WELCOME TO TRINITY LUTHERAN CHURCH

“Oh Lord God, you have called us, your servants, to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden and through perils unknown. Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

 

January often is seen as a dark month for many, as a plan to hold to resolutions we made on New Year’s Eve and the uncertainty and unknowns one faces.  As we enter this New Year of 2025 we, too, don’t know what the year will bring. As with this prayer from the old red hymnal #96 and referred to in my youth as the Holden Village prayer, we are reminded that we enter into a new year with exactly what that prayer calls  us into: blind adventures, untrodden paths, and difficulties or perils we cannot yet know but we are asking God to give us faith to follow through where God calls us with God’s hand leading and love supporting us. Jesus tells us in Matthew 28: “Go and make disciples of all nations, teaching them all that I have taught and baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and lo, I am with you always even unto the end of the age.” So though we don’t know how the path will end, where it will take us nor whom we will meet along the way, it is clear that those four verbs of command: Go, Make, Teach, Baptize are the call of why we are called out and Jesus makes the promise that through it all He will be with us. In those words we hear that we are not left alone in taking on the call of discipleship, Jesus is with us.

This new year has many uncertainties at so many levels that it’s impossible to point to one thing that might bring us peril or paths untrodden but in knowing a God who has faced perils on this earth, who has walked this earth on paths that had not yet been trod, shared the life and challenges that we humans face every day, we have the assurance that our Lord knows us, understands us and will always stand by us whatever assails us. So in this coming year let us face the challenges together, following God’s call to be disciples, ambassadors of God’s grace and good will to all, living out the words of Paul in the letter to the Colossians 3: 12 Therefore, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. 13 Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord[a] has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. 14 Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.”  And let this prayer guide our ways as we trust in God to lead us provided the faith we need. Giving thanks for you all in this coming year that you all will be blessed with what you need.