Monthly Message
Read "From the Pastor's Desk," Pastor Michele Kaufman's monthly message:
November 2025
“To everything there is a season; a time and purpose under heaven.”
Ecclesiastes is of all the books in the Bible, uniquely concerned with this question of the meaning of life. Most people are not very familiar with it, other than a few phrases they have heard here and there such as "For everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven, especially made famous by the Byrds in “Turn, Turn, Turn.” Time is a commodity; how we spend our time can make all the difference in the world towards the quality of our life and the lives and events of which we are a part of.
You may remember the story of when Jesus went to Bethany to visit Lazarus and his two sisters, Mary and Martha. They didn't hesitate to begin the preparations. When Jesus arrived, Mary stops what she’s doing and visits with Jesus. Meanwhile, Martha continues working until she becomes frustrated and says: "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me!" And he says to her: "Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things; one thing is needful. Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her."
If we don't know the rest of the story, we may assume that Martha had a shallow faith and that Mary had all the spiritual depth. Not really! Recall when Lazarus died? They had sent for Jesus several days before. When he finally comes, Martha hurries to him while Mary stays home. "If you had been here," she says to Jesus, "my brother would not have died." No recrimination. Just simple trust. "I know even now," she goes on, "that God will give you whatever you ask of Him!" Notice that Martha did not say, "I hope" or "I think," but she said, "I know"! In spite of her sorrow, she exclaims: "I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God who was to come into the world!"
What a confession of faith! The woman who once was flustered by last minute preparations became one of the first to recognize and proclaim who Jesus really is. Martha's faux pas was not lack of spirituality. It was a matter of timing and perspective. In Ecclesiastes chapter three, we hear the rhythmic cadence of the writer who says:
"For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven...
...a time to be born, and a time to die.
...a time to break down, and a time to build up.
...a time to cry, and a time to laugh.
...a time to keep silence, and a time to speak."
There's a time for everything. The tough part is keeping it all in perspective. How to you achieve the kind of wisdom that avoids "making mountains out of mole hills and mole hills out of mountains"?
Have you ever been in a hurry and buttoned up your coat, only to discover when you were done that the coat was uneven? What went wrong? When you don't get the first button in the right hole, all the rest are out of sequence too. That's a parable about life. Jesus said it this way in the Sermon on the Mount: "Seek first God's kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well." (Matthew 6:33) If the Lord is not the high priority in your life, then, like the overcoat, so many other things in life will be out of whack as well.
October 2025
The prophet Jeremiah asked 2700 years ago, "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? Then may you also do good, that are accustomed to do evil." (13:23) In other words, can a person change his or her basic nature? Can the cruel become kind, the vulgar become refined, the coward become courageous?
Sometimes I wonder. I question how we continue to make the same mistakes time and time again. You would think we would tackle a situation differently knowing what the outcome was the first time around. Is it possible for us to change? The answer is, "of course." We can. Millions of people have experienced change in their lives. Consider for a moment St. Paul. Paul by his own admission persecuted the early Christian church. He was a zealous advocate of the Jewish faith. The important thing, however, is that Paul changed. He became the great missionary apostle for Christianity. He was changed -heart, mind and spirit.
We DO possess the capacity for change. We have seen people change. In fact over a set period of time almost everyone changes to a certain extent. That is what maturity is all about. Sadly, Sigmund Freud wrote once: "I have examined myself thoroughly and have come to the conclusion that I do not need to change much." How many of us can look in the mirror and be as sure as that. Truthfully many people are content with their situation and like Freud, don’t see a need for change. Some people are not even aware of their deepest spiritual needs because they never give any thought to their souls. They never give any thought to where they stand with God. So in order for there to be change, there needs to be an awareness and a desire. Change comes when we dare to take a first step. Getting started is always the hardest part. So often we fear change. We become comfortable where we are. Old habits do die hard, but they do die if we will dare to take the first step. Change involves risk-it requires stepping out-it means breaking the mold, embracing the possibilities before us.
Ann Landers carried a writing from an anonymous source that speaks to our need. It is entitled "The Dilemma." To laugh is to risk appearing a fool. To weep is to risk appearing sentimental. To reach out for another is to risk involvement. To expose feelings is to risk rejection. To place your dreams before the crowd is to risk ridicule. To love is to risk not being loved in return. To go forward in the face of overwhelming odds is to risk failure. But risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing. The person who risks nothing does nothing, has nothing, is nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he cannot learn, feel, change grow, or love. Chained by one’s certitudes, they are slaves. Only a person who takes risks is free. Allow Christ to change you!
September 2025
Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? Matthew 25: 25-27
The book of Acts, thought to be a sequel to the Gospel of Luke, is a book of blessings. It's a book that illustrates for us how the church began and how the church grew. It's a book about the role and ministry of the Holy Spirit. It's a historical and theological book and it's a book about attitudes, outlooks, and outcomes. It begins with the outpouring of God's promised Holy Spirit and how that spirit empowered the disciples to spread the message of Christ's life, death, and resurrection. There's a distinctive shift in the outlook of the followers of Jesus. Their outlook made a positive difference in the spreading of the gospel. Their outlook was determined by their confidence in Christ. Jesus' disciples had no idea what lie ahead of them, but they stepped out in confidence, knowing Jesus was with them. We can learn something from those early Christians. When we have confidence in Jesus our outlook should be positive, upbeat and focused on the future. We can be witnesses and tell our faith stories so that others will know that God is still at work in the world today. We can tell others that proper outlooks will result in positive outcomes. A proper outlook involves more than positive thinking; it involves confidence in God's promises, his teachings, and the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives. 4 I know none of us expected the pandemic to go on as long as it has. And while there are many who have struggled with isolation, depression and uncertainty, there are a number of positive aspects that have come out of the last few months. Community spirit, a concern for our elderly population, recognizing people we might otherwise overlook. People are sleeping better; we are more in touch with family and friends. The pandemic has brought a change in routine and changes to work situations that has given us more time for ourselves and others. Gustof Aulen said: God does not will everything that happens, but in everything that happens God wills something. Maybe in the midst of the pandemic, God has given us the opportunity to step back and reevaluate our lifestyle and our priorities. The virus has forced us to make changes to our daily lives that we might actually want to keep once the crisis is over. These challenging times have offered opportunities for social bonding and other ways of connecting to and helping people. The feeling that “we’re in this together” has triggered interesting ways of connecting. Some of those have gone viral—such as Italians singing together from their windows and balconies. Businesses and other organizations have been forced to streamline procedures and decision making. Creativity and innovation are allowing us to work more efficiently and effectively. Even the church has been forced to reexamine how we connect with our membership and “do” church. 5 Like those early Christians, we cannot be certain what the future holds, but we need to have a positive outlook and consider what “good” has come from these trying times. We can dwell on what was or we can imagine what may be, knowing that whatever the future holds our Lord Jesus works for the good of those who love him.
June 2025
UNDERSTANDING MISSION AND MINISTRY
When the Bishop took office, he asked me to assume the position of Coordinator of Companion Synods for NEPS. Northeast Penn Synod has four companion synods: The Lutheran Church of Slovenia; the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saxony, the Lutheran Church of Argentina/Uruguay and the South Central Diocese of Tanzania. It is an honor and a privilege to serve in this capacity on behalf of the synod. The connections made through this program help to strengthen our faith and understanding of the church both here and abroad. It is amazing what we can learn from one another and the impact we can have on one another.
Back in September the Bishop and I were invited to visit the South Central Diocese. We had the opportunity to visit many of the congregations that are partnered with a sister congregation here in Northeast Penn and see their various ministries. As you may know, I recently returned from the Lobau-Zittau area of Saxony, Germany. I made that trip with eight other members of the synod and the Bishop. These exchanges focus more on a culture and making connections. Next week we will be welcoming the Bishop of Saxony and a delegation of five. They will be attending Synod Assembly and visiting various ministries throughout the synod. It will be an opportunity to discuss new strategies as this program moves forward. It is amazing to discover the differences as well as the similarities we share and how we can learn and gain insight by sharing our stories and experiences.
Following the departure of our Saxon guests, a group of seven individuals will be traveling with me to Argentina. This is the first time an adult group will be visiting that region. We were asked to travel with members of the Nebraska as well as Saskatchewan synods who are also paired with the Lutheran Church of Argentina/Uruguay. We will be learning about various ministries throughout the region, visiting Iguazu Falls and the Patagonia area. These are amazing opportunities. They allow us to see the church and our faith in a new light. I encourage you to learn more about the companion synod program and contemplate what role you can play in these relationships.
I want to invite you to join us on Sunday, June 1st at 6:00 p.m. at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church. We are having a covered dish supper which will offer the opportunity to meet and greet the German delegation visiting Northeastern Pennsylvania Synod. You’ll have the chance to meet Bishop Bilz from Saxony, Germany accompanied by our own Bishop DeForest. Following dinner we will have a musical presentation “The Life of Christ in Word and Song.”
May 2025
The church was filled to capacity; voices raised in song and the excitement and enthusiasm that filled the space, you can’t help but feel the joy of Easter Sunday. On Monday, someone reflected on all the events that had transpired over the weekend and said, “If only they were all there next week and every Sunday after.” Is that too much to ask? Why is it that we willingly and actively invest in other aspects of our life, but so often fail to invest in our spiritual welfare. Can’t every Sunday be Easter Sunday? A time to celebrate the joy and fellowship of our Christian community? A time to pause from the hectic world to contemplate and strengthen our relationship with God?
The sabbath is a time of joy, a time to engage with God, and with each other in praise, to take time out from time, in which we are scheduled, and busy, and focused on doing, and to take time to enter into God-time, that fullness of time, in which we just can “be,” in which the Eternal presence of God interrupts time for a brief time, and we can leave all that interrupts us, bothers us, worries us, harms us behind us, and revel in the joy of God’s presence and power. We can take time out of time to recognize the hand and the outstretched arm of God in our lives, and to feel God’s smiling face upon us, blessing us and renewing us.
I am an extrovert. Surprised? I suppose not. But even I on that occasionally Sunday morning have to pull myself out of bed and get myself ready for church. And yet, once I get there, my mood changes and I am energized by your presence and the conversations that take place. One day following service, I had to drop off some paperwork to someone in town who just happened to attend another church. Of course, I was in a jovial mood, and that person said to me, “Oh you’re happy today...must have had communion!” And my response was “Yes we did, but that little bit of wine has nothing to do with my mood. Maybe you should try my brand of religion!”
I suppose it’s like everything else in life; you get out of it what you put into it. And personally, I believe we walk away gaining more than we invest when we allow God to work in and through us. The Sabbath is a time to engage with the almighty God personally and relationally, to feel God’s blessings, to radiate God’s joy with our hearts, souls, and voices. You mean, the Sabbath day isn’t just our day off from work to sleep in, get a little R&R, get me some “me time”? If only that were true. My understanding is Sunday for many becomes one more day to be filled with everything else that doesn’t get done the rest of the week.
Trust me on this: invest in your spiritual well-being and everything else will fall into place or as the Psalmist says: “Be still and know that I am God” (46:10).
April 2025
It is that season of the Church's year when we as Christians dwell on the Mystery of the Crucifixion. And what the Crucifixion tells us is this: God Himself died upon a cross, to pour out His love for us, to forgive us our sins, to share His life with us now, and eternally. Too many people move from Palm Sunday's jubilation to Easter's victory and never take the excruciating walk through the Upper Room, the Garden of Gethsemane, the Trials, and Mount Calvary. But you must go through it all really to know the joy of the open tomb! Let us examine what Our Lord went through even physically in His love for us: in His suffering, His Passion, and His crucifixion: in His agony in the Garden, in His scourging at the pillar, in His crowning with thorns, in His carrying the cross to Calvary, in His crucifixion and death. As we more deeply realize this, what God went through in His love for us, we will hopefully realize more deeply the love that God has for us, for you and for me. 4 Look at the cross. Empty and unoccupied, it is simply an object of brass or the timbers of a tree; but, when the crucified and suffering body of Jesus Christ is placed on the historic cross of Calvary, it becomes a sword - a sword in the hand of God that can conquer everything in heaven and on earth. It can even destroy the very gates of hell. Alleluia! Rejoice! Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!
March 2025
The 40 Days of Lent
“The flood continued forty days on the earth. The waters increased and bore up the ark” (Genesis 7:17). As the flood covered the earth and lifted up the ark, saving those within, so in baptism we die to sin and are raised to new life in Christ. Lent is a time to walk in newness of life.
“The Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart” (Deuteronomy 8:2) Lent is a season of humility and repentance, as we turn to the Lord and seek his forgiveness. Lent is a time to forgive others as we have been forgiven.
“He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God” (Acts 1:3) The risen Lord appeared repeatedly to his disciples and taught them about the kingdom, preparing them to be his witnesses. Lent is a time to be witnesses for Jesus, to tell others of the forgiveness and life found only in his name.
Lent is a season of forty days, from Ash Wednesday to Holy Saturday, the day before Easter. Because Sundays celebrate Jesus’ resurrection, they are not included in the forty days. In the Bible, the number forty appears in the story of the flood, in Israel’s wandering in the wilderness and in the life of Jesus. The number forty is often a symbol of ruin and renewal, testing and teaching.
Lent is a time for us to remember the ruin that sin brings to our lives, to repent and receive God’s forgiveness. After his baptism, Jesus “was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan” (Mark 1:13). During these forty days we remember how our Lord stood in the place of sinners, in our place, and resisted every temptation of the devil. On the cross, the innocent Son of God suffered the punishment we deserved for our sins.
February 2025
Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord rises upon you. See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples, but the Lord rises upon you and his glory appears over you . . .” Isaiah 60:1
We are now in the season of Epiphany. Epiphany begins with the wise men following a distant light and continues through the celebration of the Transfiguration--when we see Jesus in all his glory.
Epiphany is not only a season of the church year; it has also crept into secular usage. When we say that someone has had an epiphany, we usually mean that that person has had a moment in which they have achieved a realization, an awareness or a knowledge of something, after which events are thrown into a new light. Such epiphanies may be life-changing. The symbol of light is an appropriate one in this, the darkest season of the year. Light is a favorite symbol throughout the Scriptures. Christ said about our witness that we do not light a candle and put it under a bushel. Christ himself is seen as the light of the world. When Isaiah sought to proclaim the coming of the anointed one of God, he declared, “Arise shine your light is come (60:1). During this season we read stories of how Christ is revealed to the world. For those who experience his “presence”, they have that “ah ha” moment; that “there you are Jesus”.
Christ is our light and in him is no darkness at all. For just as light is the appropriate symbol for Christ, darkness is the appropriate symbol for a world without Christ. Professor Harold DeWolf, in his book The Religious Revolt Against Reason, tells of an experience he had as a young man. He went swimming at midnight one night with a friend in the Atlantic Ocean at Massachusetts Bay. He said the water was full of phosphorescent light. Every dip of his hand in the water produced something like “a circle of flashing gems and every breaker looked like a cascade of fireworks.” To ride the waves they went out some distance from the shore. Then turning toward land DeWolf was gripped by a strange fear. The lights from the shore no longer shone. So he looked up to the sky to get his bearings. But the sky was like the water--full of the spectacular confusion of the northern lights. “No star was visible. Then panic overtook him, for in all that glittering display there was no fixed reality. He could not tell the way to shore. He started back with a helpless terror engulfing him.” He learned that, with no fixed star to guide him, it was almost impossible to chart out his course. Thank God we have a star to follow. It is the same star that guided the magi long ago. It is the light of Christ. Christ is our dependable guide, whose love never fails.
January 2025:
In the comic strip, “Calvin and Hobbes” Calvin and Hobbes are talking about the New Year. Calvin says, “I’m getting disillusioned with these New Years. They don’t seem very new at all. Each New Year is just like the old year. Here another year has gone by and everything’s still the same. There’s still pollution and war and stupidity and greed. Things haven’t changed. I say what kind of future is this? I thought things were supposed to improve. I thought the future was supposed to be better.”
Hobbes replies with his usual keen insight, “The problem with the future is that it keeps turning into the present.”
The New Year is traditionally a time for reflection. We look back over the year and assess our successes and failures. We may feel a sense of accomplishment from our successes, and we may experience some grief and guilt over our failures. Each time we face a new beginning. We have hopes that things will be different and hopefully better. But as Hobbes says, the future just keeps turning into more of the present. I think we have good intentions of making the necessary changes; what we lack is the motivation, the resolute. The Bible talks about a God "who can make all things new." Paul declares in other portions of his writing that "if any person is in Christ Jesus, they are a new creation."
What we need is not inspiration, but a transformation. Not a resolution, but a revolution. We need a change in our lives that comes from God. What every person needs is something that will permanently affect their life situation. What we need is something that will truly satisfy our longings; something that will bring true and lasting change. What we need is for God to do a new thing within us. We can be new people when we have the mind and attitude of Jesus Christ living inside us. Christ’s spirit lives best in his disciples who say, "This I will do," rather than, "Something ought to be done around this place." The power that God offers us is a resource we need to draw on. We need to draw on our faith- it is the power that comes from believing all things are possible.
So I close with this prayer that appeared in the Upper Room publication by Rev. Dr. Kenneth G. Phifer, written with the intent of letting go of the past and relying more on our faith in the New Year
"Eternal God, before whom we are creatures of the day and children of the hours, I lift my prayers to you as I stand in the shadow of the waning year. I am aware once more of the fleetingness of time, and the transiency of my being. So much has happened to me during the year now so rapidly slipping away, So much of hurt and happiness, of loss and gain, of hope and fear. I did not expect the sorrow that was thrust upon me. I was surprised by the turn of events that changed my life. I look back. I remember how different life a year ago was, The slow, quiet erosion of the days has gone on, and I am not quite the same person I was, for better or for worse. I have had a whole year to grow in love or to fall out of love, to turn my hands to constructive tasks, or to turn away in idleness. I have had a whole year, and now it is almost gone. No matter what I have done or failed to do, O Lord, keep me from dwelling on it too much. If I have failed, help me put my failure behind me. If I have done well, help me to be glad but not complacent. There are other hills to climb and new hopes to be realized. I know, O God, you understand my need to look back for a while, wistfully peering at the past. But start me looking forward. I do not know what events are ahead, but I do know you are there, and I am grateful. Amen.
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Cellphone: (570) 881-2371
Home Phone: (570) 443-0832
Office Phone: (570) 474-6616 (Saint Paul's)
Email: kaufman19@verizon.net
She can also be found on Facebook under "Michele Kaufman."
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