August 5, 2025 

Today's Reading: Colossians 3:1-11

Daily Lectionary: 1 Samuel 19:1-24; Acts 28:1-15

“For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.” (Colossians 3:3-4)

In the Name + of Jesus. Amen. 

Springtime rolls around on the calendar, and you take a handful of pumpkin seeds, dig a hole in the garden, drop the seeds in the earth, and bury them. It’s a funeral of sorts. The seed dies in the earth, but there’s life hidden in the seed as well. Before long, the seed sprouts, vines grow, leaves burst out, and that first orange pumpkin appears.

This annual gardening pattern is a picture of what Paul teaches us in Colossians. Being the Master Gardener that he is, God likes to hide things as well, burying them in the ordinary things of life. On Sunday morning your pastor—and fellow sinner/saint—stands before the congregation uses ordinary human words, sentences, and grammar, and yet hidden in those words is a gracious declaration of Good News: “In the stead and by the command of my Lord I forgive you all your sin in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Later on in the Divine Service, you approach the altar, kneel, open your mouth, and reach out your hand to receive a plain, ordinary wafer of bread, and you drink from a cup full of wine. And yet, hidden in these earthly things is more than meets the eye: Jesus’ Body and Blood and his promise of forgiveness. The same is true in Holy Baptism. The pastor takes good old H2O from a faucet, pours it in a bowl, splashes and empties it over your head. And hidden in and with the water is God’s promise, pardon, and peace. 

Through these gifts of words, water, bread, and wine, God is hiding his goodness and grace for you in the ordinary gifts of creation, and in turn, he ensures that your life is like that pumpkin seed you plant in the garden. Your life is hidden with Christ. In Holy Baptism, he buries you with Christ and raises you to new life in Christ, so that one day, when the Gardener returns on the Last Day, he’ll do for you what he did in his own resurrection on the third day. Like the seed that is tossed in the earth and later gives life, when Christ our Lord returns, he who is the firstfruits and the firstborn from the dead will return to bring you new life and bring you into the new creation.

In the Name + of Jesus. Amen.

Death has lost its old dominion, Let the world rejoice and shout! Christ, the firstborn of the living, Gives us life and leads us out. Let us thank our God, who causes Hope to spring up from the ground; Christ is risen, Christ is giving Life eternal, life profound. (LSB 479:3)

Rev. Samuel Schuldheisz, pastor of Beautiful Savior Lutheran Church in Milton, WA.

Audio Reflections Speaker: Pastor Jonathan Lackey is the pastor at Grace Lutheran Church, Vine Grove, KY.

Step back in time to the late Reformation and learn about a divisive yet inspirational figure: Matthias Flacius Illyricus. His contributions to Lutheranism still echo in our teachings today, from the Magdeburg Confession to parts of the Lutheran Confessions. Learning about Flacius’s life will help you understand more intricacies of the Reformation than ever before.