August 2014 – A Seminarian’s Letters Home

To the membership of Circle of Faith Parish:

Greetings to you all from Evanston, IL! Actually, as I write this, I’m getting ready to head back to IL to begin my second year of doctoral studies. My last day with Circle of Faith will be Friday, August 15^th. Once again, sincere thanks to all of you for another wonderful summer of conversations, visits, worship, and learning. Special thanks to everyone who has gone above and beyond the call of duty to help make our Wednesday night classes into the rousing successes they have been. Just a reminder that the last one, an exploration of the beautiful prayers of the early Christians, will be August 6^th.

This year, Circle of Faith will be wrestling with the questions, “What are we doing? What should we be doing?” These are complicated questions to answer at the best of times, but when you put together three congregations as different as all of ours, the responses become myriad. Fortunately, we’ve got an opportunity soon to start localizing our answers. We’ve got God’s Work, Our Hands Sunday coming up on September 7^th, when we will join with all other ELCA congregations to do something in our communities and show God’s love to everyone. If you come up with any new ideas for what we could do that week, let the pastors know – we’ve already had some great ones coming in!

Over the next year, we’ll be dreaming about this a lot more as a parish, and creating new opportunities to wear our gold T-shirts while serving God’s people. That’s the fun thing about being Lutheran – we believe that God’s grace and love overflows so abundantly, and we don’t need to do anything to earn that love. This leaves us free to share that grace with everyone else. So let’s get out there and share it as much as we can!

Heading into late summer and continuing to let God’s work happen through our hands, let us pray for God’s blessing, using these words:

God of abundance, you have poured out a large measure of earthly blessings: our table is richly furnished, our cup overflows, and we live in safety and security. Teach us to set our hearts on you and not these material blessings. Keep us from becoming captivated by prosperity, and grant us in wisdom to use your blessings to your glory and to the service of humankind, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. [ELW, The Proper Use of Wealth

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

Your fellow member and pilgrim,

Carl P. Rabbe, M.Div.