcome to our neighbors. King Park is a little oasis in our neighborhood with a garden that invites those with green thumbs to grow vegetables, flowers, and relationships.
God has richly blessed us and our gardeners with good healthy food. Relationships have formed and gardening methods shared from around the world. New foods discovered from different lands and of course a good fence to keep rabbits and deer from feasting on the buffet of garden delights. Many conversations about weed management, mulch, water and the closing of the season for the garden were navigated.
I remember the requests for a water pipe to be run down to the garden. Talking it over with Mission and Justice and Property Committees and Council. I confess that I was reluctant to have us invest in something I wasn’t sure was going to be around and of course all the worst-case scenarios ran through my mind with an open pipeline to water. And now 10 years have passed, and the garden has grown and so have we with God’s nurturing presence. Gardeners are the creative sort, and the solution was to run a hose from the church down to the garden so that plastic tanks could be filled, and gardeners could draw water from the tanks. We have added tanks over the years and have recruited people to fill them throughout the week.
I give thanks to God for these ten years and all the ways God has helped us to share this garden with our neighbors and each other. God has blessed us through this garden and the many hands that help to make it possible. God does some of his best work in gardens and with us. To God be the glory!
Bold Inquisitive Belief Loving Expansively,
Pastor Connie Spitzack
GREETINGS TO THE HOLY PEOPLE OF GOD,
Our hymn of the day for this Sunday is the African American Spiritual, “There is a Balm in Gilead” (ELW # 614). This hymn is an answer to God’s question in Jeremiah 8:22a, “Is there no balm in Gilead?” This spiritual proclaims YES, yes there is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin sick soul.
Refrain
There is a balm in Gilead
to make the wounded whole;
there is a balm in Gilead
to heal the sin-sick soul.
1 Sometimes I feel discouraged
and think my work's in vain,
but then the Holy Spirit
revives my soul again. Refrain
2 If you cannot preach like Peter,
if you cannot pray like Paul,
you can tell the love of Jesus
and say, "He died for all." Refrain
3 Don't ever be discouraged,
for Jesus is your friend;
and if you lack for knowledge
he'll ne'er refuse to lend. Refrain
Text: African American spiritual
It is not an aromatic medicinal ointment like Vicks Vapor Rub but the response tells us that this balm is not located in Gilead or any place in the world but rather it is the Holy Spirit that revives our soul and Jesus is our friend who died for us. Our hope, our balm is found in God who acts, and we respond and answer, yes, there is a balm, a hope and we are the ones who get to answer and respond to God’s gift of grace. Rub this balm of grace into our lives with its sweet aroma radiating from us.
Bold Inquisitive Belief Loving Expansively,
Pastor Connie Spitzack
GREETINGS TO THE HOLY PEOPLE OF GOD,
Our hymn of the day for this Sunday is the African American Spiritual, “There is a Balm in Gilead” (ELW # 614). This hymn is an answer to God’s question in Jeremiah 8:22a, “Is there no balm in Gilead?” This spiritual proclaims YES, yes there is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin sick soul.
Refrain
There is a balm in Gilead
to make the wounded whole;
there is a balm in Gilead
to heal the sin-sick soul.
1 Sometimes I feel discouraged
and think my work's in vain,
but then the Holy Spirit
revives my soul again. Refrain
2 If you cannot preach like Peter,
if you cannot pray like Paul,
you can tell the love of Jesus
and say, "He died for all." Refrain
3 Don't ever be discouraged,
for Jesus is your friend;
and if you lack for knowledge
he'll ne'er refuse to lend. Refrain
Text: African American spiritual
It is not an aromatic medicinal ointment like Vicks Vapor Rub but the response tells us that this balm is not located in Gilead or any place in the world but rather it is the Holy Spirit that revives our soul and Jesus is our friend who died for us. Our hope, our balm is found in God who acts, and we respond and answer, yes, there is a balm, a hope and we are the ones who get to answer and respond to God’s gift of grace. Rub this balm of grace into our lives with its sweet aroma radiating from us.
Bold Inquisitive Belief Loving Expansively,
Pastor Connie Spitzack
GREETINGS TO THE HOLY PEOPLE OF GOD,
Carole and Ray Hegtvedt were very faithful servants of God at Christ the King Lutheran Church and in all they did. They recently died. Both within a day of each other.
Carole would so faithfully come and help us to assemble the newsletter when we used to do that, and Carole and Ray helped us count the offering. They had their quiet behind the scenes serving. Neither wanted to draw attention to themselves or be “a bother” to others but loved to serve and care for others in a quiet and behind the scenes manner.
It is that attitude of not wanting to be a bother and just plain trying to get through each day for the Hegtvedts that left our community surprised to hear of their deaths although we knew they were struggling with their health. Some of the residual results of being disconnected from one another for such a long period of time and getting swept up in the challenges before us. I am grateful for the care they received through hospice.
Carole and Ray were a gift to us and we give thanks to God for them and the opportunity to walk together in faith for a period of time. Ray once shared with me something he observed in worship in the park. He was wondering if I had noticed the snow egret flying over us. I had not as my attention was on the order of worship. But Ray’s attention had been captured by that bird. Egrets are symbolic of purity, strength, balance, concentration, longevity, and piety. Egrets tend to enjoy solitude, freedom, and independence. Maybe in sharing this observation of this beautiful, rare bird, Ray revealed a bit about himself and Carole.
That same worship service, he also noticed that as Bekah Ode was making her way to communion, she said, “We are blessed.” I loved that Ray shared that with me as he was encouraged by Carole to do so. Yes, how true, we are blessed. Thank you, Bekah. Thank you, Ray.
What a beautiful gift. This is the gift of the community of faith. We help each see how we bear the image of God in this world. We give thanks to these servants of God, Ray and Carole as they now cheer us on in the communion of saints.
Bold Inquisitive Belief Loving Expansively,
Pastor Connie Spitzack
CHRIST THE KING LUTHERAN CHURCH | 325 MORMON TREK BLVD. | IOWA CITY, IA | 319.338.5236
