Beware The Ides of March!

Beware the Ides of March! While the day has come, it is not over.

I loved learning about Julius Caesar through the work of William Shakespeare; I think it was in the 7th grade (a long, long time ago!). What fun it was to learn history through literature and storytelling instead of history textbooks! I later learned, in college, how much we can also learn about history and culture through a study of art. Again, much more interesting than history books.  

History provides us with the clues for understanding our present time and preparing for the future.

While not part of the Shakespearean text, I remember our teacher telling us that Julius Caesar was reported in another historical document to have answered the soothsayer’s warning with “The Ides of March has come” and the soothsayer’s reply that “the day is not over.”

The Bible is full of stories that inform us of the history of the God’s chosen people, the Israelites. Many prophets warn the Israelites of the times when God will judge them and then again how He loves them. As in, “Beware, the Ides of March is coming.”

The New Testament expands the story of God’s love and offers Jesus as the sacrifice and blood price for our redemption and the cementing of our relationship with God. “The Ides of March is here.”

But we also learn in the New Testament that God will come again. “The day is not over.”

One day, we will all stand in judgment before God. Whether that day is a cataclysmic collapse of all that we know as a civilization, or as one sole life standing before His creator, we do not know. We are living in the time between the Resurrection of Christ and His Coming again. Just because Jesus has paid the price for the forgiveness of our sins, we cannot forget to reach out to those around us with love, forgiveness and compassion.

The Resurrection is not our “get out of jail free” card. We are obliged to love as God has loved us; to forgive as we have been forgiven.

There are people who will say that the destructive forces of nature and the devastating disasters, wars and uprisings that have filled our newspapers for the last few years are signs of the apocalypse.  The recent news reports from Japan certainly can stoke those fears. 

Yet we do not know when that time will be.  "But of that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone. Take heed; keep on the alert; for you do not know when the appointed time will come.” Mark 13:32-33 Caesar would have done well to stay alert. The Bible has warned us as well.  We are to be alert, but we are not to be afraid.  God is there; "He is near, right at the door." Mark 13:29  "...My words will not pass away." Mark 31

“It ain’t over till it’s over.” - Yogi Berra 

We've got a lot to do today.  There are people all around us in need of the gifts and talents and love God has called us to share.  Get out and do it.

What has God called you to do in your life? Are you working toward that goal? Will you be caught with your task unfinished? Or worse, not yet begun?

Why do you serve in church leadership? Or not?

Tonight is our monthly church council meeting at St. Andrew Lutheran Church in Parsippany. We have three newly elected members on the council beginning tonight, one who has served many times before, one who is re-upping his term of service and a couple-years-new-to-our-congregation member who has served on a previous church council.

It is no secret that serving on the church council can sometimes be a thankless job. And yet, these three have clearly felt the call to do so…on more than one occasion or for more than one term. Why?

Our church council is served by nine elected members, the pastor, a financial secretary, and a treasurer. The council is supported by and provides support to a variety of ministry teams: Children’s Circle Day Care, Finance, Stewardship, Christian education, Ministry-in-action, Evangelism, Property, Worship and Music, and Fellowship (in no particular order). All these people put in an extraordinary commitment of time, talent and love to advance the ministry goals of St. Andrew Lutheran Church. Why?

Because they are called. God has called them to service. Each of them has felt the love of God and knows that he/she is a child of God, and in return wishes to return that love in service to Him. He has gifted His children with a variety of skills and knowledge, and commands us to use them for His glory through his Church in the world, and through St. Andrew. I know there are people who have been approached to serve on a church council and replied something to the effect, “oh, I can’t do that.”

You know what? You can. You can do it too. Many of the people who have served as ministry leaders or council members also felt they couldn’t do it but, as it is often said in church circles… “God doesn’t call the equipped…He equips the called.”

If your heart is in it, God will provide you with the talents.

God bless those who enter this upcoming year, full of all sorts of challenges, having felt the call of God to serve His Church.

What is God calling you to do?

Samson to God: "Why me?"

I can imagine Samson saying “Why me, Lord?”

We’ve all heard the story of Samson and Delilah, of his strength because of his uncut hair, of her betrayal, and his ruination of the Philistine’s. I was thinking about it as my son and I received haircuts this week.

What follows is a perfect reminder to me that there is always more to the story than we remember and why we should continue to engage in Bible study.

I had read the story of Samson and Delilah some time ago, probably for a Sunday School lesson. Probably under the pressure of time, I only read the appointed verses which were likely Judges 15:14-16:30. One more verse would have detailed that Samson was one of the judges of Israel. Wow do I feel stupid. I feel like I should have known that. (Maybe I did but forgot it because it wasn’t pertinent to the lesson of the story for that Sunday School day?) It puts a different spin on the story for me now.

More importantly, I set about reading the chapter or so BEFORE the Samson and Delilah story. (Start at Judges 13) Here is where details of Samson’s life purpose are revealed to us. He was born of a promise by the Lord to a barren woman and her husband, to be used for God’s purpose.

Samson was to be a Nazirite to God, a person who took a vow to be set apart for God’s service. You could take a temporary vow to be a Nazarite, but Samson’s parents had made the vow for him for a lifetime of service as commanded by the angel who brought the promise of his birth.

Samson’s life and his trials mirrored the experience of the Israelites; when he was faithful he thrived, when he ignored God trouble seemed to find him.

During his life, Samson was betrayed by his wife and her people, then by her father and his friend, then later by his lover Delilah. He ultimately would be humiliated by being paraded around by the Philistines as a trophy and prize.

Samson was incredibly strong; his strength a gift from God. Throughout his life he often played tricks on those who sought to learn the secret of his strength (not cutting his hair). He sinned by marrying a pagan (and an enemy), by his sexual liaisons with women, by his revenge, by his boastfulness regarding his strength, by allowing his lust to overrule his calling, and by giving in to the persuasion of others instead of doing what was right and safeguarding the gift given to him by God. It seems amazing that he was appointed a judge of Israel, but apparently his strength and the times he was faithful to God were enough for the people of Israel.

For all his trials, I can imagine Samson would have asked, “Why me, God?”

But God had a plan for Samson. Even though Samson continued to choose unwisely and stray from God, God was able to move Samson through his trials to bring him to the place where he remembered God and fulfilled God’s calling for him. By his destruction of the temple to the god Dagon, Samson began the fulfillment of the promise that God would deliver His people from the Philistines.

While we may suffer through trials and ask, “Why me, God?” we can look to our own lives for the ways we have chosen to stray from the path He has set for us and that make our life difficult. We can learn from this that though we make mistakes and choose to walk away from God, he does not abandon us. He will be with us to the end.

We may not understand his purpose for us, but the story of Samson helps us to see that God is with us helping us to fulfill the calling He has given us, if we let him.

Have you ever been through rough times in your life where you’ve said, “Why me, God?” In retrospect can you see that God may have had a plan for you? Or maybe that plan is not yet clear to you and you still struggle with that question? Do you believe that God has a plan for you?

Sometimes Life is Like Pea Soup

Tonight I made pea soup for dinner. In the process, because it is definitely a process, I got to thinking about how life can often be very much like pea soup.


To start, you need 3 quarts of good clean water. We begin our lives as children of God after being baptized, washed with the waters of the earth made holy by Jesus’ baptism.

You need a pound of dried split peas. Peas, when cooked for hours, will turn to mush, but they’re full of fiber and make much better soup when mush than hard. Sometimes when we’re subjected to extreme circumstances we often find ourselves turning to mush; we lose our resolve. BUT, if we’ve been growing in God’s garden, we’ve also been gifted with the fiber to withstand those circumstances and we will be transformed into a new creation.

You need leftovers from Christmas or Easter dinner. Our family often has a spiral cut ham for our holiday dinner. Usually there are some leftovers and I always freeze them to make pea soup during the cold of winter. A few pieces of ham can add flavor, protein and bulk to a large pot of soup, stretching a few pieces of ham into soup for several meals. God is a god of abundance. God gives us gifts and talents and love to spare and to share. If we throw them away, we have wasted God’s gifts and others will suffer for their lack. If we put them aside and don’t use them, we hide our light under a bushel and our gifts are of no good to anyone, including ourselves. However, when we pull them out and use them, we have plenty to share and our gifts are multiplied.

You need herbs and spices. While the salt is already plentiful in our leftovers, we need some garlic, pepper, and basil to really add flavor. God has given us the salt in our lives. The gifts He has given us will leach out into the soup of life that we flavor. “You are the salt for the world, O People, Salt for the City of God,” says one of our hymns. Also, our lives are best enjoyed when we are willing to be enriched by the gifts of others. It is the experiences that we share with others that spice up our lives and give it flavor. God has created us to be in community with each other so that we might enrich others and be enriched by them.

You need supporting vegetables for nutrition and taste…carrots, onions and celery. God gives us tools to nourish, flavor and sustain our lives. We have the Word of God and the sacrament of Holy Communion to nourish and sustain us from week to week. We have the community of believers in Christ to support and enrich us.

You need time. This is the step I frequently forget about when making pea soup. I set out to start dinner and suddenly realize I didn’t plan this out well and we’re going to be eating very late tonight. Pea soup needs a couple of hours to cook or you’ll end up with cement or runny liquid and hard peas. Our lives are a journey toward a perfect relationship with God that is made possible because of Jesus. It takes a lifetime to get there. It is a journey where we will be tested, boiled down into mush, so that we can be re-made into something wonderful. If we try to rush things and do things in OUR time, we usually screw up the soup. If we allow things to cook along in GOD’S time, our soup – our lives, will be full of flavor and texture, and there will be plenty for everyone.

And lastly, pea soup stinks. So do our sinful lives. But pea soup tastes delicious regardless of the smell. (Well to a lot of people…maybe you’ve got a different soup with a similar analogy!) God loves us no matter how much we screw up the soup. He forgives us and adds the corrective spices, flavors, ingredients and cooking time so that when He’s ready to invite us to the banquet feast, we have been re-created into a perfect recipe that He is proud to share with His family.

Because ALL that He has created is good, and that includes YOU.

How has God flavored your life? In what ways have you been boiled down into mush? Do you see how He is re-creating you?

Be Re-Made in Epiphany

Epiphany…seeing something old in a new way.

In talking about the season of Epiphany, Rev. Fred Lentz, pastor of St. Andrew Lutheran Church in Parsippany, has been asking us to focus on three thoughts.

1. Know who you are!
2. See what you have been given!
3. Do what matters in this world!

Three simple thought processes, yet how powerful they could be in re-making our lives, the lives of others, and the world.

It is easy to get dragged down into the negative thoughts of our lives. There are plenty of news stories that detail all sorts of sad or distressing news. It is so easy to let the world overshadow the true joy of life.

Take joy in….

Knowing who you are! YOU are a child of God. What could be better than that? You are loved… no matter what. You are forgiven. You are claimed. You will never walk alone.

Seeing what you have been given! Each of us has been given gifts, talents, skills, and knowledge that is unique to you and the experiences of your life. You know you can do things that other people can’t. You might have the gift of humor, or financial insight, or gentleness, or management, or coaching, or singing, or writing, or gardening, or painting, or leadership, etc. You have unique gifts. Use them! You are more than what you perceive yourself to be lacking!

Making a difference! Use those gifts, talents, skills and knowledge to ease the burdens of others, make the world a better place, or bring someone closer to God. If you are gifted with leadership skills and do not lead, you have wasted your gift. If you are gifted with organizational skills and do not use them, you have wasted your gift. If you are gifted with (name it) and do not use it, you have wasted your gift. If you waste your gift, will you be able to stand before God at the end of your life and justify this wastefulness? You are more than what you haven’t done…think of what you can do!

If you’ve been following this blog or know me I am perpetually searching for God’s direction in my life. It is a journey. Sometimes the path is clear and I follow it easily. Sometimes I get lost and the journey gets hard. I want to be on the path God has set for me because He will provide me with opportunities to use the gifts He has given me and I will enjoy the journey.

Knowing I am a child of God makes a difference in my life. I know to whom I belong, even if I feel like an outsider in the world. I know I am not alone, even if it feels like the world has abandoned me. I know I am forgiven no matter how many times I screw up. I know I am loved, even when I feel unlovable.

There is a song (yeah, I know… more music analogies, but hey, it moves my life) that I’ve heard on Star 99.1FM called “You Are More” by Tenth Avenue North. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgi-G-dHYkY

Check it out. You’ll be “re-made.”

The Lord Respects Me When I Work, but He Loves Me When...

I just got home from choir practice. I have to say there are many Thursday evenings when I think about leaving the warmth of the house to head out into the cold for our choir practices and I just want to stay home and skip it. Usually I’m mostly comfortable with the song we’re going to sing on Sunday, so hey, why not? But then I’d miss the first run-through of the newest piece in our repertoire. So, I bundle up and trudge out.

The thing is... I love to sing. I mean I really LOVE to sing. My voice is not technically trained or beautiful, but I’m a fairly strong alto. I have a pretty good ear for the key and I’m a relatively confident singer, not loud, but confident and strong enough that the other two altos prefer me sandwiched in the middle. My voice blends better with others than standing out alone on a solo anyway. I recognize that and am okay with that, because it isn’t about being a soloist. I love to sing… just because. I’ll never make a living out of it.

Being out of work, I come across a lot of advice to look at the things I love to do and try to find a job in an area that involves that passion. Okay. I’d starve if I tried to live off my voice. I think it is okay to just love something and not gain employment from it. On the other hand, I love to write, and I wish someone WOULD pay me to do that, but in the meantime, here I am. My perspective on this is that God gave me the gift of a voice good enough to sing with a choir and to help lead the music for our congregation so that I can glorify Him, not so I can be employed because of it.

When I was young a neighbor gave me a framed quote that read, “The Lord respects me when I work, but He loves me when I sing.” I can not adequately explain to you how that quote has shaped my life, and not just in regard to my singing with the choir. When I was a child, I took this pretty literally and was happy that my singing was pleasing to God. As I grew older I began to understand that while the Lord had gifted me with a German work ethic of trying to always do my best work…ALL THE TIME, and that He respected me working hard and doing my best, what really pleased the Lord was doing something to glorify Him. It didn’t matter if I did my best work on something; if it didn’t glorify Him, it didn’t much matter. However, if whatever I did, be it writing a blog entry or shoveling my neighbor’s snow, if I did it to glorify God (to maybe enhance your own relationship with Him, or to serve as Christ to my neighbor, or to be a pleasant face in a stodgy office) then THAT would please Him, even if it wasn’t perfect.

When I was in college I read somewhere that the artist who sculpted the Statue of Liberty, Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, when questioned why he was bothering to spend so much time on the top of Lady Liberty’s head as no one would ever see it (there were no planes at the time), is said to have replied, “Because God will see it.” Aha! A man after my own heart! God knows when we put forth our best effort and when we do it for His glory, or for our own.

The Lord respects me when I work, but he loves me when I sing…laugh…write…care for another…use my God-given gifts and talents…for His glory.

That is why we were created. And so I sing.

Disconnecting in an Internet Age

I’ve been on a 2 day hiatus from the Internet and my computer. You may have noticed…no blog entries. It was not my original intention to totally disconnect like that but hey…life got in the way. On Monday, I returned my daughter to her college. Yesterday, life was just chock full of appointments and chores that just filled up the day. You would not believe the number of people at the grocery store in preparation for our overnight snow storm! Oh well, we really were out of milk and stuff for dinner and lunches, so I slogged through the crowd and stood in line with the rest of world. Last night, with chickadee #1 back to school, it was time to take down the Christmas tree. Epiphany has arrived and Christmas is over.

In reflecting on my two days of disconnect from the Internet, I have to say it was somewhat more productive on the home front but the thought of opening my e-mail box fills me with dread. I also feel re-charged and somehow more whole. The other thing I’ve noticed is that I feel more connected to my real life, even though I’ve clearly become disconnected from the Internet crowd. Have you missed me? I doubt it. However, I suspect that if I were to somehow get sucked into cyberspace, my family and friends might actually miss me.

A small epiphany in Epiphany. I hadn’t realized (well maybe I did have an inkling) how much I wasn’t getting done in the attempt to get these Internet things done. Truthfully I spend a lot of time on the computer doing the job search thing, doing stuff for St. Andrew, and stuff for the Boy Scout troop. In order to make all these Internet connections, I had to let some of my real-life connections pile up in the corner.

After un-decorating our Christmas tree last night, I telephoned my friend with whom I also connect on Facebook. It was a great conversation. We made plans to get together because we haven’t seen each other in person since early December. It’s hard to have that real-time, real-life dialogue on the Internet, even though it certainly is possible with chat and Skype, etc. It just isn’t the same. I read her Facebook postings and occasionally comment, but it is SO much more real to talk to her in person. I hadn’t forgotten this. I know this. But sometimes all the “stuff” gets in the way of what is really important…how God intended us to communicate with each other…a true relationship with each other. Sometimes the Internet may make it easy to find connections with people and to instantly or easily send a message, but I hope we never lose our ability to really talk to each other, face-to-face. We need to remember the Internet is just a tool, and treat it as such.

So now I plan to purposely disconnect from cyberspace once a week, so I can purposely plan to re-connect in real-life with the people I care about (and with all the things I neglect along the way).

How about you? Do you purposely disconnect yourself from your computer? Why? What do you gain? Lose?

Monopoly and Why I Have Hope for the New Year

Yesterday was New Year’s Eve. The last day of 2010. Good riddance. And yet, I learned a lot during the year. I even was reminded of some important life lessons during a game of Monopoly last night.

Our family is not big on going out to celebrate the welcoming of a new year. My husband and I are basically New Year’s Scrooges. Occasionally we’ll go to a party but generally prefer to stay home, play some games with the kids and/or watch movies. So yesterday evening we broke open the Boy Scout Edition of Monopoly that my son received for Christmas and later watched the new DVD release of Despicable Me.

Now what can I learn during a game of Boy Scout Monopoly? Well aside from having a lot of fun with my family, I learned that even the best plan is subject to the whims of others and the roll of the dice. I had planned to buy everything I could as I moved along because I knew I was up against others with similar plans, who would be placing tents and cabins on the various merit badge spaces and charging me enormous rent if I happened to need to camp at their site. Unfortunately, my dice rolling left me lacking for opportunities to become a merit badge or National Boy Scout Camp property baron. I did not own a monopoly of anything by the time the others had scoffed up all the rest of the property, although I did acquire a bunch of cash in the meantime.

So I learned that through no fault of my own, my original plan was bust and I had to come up with a new plan. Now this is not something new to me, I do it all the time, but I did feel rather insightful as we were playing and thought, “Hmmm, how interesting. My life has not been following the path I had planned either and I am again faced with deciphering what to do next.” Having written yesterday’s blog earlier in the day, I thought about how I have agreed to let God prepare the road, tighten Jesus on as my safety belt, and let the Holy Spirit program the GPS.

I was debating how to find a path toward success in this Boy Scout Monopoly when my daughter, home on college break, chirps up, “You know that church I’m going to near school? The pastor there was preaching and talked about Monopoly in his sermon.” She then went to their web site and called up a sound track of his recent sermon. And I thought, “Wow!”

I thought “Wow!” because she was eagerly seeking out a place of worship while away at school (even though it is a non-denominational contemporary style of worship and not Lutheran, hey, she’s worshiping!). I thought “Wow!” because she remembered the sermon and was eager to share it with us. I thought “Wow!” because this pastor had found a way to imprint a very important message on her. The message in his sermon was that the objective of Monopoly, to basically have it all at the expense of others, is in direct opposition to the message of Christ. While in Monopoly, money may buy all the tents and cabins, he points out later in his sermon that the Beatles got it right when they sang, “Money can’t buy you love.” Christ already paid the price for love. Love is free.

I didn’t win the game, but I wasn’t the first one out either. We had fun and that was what counted most. I also learned that in spite of what seems like difficult odds there is hope. While we might not finish up with all the “stuff,” we certainly can have hope for the future when our kids can connect the contradiction between the rules of the game and the rules of a life of well lived, full of true meaning and love.

When we can still say “Wow!,” there is hope.

My New Year's Resolution

Let God take care of the road
Wear Jesus for my seat belt
Let the Holy Spirit program my GPS/map (I’m kind of a map person myself)

There is a song by Carrie Underwood called “Jesus Take the Wheel.” In the song she sings about how she’s been travelling the road [of life] too fast, has got a baby in the back seat, hits a patch of ice, the car starts spinning out of control and in her desperation of being unable to right the situation and gain control of the car, she throws her hands up in the air and pleads, “Jesus take the wheel!” http://www.cmt.com/videos/carrie-underwood/67430/jesus-take-the-wheel.jhtml

When I first heard this song I thought, “Wow, that’s faith!” and then I thought, “But it’s rather stupid to let go of the wheel.”

How hard it is for us to truly let Jesus “take the wheel.” To truly let it all go and give it all, and I mean ALL of it, over to Jesus’ care. I’ve had a rough year or so being out of work, like so many other people. I’ve been struggling with “what I want to be when I grow up.” I’ve tried to let God direct me in where I should search for jobs and what I should do - career change or similar path, part-time or full-time, non-profit or for-profit, 5 miles from home or 20, go back to school in a similar field or something different - but I’ve not really, and I mean REALLY, given it all over to Him. I keep thinking I’m going to figure this out.

You know that when you hit the ice you’re not supposed to hit the brakes. Your supposed to take your foot off the gas (in other words, let the car slow down), let the wheels roll and continue to search for traction. If you slam on the brakes, your tires will just slide, breaking the co-efficient of sliding friction (a term of physics according to my hubby). You’re also not supposed to grip the wheel tightly, but rather let it slide loosely through your hands allowing the car to straighten out its wheels in the direction of the skid. Then as you feel the car grip the road and gather traction you can tighten your grip on the wheel and steer out of trouble.

What a GREAT analogy for how we should let God take over when we hit that patch of trouble!

So, that’s my New Year Resolution: Let God take care of the road, Let Jesus be my seat belt [Savior] (plus always wear my car seat belt, of course), and Let the Holy Spirit program my GPS/map.

What’s your New Year Resolution?

Even An Old Station Wagon Can Have a Purpose in God's Plan

There are so many days when I find myself wondering what on earth God’s plan is for me. I ponder it rather frequently these days as I don’t really feel like I know what path I’m supposed to be traveling. Sometimes I get little epiphanies of enlightenment, like the other day when I was posting the road signs for our Live Nativity.

Now lest you think this is a job I love to do, let me say that there are two sign locations that absolutely gave me anxiety due to their rather perilous traffic locations (but rather good visibility from a marketing perspective). Envision a 44 year old woman carrying a 3’ by 4’ metal sign on 6’ sign posts over her head so she can see the traffic, across two lanes of state highway or busy county road to stand and tie this advertisement to a telephone pole or light post in prime traffic visibility. Now stop laughing and let’s get back to the subject…

Clearly God has jobs for me to do at St. Andrew, and one of them involves directing our Live Nativity. One of the facets of publicizing this event is the updating and posting of road signs. At the time we designed and ordered them, we somehow picked a size that would fit in the back of my station wagon. I thought nothing of how the Holy Spirit moved me to not choose a larger size for either the signs or the posts but happily they fit into the mom-mobile. Each year I order new vinyl numbers to update the dates. I then load them into my car. I’ve been running around each year posting these things at their standard places around town around 10-12 days before the event. Then, I go back out on the day after the Live Nativity and take them all down.

However, last week I was suddenly struck with the thought that I almost didn’t have an appropriate vehicle for this purpose this year. Our car is a 2001 Ford Taurus station wagon with over 120,000 miles on it. Our daughter had been driving it around last year, but we were having a few problems with it that we weren’t sure were worth fixing. We debated doing the repairs…and then the oil light came on. Our mechanic gave it a rather expensive diagnosis, but considering the age of the car, suggested we trade it in or sell it for parts. After nursing it along for a few weeks, keeping local, and saying a few prayers, we purchased a new used car (how’s that for oxymoron?) from a friend and were ready to get rid of the wagon, as my needs for a wagon were no longer valid. I am mostly done transporting multiple kids, including Girl Scout troops and all their cookies.

But God clearly had more plans for our old station wagon, because the oil light mysteriously went out, puzzling more than just our mechanic. We fixed the few repairs needed and it’s been running just fine ever since. It’s as if God gave it a new life because it actually seems to be running pretty darn well for a 10 year old car that’s taken the abuse of a lot of camping, vacations, and kids, kids, kids being schlepped all over His creation.

Fast forward to December 2010 and our upcoming Live Nativity. As I installed the signs to promote this year’s event, St. Andrew’s Christmas Gift to the community, I thought about how God does really work in mysterious ways, and how even a station wagon can have a God-given purpose. This only goes to show that God will use us and our “stuff” for His plans, whether we’re aware of it or not. Even a station wagon can be fit to His purpose. I’m guessing that when it really does come time for this car to be truly retired, God will provide another vehicle to carry the messages of our Live Nativity and serve this purpose for Him…and maybe even a new “poster of the signs.”

So if you’re driving around Parsippany and see “Live Nativity” signs come and see what all the fuss is about. Come and hear a story about how God has used the most unlikely of people to change the world. Then perhaps it won’t be such an unlikely thing to think that God might have a purpose for a trusty old station wagon…or maybe even a purpose for you and for me.

Live Nativity

Saturday & Sunday

Dec. 11 & 12

4:30 - 8:00 pm

St. Andrew Lutheran Church

335 Reynolds Ave.

Parsippany, NJ 07054

973-887-6713