Could you do this?

You do get the name, right? The Church exists on both sides of the red doors?" As in both inide and ouside, members and nonmembers?

Just checking. One of my friends asked, "What, the right and the left?"

From time to time, I'll point out where God is working way outside of St. Johns'.

Meet Rais Bhuiyan.



     He came to the U.S. from Pakistan hoping to further his education. In 2001, he was working in a convenience sture in Dallas.

     Enter Mark Stroman. Distressed over a percieved lack of government response to 9/11, he embarked on a one man crusade to, "to retaliate on local Arab Americans, or whatever you want to call them." He killed two men, one Indian Pakastani, one Indian.

     The night he came into the store where Bhuiyan worked, he asked "Where are you from?" and then shot Bhuiyan in the face. 

      After multiple surgeries, Bhuiyan remains blind in one eye.

     As he recovered, he realized that it wasn't just his body that needed healing. He is a Muslim, and he knew that he needed to forgive. So he is now working to have Stroman's death sentence (he is scheduled to be executed on the 20th of this month) commuted to life in prison.

     "According to my faith in Islam, there is no hate, no killing. It doesn't allow anything like that," says Bhuiyan. "Yes, Mark Stroman did a horrible thing, and he brought a lot of pain and disaster, sufferings in my life. But in return I never hated him."

     Sura 5, verse 32 from the Quran, states, "If someone slays one person, he has slain mankind entirely. And if someone has saved one person, he has saved mankind entirely."

     Visit his website at worldwithouthate.org. Learn a bit about compassion and mercy.

Red, White, and Vlue on the Rack

It's come to this...I'm having theme days on the free clothing rack in front of the church.

Well, some of our customers don't have a lot of excitement in their lives.

Ah, the rack. It is emblematic of what good small ministries can do. And its been evolvong for more than 20 years.

Someone was cleaning their closets, and thought some of the ladies from the weight loss group that met at St. John's baxk then might like them. A rack was set us and a 25 cents sign affixed.

Everybody loved it! And so it went for a while.

Then we realized that some folk swho came through the doors couldn't afford the quarter per item...so we took down the sign.

Then we realized that some of the folks who need clothes don't come to church or to meetings or whatever...so wemoved the rack outside.

Its gotten to wherre folks just com and hang up their stuff, or leave non--clothing items. Someone has recently takern to leaving bags full of soap. Hooray!

It is really low maintainance. Community service volunteers are good for putting clothes on hangers. The rack strays out when weather allows--I forgot to roll it in one night, and the next day someone tearfully told me how kind it was of us to let it out for people who are too embarassed to look at a free rack during the day. Oh!

I have no idea how much gets given away. I did sonme figuring one day and came up with about 5,000 items per year. That's ballpark, but its pretty good for something that takes literally a couple of hours a week and costs nothing.

People have all sorts of bright ideas about how to improve it.  "Why don't you turn your hall into a thrift store?" Well, because the folks who use the hall wouldn't be happy--and that includes the folks who come to our healing service in the hall on the 3rd Sunday of each month because they can't make the stairs. A very nice professional do-gooder once offred to get me bundles sorted by season and size from a wharehouse in Kentucky. Sweet, but it desn't strike me as extremely green to be trucking clothes back and forth to Kentucky when folks aare doing a fine job of supplying us right here.

We don't have everything all the time, of course, but we haave faith that folks will find what they need. And we get to have conversations about that, and find out what it is they do neeed.

It's a nice little ministry. And if you hurry, you can get in on the red white and blue special!

You know it when you encounter it

At the community meal on Saturday (about which much more another time)  a little guy wandered into the kitchen, followed by his grandma.  Spying a couple of apples on top of the microwave , he staated that he wanted one. I guess his grandma didn't want him to, because she said, "They're plastic, Bubba."  Bubba may not be the most academically gifted kid in the crew, but he did not skip a beat beforei  asking, "Then why is there a fly on that one?"

On some level or another, we know what's the real deal, even when those we trust are doing their best to take that away from us.

So practice and share. Where do you see God working?

Share a quick answer,

then visit God is on the loose! on YouTube and God sightings in the Northeastern PA sunod on facebook. Then share some more!

Bible Study at Helfer's resturant, Tusday at 4

Well, it in't really a Bible study at the moment. We're reading--well, I'm reading aloud--C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce. I first read it when I was young & impressionable, and hte idea of bus trips from hell to heaven still charms me. It is a rich & multilayered book: I don't read it quite the way I did when I was 14, but I love it still/.  We're getting near the end, but you can still jump in.

We pray, too--probably spend about half our time gathering up the needs that have been presented to us and lifting them up/ Oh, and coffee--let us not forget the coffee....

Come join us! Helfer's is at Lloyd & Ferguson Sts. in Shenandoah. (Marcella--right next to whre Shirley used to live!)

St. John, who baptized

     Of course I should have mentioned in my last post that we do prayer around the cross every Friday at 9:30 p.m. The church is at 119 W. Cherry St. in Shenandoah. You mau come in your jammies or dancing shoes, whichever suit your plans for afterward.

     And this week, it is on St. John;s birthday. How  I love him, the last of the OT prophets! Back at St. Johns' 125th anniversary, when we were deciding which St. John to claim as patron, my father lobbied strongly for this one, and suggested that we remame ourselves, "Ye Brood of Viper
sLutheran Church." (Luke 3:7) footnote: at the end of the day we decided to claim the patronage of every St. John, hence "St. Johns'."

    He was not a mincer of words, this saint. He spoke his truth, and it was always about Jesus, from thei first meeting before they were born when he jumped in his mama;s belly with the joy of recognition. He tol his followers of someone greater coming after him, when Jesus arrived, he and God both acknowledged him.

     He wasn't at the crucifixion--he'd already been killed. But Matthias Grunewald painted him there. And to do what? To point, with that long finger, to Jesus.

     What a calling! Never part of the inner circle, but so much more--the one Jess called the greatest of those born of women.

     Come out tonight and we'll celebrate his birtday.

Praying around the cross...outside

     So a couple of  Fridays ago there was not a big crowd gathered at 9:30 for prayer around the cross. In fact it was just myself, the Yangster (about whom more later) and Thea.Well, two or three, the Bible says, and Thea is a force. She comes when she is able, and that is not a throwaway sratement from her. Thea is dying rather mor quickly than most of us, but her determination to do what is to be done in the meantime is, as they say, a witness.
     In the event, it was one of those perfect, silken late spring evenings, and we decided to carry the cross outside the red doors. We stood it upright and put the candles where we could and just got on with the singing ad the praying and the chanting. Then we talked for a sweet long time. A blessing.
     Thea was there the first night we did prayer around the ctoss a few months ago.So was the Yangster, my 11 yea rold, who is a boy scout kinda guy and good with fire. There, too, was a somewhat challenged but extremely game fella. I said a few words of introduction, we talked about those for whom we were praying and prayed for them. I invited people to light candles and place them on or around he cross, then settled into some chanting after I lit a candle to show how its done. Pasta, especially vermicelli, makes a fine candle lighter,so I took a light from a candle already on the cross and lit a tea candle.  The Yangster lit a few, then our somewhat callenged but game brother started in. He apparantly thought the idea was to light all the candles, and he went at it with great gusto and little success. Pasta is a good lighter, but if you take a light from a candle at one ed of the cross and arc it toward a tea candle on the table at the other end...well, the Yangster observed the next day, "I never quite gt it before about insanity being doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." He moved in to assist. And then I glanced over at Thea, who was bent double in her motorized chair. Oh, dear thought I, tere's no better place to meet God and all, but....  I went to her and put a hand on her back. She was breathing. I was delighted. So I got down on the floor, peered up in her face, and whispered, "Are you OK, or do you need a little push?"
At which point Marilyn, who is rather more attuned to God's time than mine strolled in, assumed I was hearing a confession, and made to leave. So I tried to call her back quietly (foolish, she is a bit deaf) while pushing Thea to upright,  and holy laughter ensued.
    I may have told you all you need to know about St. Johns' already. We'll see.