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: The Why Question

My guest blogger today is Rev. Dr. Larry Duane Pickens, Esquire, an Ordained United Methodist Pastor in the Northern Illinois Conference.  He holds degrees in Political Science, Theology, Divinity and law from North Park University, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary (my own alma mater), Bossey (Switzerland), Chicago Theological Seminary, and DePaul University.  Larry has pastored churches in New York and Illinois and led a global agency of the church from 2004-2008.  He is a distinguished pastor, lawyer and United Methodist who has spoken from pulpits and in front of national constituencies.  Please welcome to my blog…a friend and colleague, Larry Pickens!



The Why Question

It is said that if we are to plumb the depth of our lives, we must learn how to ask the why questions. It is the why questions that demonstrate with clarity, I think, the conditions of our souls and the nature of our existence. Perhaps, when we ask the why questions it represents the time in life when we are most honest with ourselves and God. Why questions- “why is there violence and injustice in the world?” “Why do bad things happen to good people?” “Why do the unrighteous prosper?” And the ultimate question, “Why is there suffering and death?”

The resurrection is also grounded in a why question that is posed to both Mary and Mary Magdalene. What is their reason for going to the tomb following Jesus’ death? Perhaps they were still in shock, suffering from some form of past traumatic stress syndrome, which drove them to a tomb with spices designed to ameliorate the smell of a rotting corpse lying in a tomb that was purportedly sealed by a boulder?

I would like to think that it was hope that drew these faithful women to Jesus’ tomb. The hope, inspired by Jesus’ ministry of inclusiveness, carried these women to the tomb in a death defying act of love and faithfulness. The why question that is posed in the tomb. Hope is a stubborn thing that sometimes grows frail but is very hard to kill. It was a stubborn hope that moved these women to the tomb. They became instruments of God’s death defying will represented in Jesus’ victory over the grave.

Diana Butler Bass has recently written a compelling book that is titled “Christianity After Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening.” In an age when we find ourselves trying to repair creaking old church structures, Bass challenges our thinking, calling us to spiritual transformation and resurrection. She is calling us to make all things new for an age that still has its hope grounded in Jesus Christ. She states that we are at a critical stage in a completely new spiritual awakening, a vast interreligious progression toward individual and community transformation. Resurrection in our denominations and our local churches is grounded in the life giving and service driven gospel to which Bass speaks. But such compelling transformation is again grounded in the why questions of our lives.

I hope that you too are asking the why questions. But more so, my hope is that you are walking toward renewal, transformation and yes, resurrection with a stubborn hope.
Amen