Category Archives: Ministry

Faith, Ministry, Uncategorized

The Lutheran Hymnal

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I start my job quite early, often about 4am, and want to read something as I eat breakfast alone. My lovely bride is purging the house of clutter, and during the process she found my grandparents’ copy of “The Lutheran Hymnal”.  For the past few weeks, I’ve been reading these ancient hymns each morning with my egg and hard bread.

Today’s hymn is #605, written by Bernard of Morlas ca.1140; “The World is Very Evil”. Listen to these lyrics?

“The world is very evil, the times are waxing late;

Be sober and keep vigil, The Judge is at the gate;

The Judge that comes in mercy, The Judge that comes with might,

To terminate the evil, to diadem the right.”

The part that makes me weep is about the judge who comes in mercy. Is it possible that G-d is our beloved elder who kindly picks us up, dusts us off, and sets us on a new path? So good to see such grace in the midst of the Dark Ages! May you be blessed by the kindness of G-d today! Amen.

 

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19th Century, Culture, education, History, Intercession, Jesus, Ministry, Minnesota, Native Americans

Pond Brothers arrive in Minnesota 1834

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Samuel and Gideon Pond, missionaries at Lake Calhoun, begin a lifelong study of the Dakota language. They compile dictionaries and grammars and put Dakota speech into written form.*

Lord, thanks that you speak to us in ways that we understand. You impress your ideas on us in a plethora of ways, including, but not limited to, our language. Thanks that your light shines through to us where ever and whenever we are in this world! You know the subtleties of our “mother tongue!”

These men, Samuel and Gideon, seem to have captured Your heart in this. They were not out to just meet the Dakota; they meant to live their lifetime with them! Will You bless this commitment to the Dakota peoples and their spoken language?

Furthermore, they rightly represent you as the living “Word” of God. How fitting that they were content to learn the words of the Dakota, and write them down. This was not enough, they wanted these words to flow the way they were thought and spoken, and so undertook to worship You by understanding Dakota grammar! Will You bless them, and their generations who want all Minnesotan languages to be cherished and recorded? May we as a State know you better by knowing the language of our fellow man!

*Note – PrayThroughHistory uses the timeline located for several years at the Minnesota Historical Society Web site, at this URL: mnhs.org/about/dipity_timeline.htm .  The current URL is http://www.dipity.com/Minnesota/History/Minnesota-History/ and only works if typed, not pasted, in browser. It is worth the effort!

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