My little friends Grace and Micah were baptized tonight at church. I was going to link back to the photo shoot we did a few weeks ago, but oh yeah, I haven’t posted those images yet. This is an excellent reminder to do so! So anyhow, tonight these sweet kids were baptized at Redeemer—and it got me a bit choked up. Baptism itself doesn’t save; Jesus is the Savior of mankind. But we baptize our babies, our toddlers, our teens, our adults because it’s a sign that we belong to God. What a beautiful expression of faith tonight, to see Grace publicly proclaim her faith and to see Micah receive this sacrament. Afterwards I told Grace how neat it was to see her baptized, and she informed me with great excitement that she got to take communion. Yep, communion is pretty darn exciting, too.

Our small group at Redeemer meets every other week for dinner and bible study. I’ve come to love these folks and enjoy both the dinners and the studying with equal interest.

Our kids are loud and creative and active—and our babysitter is worth every penny we pay her. In this photo Rev has a light saber, naturally. He and Liv encourage each other to new heights of commotion, I believe!

My favorite shot is this last one of Conrad and Amy. I have a perfectly lovely shot of them tucked away in my files, but I like this one better. Conrad actually held that skeptical expression so I could get my camera settings right. I have more photos of people scowling at me than you can imagine! But this one is fun-loving, so it gets posted.

On the drive home this evening as I encountered a serene Nebraska sunset and reflected on the hospitality I had just received, my grandma Iola’s words came to mind: All this and heaven, too.

Yep, all this and heaven, too.

Worship hit a reset button in me tonight. I was reset from faulty thinking. Reset from navel-gazing. Reset from myself. Reset to heaven. “Heaven, too” seems to be the focus of Grandma’s phrase and Tobey drove the point home from the pulpit tonight. From Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5, the truth is clear: we can’t make it to heaven on our own. The standard of perfection, though we certainly attempt to attain it, can’t be reached, no way, no how. All of us, try as we may to avoid it, deal with anger, lust, lies, despising one another. But there is good news, there is Christ. He died for our sins, once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, God’s gift to us. Heaven, too? Yes, definitely, by the grace of the cross.

The “all this” swept over me on my short country drive. As a lullaby played from the CD player, my beautiful (hilarious, vivacious, sweet, fill-in-the-blank) daughter rested in the back seat. Liv can be such a handful at times, but goodness, my cup runneth over with her. Today I marveled at how and why God gave someone as wonderful and complex as Liv to two people like Jeremy and me. God only knows. Tonight my heart is full.

“All this” also includes Redeemer, our church. Week after week I am encouraged by Tobey’s preaching, by good friends, by opportunities to serve the body of Christ, and, I’ll be honest, by a good cup of coffee. “All this” for Redeemer includes a pretty amazing gift: a new church home. When we began meeting at Zion last June (we are, afterall, Zion’s daughter church), we anticipated moving out of that location within months. We prayed a lot for wisdom, continued to seek out new meeting places, and nothing worked out. Well, the hand of God moved, someone from Faith United Church of Christ contacted Tobey (I’m sure there’s another story here!), and we learned that they wanted to give this church away. The church, located in exactly in an area of town we want to serve, was dwindling in numbers and the leadership wanted it to be used—not as blacktop for game days, but as a house of God. (If we do end up with a few parking spots, I’m sure we’ll use them on game days. But that’s not the point of this paragraph.) In fact, when I toured the building initially, it was completely clear that the church wanted to give us everything—all the furnishings, all the fixtures, all the plates and spoons in the kitchen. A dollar was exchanged, to make things legal or something, and now we have a building. Unbelievable.

All this and heaven, too?

Absolutely.

God is good, all the time. All the time, God is good.

Our community dinner blog, Needs More Butter, is still up and running despite the fact that community dinner has been shelved momentarily. I just posted a recipe for one of my all-time favorite salads, Bok Choy Salad; and for a yummy take on an always delicious side dish, check out the Corn Casserole.

We love community dinner—at this point, it feels like a very natural part of our lives in this neighborhood—but at the same time, a family can only do so much during the week. So what is it that’s taking up our time and momentarily shoving community dinner out of the way? Redeemer. Redeemer is our church plant (meaning, a new church body started by an older congregation, in this case Zion Church) and we are wholeheartedly committing to the vision and ministry of it. And really, community dinner hasn’t been completely shoved aside. It’s been somewhat replaced by our small group which meets every other week. We eat, we hang out, we study the Bible, we pray. We only did three of those four at community dinner. ; )

When I received the music for this week’s bulletin (I create the bulletins for our church Redeemer. And now I have to publicly take credit for all the errors… Yikes), I was excited the following hymn was on the docket. I love this hymn. Even without a powerful organ behind it, the melody and lyrics are incredibly stirring. I always feel like the roof is being blown off the church building in praise to our Creator when we sing this one, as though the worship is going straight through to Heaven, accompanied by the angels and saints from ages past.

We have a mighty God, worthy of praise.

Praise to the Lord, the Almighty

1. Praise to the Lord,
The Almighty, the King of creation!
O my soul, praise Him,
For He is thy health and salvation!
All ye who hear,
Now to His temple draw near;
Praise Him in glad adoration.

2. Praise to the Lord,
Who over all things so wondrously reigneth,
Shelters thee under His wings,
Yea, so gently sustaineth!
Hast thou not seen
How all your longings have been
Granted in what He ordaineth?

3. Praise to the Lord,
Who doth prosper thy work and defend thee;
Surely His goodness
And mercy here daily attend thee.
Ponder anew
What the Almighty can do,
If with His love He befriend thee.

4. Praise to the Lord,
O let all that is in me adore Him!
All that hath life and breath,
Come now with praises before Him.
Let the Amen
Sound from His people again,
Gladly for aye we adore Him.

Our church building burned down a year ago yesterday. I tried to write a blog post yesterday afternoon but had terrible writer’s block. The block persists but seems a bit easier to bypass this morning. It’s not that it’s hard for me to talk about the fire. In fact, I feel like everyone has moved on and we’re all dealing just fine with the empty lot at 9th & D. The sheer emptiness of it all still looks and feels rather pathetic, but I have great hope for that space. While the congregation of Zion has moved down south into Southwood Lutheran’s old building, a new life is springing from the ashes. Within a short time after the fire, it was decided that a new church (what we call a daughter church, or church plant) would come back to this neighborhood to serve downtown Lincoln. We are a part of that church plant and next Sunday, in fact, will be our last week at Zion.

Redeemer is our name and it’s been a joy and pleasure to be a part of the very beginning stages of this new work. There’s so much to say about God’s goodness to us in the midst of the church plant, but the ole writer’s block is plaguing me. Suffice to say that my work for Redeemer as an Administrative Manager (the term Office Czar was a close second) is consuming a lot of my energy these days. There’s always a balance to work out with my chief role as Mommy and I’ve seen God’s grace many times over as I look for that balance. I love office work more than one can imagine and it’s a privilege to serve Redeemer and Tobey Brockman and Adam Odell (our pastors) in this way.

So, while I experienced twinges of sadness yesterday about the fire which devastated our building a year ago, I can’t remain sad about it. Good things are coming…