Resurrection & New Life: God At Work


Meet Andrew Mortonson





My guest blogger, today, is Andrew Mortonson.  He is a member of First United Methodist Church in Green Bay, Wisconsin and is active at the Wesley Foundation at the University of Illinois in Urbana/Champaign (UIUC) where he will (in August) finish his Masters degree in Aerospace Engineering.  …And I am really proud of Andrew’s most recent announcement:  He has already gotten a job with Rolls-Royce as an Engineering Associate after graduation!






Beginning to See God at Work



Today’s Scripture:  Luke 24:45-49


There was always a plan – a reason, a goal for tomorrow. I had always known the next step in life and was always fully prepared to take it. I had a stable family, good education, and a loving church home. I knew where I would go to college since before I started high school, and there was never really any question I would get in. I was blessed in many ways as a child. 


I grew up in the church, and for a large part, my faith was always laid out before me. Unlike many of the other kids my age at church, I learned and grew in my faith and continued being an active participant after confirmation. Being an active Christian wasn’t necessarily the cool thing to do, but in a Christian community like Green Bay, you never are really challenged in your faith. I often found myself in more discussions with other denominations, especially Catholics. 

When I went to college, I moved into a fraternity, and most of my influences were anything but Godly. I continued to succeed in school, but I felt incomplete and often alone. The summer after my freshman year, people from my home church asked me if I had found a new church to serve at school. When I admitted I hadn’t, they often encouraged me too look, or gave suggestions. I agreed that I would look at the Wesley foundation on campus, partly just to keep people off my back. I fortunately found a new home and gained many new supportive friends.

For the next two years, I felt like I knew where I belonged. While I occasionally struggled with friends and classes, I knew that God was providing for me. However, in my senior year, that feeling began to fade. I thought I had lost God’s call; I wasn’t really sure what my future path should be. I graduated college with Honors, but like far too many people that year, I had no job, and returned to live at home. Once again, I felt very much alone. Even though I was living with my family and had many loving people around me, I was completely lost.

I can understand what the Disciples must have felt around the crucifixion. Only a week before, they entered with Jesus triumphantly into Jerusalem. Going to serve with Jesus was not easy, but I’m sure after a while, they all felt like they were where they belonged. Only a few days later, they were lost, and felt very much alone. 

My story did not turn around in just three days, yet I know that even in those times, God was working in my life. I began to get involved in the praise band at my home church, and the other members often helped remind me that I was not alone. But the real point where I began to see God working was when one of the women in the church came up to me and started asking me details about my life. She knew that I had been looking for a job, and she wanted to know what kind of job, and what I was interested in. Then she told me that she needed to know all of this so she could properly pray for me. She prayed with me, and hugged me and promised me that her prayer group would continue to keep me in her prayers. 

It was about this time that things started to turn around. I applied to grad school and began to attend that fall. Through the two years that I have been studying, I only recently was assured funding for the remainder of my program, but I trusted wholly in God. Within a few months of returning to school, I began dating the woman who became my fiancée, and now within the last week, I was offered a job after graduation. Almost exactly the position I had wanted three years earlier. 

After Jesus arose on Easter, the Disciples went on to spread the gospel throughout the world. But they needed fellowship and support from other believers, and to fully place their trust in Jesus. In the same way, I could not be where I am today without the prayers of family and friends and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Even more, I know that I can impact the lives of others simply through words of prayer and support. At our lowest points, the promise of God’s perfect grace, through the resurrection, allows us to put all of our faith in Him. In Luke 24, Jesus appeared before the disciples who had gathered after the crucifixion. 

“Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. He told them, ‘This is what is written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.’” Luke 24:45-49 (NIV)




**top image found at:  http://imlivinginadream.wordpress.com/2011/06/13/on-101-goals/
**image of Andrew Mortonson found on his Facebook.

Resurrection & New Life: God’s Word Is Yes!

Meet Rev. Cindy Watson

Rev. Cindy Watson is the senior pastor at West Heights United Methodist Church in Wichita, Kansas.  She has served in the Kansas West conference for almost 30 years and is a graduate of St. Paul School of Theology.  She is the vice chair of Inter-Faith Ministries in Wichita and I met her as we have served together on the General Commission of Christian Unity and Interreligious Concerns of the United Methodist Church.  It is good to call her a friend and welcome her to be my guest blogger today!







God’s Word Is Yes!

A few years ago there was slogan, “love is not a feeling, love is a decision”.  The whole push behind the slogan was an understanding that love takes commitment and dedication.   Falling in and out of love was easy, staying in love was a way of life that lead one to stay the course and see what a long term commitment could mean in terms of the depth of one’s relationship and life.
For Christians, Easter is the same thing  Easter is not a feeling on one Sunday a year, it is a commitment to a moment, an experience, a season.  For the early Christians Easter became a moment and a promise the end was near and the reign of God was coming.  As the days turned into weeks, the weeks into months, the months into years and the years into decades, believers had to re-imagine what Easter meant for them and for the life of the Church.
Each person who embraces the Christian faith has to come to terms with Easter.  Christmas is easy.  Who doesn’t understand the birth of a baby.  Easter, though, requires a walk through the deep ugliest humanity offers: betrayal, lies, false arrests and capital punishment.  While it is not hard to admire Jesus facing all that hatred, intolerance  and ugliness with grace, forgiveness and love, Good Friday places him in the tomb and the hope and promise of a new day seems to die with him.
Easter is a testament to God’s unwillingness to allow evil, hatred, death and intolerance to have the last word.  God’s word is Yes.  God’s word is Life!  God’s word is Love.  God’s word is Grace!   Easter can not be celebrated in a day or even a season.  Easter invites a commitment to Christ as a way of life, as a way of loving and a way of affirming that despite everything to the contrary, Good will destroy evil, Love wins over hatred and God in Christ will bring all creation into a time of peace, grace and justice.  Christ is Risen!  Christ is Risen indeed!


** “Christ is Risen” top image from:  http://bromattisafoth.wordpress.com/2012/04/08/let-the-alleluias-ring-christ-has-risen/
**Picture of Cindy Watson taken by Scott Carnes, from his archives
Resurrection & New Life: New Life Springs Forth!




Meet RaeAnn Beebe!

Rev. RaeAnn Beebe is the pastor at St. Paul’s United Church of Christ in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.  Her church is related to the Northeast Wisconsin Association of the United Church of Christ.  She is a 2010 graduate of Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois where she was a classmate of mine!  I thank RaeAnn for sharing this devotion and hope that you all enjoy it as much as I did!













New Life Springs Forth!



Scripture: Isaiah 43: 18-19 (Common English Bible)



Do not remember the former things,
or consider the things of old.
I am about to do a new thing;
now it springs forth,
do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert.
(Isaiah 43:18-19)
This year I had a very bad case of Spring Fever. I’m not sure if it was because of the unseasonably warm weather early on or the fact that I love Spring and was excited that it was coming early. Whatever the reason, I found myself wanting to be outside getting my garden planted. Spring is an annual reminder of resurrection for me. Maybe not this year, but normally in Wisconsin winter is long and cold; a time when I just want to stay indoors and hibernate. Just when I think I can’t take it anymore, spring arrives to say that new life is possible. From the barrenness of winter new life springs forth – birds reappear and wake me up with their singing, buds appear on the trees and then begin to open, flowers sprout from the ground slowly and then suddenly burst out of the ground and the garden is full of color. One day winter and the next spring is here. I love it and am reminded of the new life we find in Christ.

We often think of new life encounters with God in just this way – bursting forth suddenly. One day our lives are in shambles, then we have an encounter with God and everything changes dramatically and suddenly. While this can happen, I think more often we experience new life in the ordinary passages of our lives. For me this occurred when my sons grew up and left home to go to college. I wasn’t needed by them in the same way and I found myself in a time of transition. My old way of life was gone and I had to find that new thing that God was calling me too. I had to find the way God had made in the wilderness. It didn’t happen overnight, but eventually, I found the way in the wilderness or the river in the desert that Isaiah talks about. I went to seminary and started on a whole new career path.

We experience many transition times in our lives. Maybe it is when you first move away from home or enter a new relationship or welcome a child to the family or lose someone you love. These times of transition can be very unsettling, but they can also be opportunities to experience new life when we are open to the places God is calling us to. Isaiah says that we should forget about what was and look toward what can be. And that is new life.