I have gone to see two different optometrists in the past few months. I wasn’t seeing so well, so I went to get my eyes checked. I wasn’t really concerned. I figured I just needed a new prescription. The first optometrist said my prescription hadn’t changed, but I might think about getting bifocals.

Jason stared at the makeshift barricade against his door. He rubbed his back and shook his head. “Will that keep them out?” Jason had been afraid when he heard the crowd gathering outside his window.

Keara O'Neill went shopping for a dress she could wear to an upcoming wedding. When she hesitated in buying an outfit, the salesperson insulted her size-eight figure and said she and her friends "were a joke."

Have you ever walked into a place and immediately felt like you didn’t belong?

The light of salvation is for all nations. Jesus prayed for it. Paul preached it. John saw it and wrote it. In the history of the Wisconsin Synod was to go out to the nations with the light of salvation. Our current and future ministry in the WELS and Epiphany is that the Lord is bringing the nations to the Racine area. Our privilege and responsibility is sharing this light in another culture and language through the ministries of Epiphany and WLS.

When I was a kid, my two younger sisters and I would ride in the back of our parents’ blue conversion van. It had wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling blue carpeting. The back seats had been removed to make three benches around the back. There was a round pedestal table in the center of the benches for drinks, food and cards. There were no seat belts in the back. It was totally unsafe! But that was OK. It was the 80s!

Several years ago, I baptized a baby boy in our church. Later, at the baptism party at the parents’ home, I was introduced to the baby’s grandfather, who is a Lutheran pastor and missed his grandson’s baptism because he was preaching that morning. He shook my hand and asked me one question.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. Amen.

You will all be failures in 2020.

Galatians 4:4-7 is one of the great texts of the Bible. It teaches the incarnation of Christ, the two natures of Jesus as God and Man, and that through Jesus as the Son of God and Son of Man, we are made heirs of the heavenly Father.

For the sake of a wager, God allowed Satan to have his way with his servant Job. Satan could do anything to him short of killing him. So, he did.