Should Christians “Keep the Lord’s Day Holy”?

The commandment says, “Observe the Sabbath Day, to keep it holy.” The Sabbath Day is Saturday, from sundown Friday evening to sundown Saturday evening.  The New Testament makes clear that this commandment, according to its terms, is no longer applicable in the Kingdom of God.  Respecting holy things is still commanded, but separating out the whole of Saturday as holy is not.

Before we take up the question in the title, a brief primer on holiness. The term “holy”, in the first place, refers to the presence of God, whether in a place, or at a time, or in words or things or people.  It is axiomatic that the presence of God makes things holy. Secondarily, the term “holy” refers to the practice of separating, or setting apart places, times, words, things or people on account of the presence of God.  It is in this second sense that the Sabbath Day was called holy. God did not imbue the Sabbath Day itself with His presence, but the Sabbath Day was meant for things which do involve His presence.  This presence of God in places, times and things was to make it possible for the Israelites to draw near to Him. That’s why the Sabbath Day exists, and why Jesus said the “Sabbath was made for man”. The Israelites were to do no work on the Sabbath Day. Why not? Because there were six other days to work, but this day was to be different, separate, not like the other days. It was a day for drawing near to God, and therefore to be kept holy.

Let’s look at this more carefully.  A day is not holy in itself but on account of what happens in it.  If a whole day is to be completely devoted to holy things, then that whole day is holy. That whole day is therefore to be kept separate, and distinguished from other days. If a day looks and feels the same as every other day, it is not being kept holy—either because God is not present in any places, times, words, things or people on that day, or if He is, His holy presence is not being respected. The holy is not being segregated and distinguished from the common and ordinary. Mixing the holy and the ordinary. The Law of Moses forbids that. So does the New Covenant. 

As an aside, what can be said for a day can also be said for an hour.  The “hour of worship” is to be set aside for the presence of God, for the drawing near to Him.  It is to be distinguished from other hours in the day or week, and kept separate.  One should not be scrolling though one’s emails or surfing the internet or thinking about lunch during this holy time. There are twenty-three other hours in the day for that.  This hour is set apart from those hours on account of the presence of God. Therefore, it is to be kept holy.

Certainly our time in worship is to be kept holy.  But the question I now raise is this: Should Christians set aside a whole day—in the fashion of the Sabbath Day—as holy?  For the sake of what happens in the Divine Service (which is holy in itself), should we set apart the entire Lord’s Day—let’s say, sundown Saturday until sundown Sunday—and keep the whole day separate and distinguishable from every other day?  We are not required to do this, of course, but neither are we forbidden. Perhaps we ought to consider whether doing this would be a good and wholesome observance, and what it might entail.

First, the purpose of a holy day is drawing near to God. In general, the Word of God brings the presence of God and sanctifies times, places and things. The Word of God should have preeminence on a holy day, and a day without it is not a holy day. The Word of God is the One Thing Needful to make a day holy. The Divine Service, and especially the Sacrament itself, is the epitome of the presence of God and drawing near to Him. Therefore the Divine Service should ordinarily be the centerpiece of the Lord’s Day, and should not be omitted without good reason.

What about questions of work and rest and leisure and what we should or should not do on a holy day? Ordinary work should be avoided, especially if it compromises the Divine Service.  By ordinary work, I mean work that can and routinely is done on other days. That said, the day is not made holy merely by resting either, and leisure activities that routinely are done on other days may be no more appropriate for a holy day than ordinary work. But resting is more conducive by far to the contemplation of God than is work. Furthermore, the holiness of a day is not only about what we do not do on that day. It’s about maintaining separateness. Some leisure or family activities might well be set aside only for the Lord’s Day. A special meal, for example. That’s another way of setting the day apart.

But we stand warned: “The Sabbath was made for man,” Jesus said, “not man for the Sabbath.” The purpose of setting aside the whole day as holy is to honor God and facilitate drawing near to Him, not multiplying opportunities for guilt. There is no end of hairsplitting on such questions as how much work is too much work and what kind of work is or is not appropriate or whether some chore could really have been done on another day. The same kind of hairsplitting and guilt multiplying can occur with respect to questions of leisure and rest and any other activity. This is the trap the Pharisees fell into.  We don’t want to go there.  Also, there is no need to make the “perfect the enemy of the good.” Even if our effort to sanctity the whole day may not always be practicable, and though we often will fall short of what might have been desirable, still, God can be glorified and we can be blessed merely by doing better.

Finally, it might be helpful to think about the good in keeping the whole Lord’s Day holy by considering what has been lost by our not doing so. Think about how many people now have to work on the Lord’s Day. No one bats an eye about this. Think about how often a load of chores are left for Sunday merely because we felt free to do so. For many Christians, Saturday night is going out time, and Sunday morning becomes (if we’re not careful) sleeping in time. Even the Divine Service, once the centerpiece of a whole day devoted to God, must itself be squeezed in, or else squeezed out!  It doesn’t have to be this way, and it would be better if it weren’t.

True, gone are the days when stores were closed on the Lord’s Day, and we couldn’t shop even if we wanted to. Those days are not coming back.  But that doesn’t mean we Christians have to shop on Sunday. We don’t have to do ordinary chores on that day.  We don’t have to treat that day as one more day in the week.  We can keep it separate—if not perfectly, then at least better than we tend to do now.  “Man was not made for the Sabbath.”  True again. But “the Sabbath was made for man,” to draw near to God, to glorify Him, and to be blessed by Him. Just because sanctifying an entire day is not commanded in the New Covenant, that doesn’t prohibit Christians from embracing such a practice anyway.  The presence of God is Holy. Let us clear a wide path to draw near!

James D. Burns
Pastor, First Lutheran Church (LC-MS)
Benton, Arkansas

Many Beliefs, but Not Many Truths

(or, “Is Truth Only for Those Who Believe It?”)

Christians believe that a human being is, from conception, an eternal transcendent soul enfleshed in a physical body, a special creation of God, every one of them—created by God, for God, and in the image of God. A human being is a moral agent accountable to God, endowed with free will and duty-bound in various ways to God and to other human beings.  This reality of what a human being is underlies all Judeo-Christian morality.  The rules of right and wrong are the way they are because a human being is what a human being is.  We should live this way; we should expect others to live this way; we should vote consistently with these rules; and we should expect all human behavior to be judged by God according to these rules.

Now, a well-meaning Christian might say, “That’s what Christians believe. But not everyone believes that.” 

To which I say, “Yes.  And so what?”

“Well, you can’t make people believe something they don’t believe, and you can’t force your beliefs on others.”   

Again, yes, and so what? We’re not talking about beliefs, we’re talking about what is true.  For where there is truth, it applies to every person, even the ones who don’t believe it. It’s just that the ones who don’t believe the truth are wrong.

To this well-meaning Christian I say, “Stop talking about beliefs!”  It doesn’t matter what you believe, or what I believe, or what another person believes.  What matters is what is true.  If I believe something because I like to believe it, because it suits me, say, then I have no right to impose it on another.  But if I believe it because it’s true—that is another matter entirely. If it’s true, then I must believe it, even if I don’t like it, and moreover, I should expect others to believe it also, even if they don’t like it, and if they don’t believe it, I can most assuredly say they are quite wrong.

Christians are not dealers in “belief”—as though it doesn’t matter what one believes just as long as one has faith in something. Even less are we dealers in uniformity of belief, as though it is important that everyone believe as we do. Christians are dealers in Truth, things that are so, even if no one believes them. Christians ought not to care what others believe, but we must care if others are wrong, even when it becomes clear that we’re never going to persuade them to change their minds.

But what about the person who says something like “We all have our truths. Jesus is your truth, and I’m fine with that.  But He’s not my truth.”  What do we say to that?

What we say is that they’re wrong, plain and simple.  They may be kind, they may be sincere, they may be thoughtful, but when they say, “We all have our truths,” they’re wrong.  No we don’t. That is not true, and we cannot let that stand.  Jesus is not our truth.  We are not inviting them to make Him their truth.  That Jesus is Lord is just true, and that does not change whether anyone believes it or not.  Christ does not become true for us Christians because we believe it.  We become Christians because we believe the truth about Christ.

Now, to what seems like a big problem: Our society does not believe there is such a thing as religious truth at all.  Therefore, it is contended, when it comes to matters of religion and morality, there is no truth to believe, but only beliefs. Therefore, when someone says “We all have our truths,” what they are really saying, since there is no such thing as truth, is that “We all have our beliefs.”

Notice that there is simply no debating such a person about God or gender or abortion or marriage or homosexuality or almost anything sexual, for that matter. Even if they acknowledge that we Christians are strongly opposed to such things, and even if they grant we may have good reasons to oppose them, no matter. Not everyone believes the way we do, so that is that. 

But we Christians know better, and we know that “not everyone believes the way we do” has nothing to do with it. We live and speak and act and vote based on truth, not on what we believe, nor on what others believe, nor on what others might be convinced to believe. Another person may believe—let’s go farther, every other person may believe—that an unborn child is just a clump of tissue, and so of course a woman has the right to terminate her pregnancy if she desires.  Now, I don’t believe that, but it wouldn’t matter if I did.  What matters is that it’s not true, that an unborn child is just a clump of tissue.  What is true is this: a human being is, from conception, an eternal transcendent soul enfleshed in a physical body, a special creation of God, every one of them—created by God, for God, and in the image of God.  Therefore, a woman cannot terminate—or rather, kill—this being merely because she so chooses. To do so would be wrong. Of course. It doesn’t matter what she believes.  It doesn’t matter what I believe.  It doesn’t matter what her doctor believes. It doesn’t matter what anyone believes.  The only thing that matters is what is true.

James D. Burns
Pastor, First Lutheran Church (LC-MS)
Benton, Arkansas

Culture and Counterculture

Christianity and the Church used to be very much part of our nation’s culture.  I don’t mean to say that most Americans were Christians.  They weren’t really Christians, but they were culturally Christians.  Seventy-five years ago Most people were connected to a church, even if only nominally.  In fact, almost half attended worship services fairly regularly.  Almost everyone went to Church on Easter, at least. It was considered a good thing to ‘go to church’.  Your average citizen, even if not very religious, was generally familiar with the narrative of Scripture—they knew who Moses was, and what the Exodus was all about; they knew that Jesus was crucified on Good Friday and rose on Easter Sunday.  They were familiar with such names as Gideon, Samuel, David, Peter and Paul.  Churches were considered good things, and clergy were generally esteemed as moral leaders in the community.  Prayer was normal.  Invoking God in public settings was normal.  Atheism was deeply suspect, and the public mocking of Christianity was rare.

The moral fabric of society too conformed very closely to the moral teachings of the various churches, and the moral teachings of the different denominations were largely indistinguishable one from another.  Marriage as preached inside the Church (even liberal churches) was similarly understood and practiced outside the Church.  In fact, the churches were considered moral authorities. Illicit sex was not at all uncommon, but it was kept hidden as best as possible, and certainly not flaunted or celebrated.  Repentance, forgiveness and humility were positive values.  In those days the ethical requirements of being a decent citizen were compatible with the serious practice of Christianity, if perhaps a rather pale and unworthy version of it. 

In those days no great cognitive dissonance arose with a genuine belief and practice of Christianity.  In large part, rank and file citizens valued—or at least said they did—the same things serious Christians did, only they did so less seriously. They prayed some, while serious Christians prayed more. They worshipped God some, while serious Christians worshipped more.  And perhaps—and I emphasize perhaps—the serious Christian was somewhat more morally conscientious, although in truth there were many counterexamples.

To summarize, then, seventy-five years ago there was no great cultural divide between genuine believers and the rest of society.  There was a great spiritual divide, to be sure, but if you were not a serious Christian you probably didn’t notice that.

Today, American culture is far less Christian in flavor or appearance than once upon a time, such that the divide between the typical citizen and the serious Christian cannot go unnoticed. The change did not happen all at once.  American culture in the sixties and seventies—and even the eighties—still bore the sheen of Traditional Christianity, but it was dimming. And the dimming of it was accelerating, to the point now where the influence of Traditional Christianity on the larger culture seems all but gone.  Rather than address the causes of this transformation, or try to identify watershed moments in the decline of cultural Christianity, let us just accept that the relationship between the serious Christian and the average citizen is no longer what it once was. One is no longer a pale and generic version of the other.  They are different creatures.  They live in different worlds, speak different languages, and seek and value radically different things.

The Traditional Church is no longer a cultural institution. Rather, it has become counter-cultural. Taking Christianity seriously, and the Church seriously, now places a person seriously outside the mainstream of our current culture.  Belief in one true religion, in Christ as the sole Savior of all, as the sole judge of the living and the dead, belief in the institutional church as the only bearer of truth about God and His Will, in the sanctity of all human life, in the restriction of sex to life-long marriage and life-long marriage to people of the opposite sex, and many other such things, are completely unacceptable in various corners of our society today.  The precepts of multi-culturalism and of diversity, equity and inclusion condemn many traditional Christian beliefs as divisive, bigoted, hateful, backwards, ignorant, and the like.  The feeling is mutual.  The serious Christian condemns many of the precepts of multi-culturalism and of diversity, equity and inclusion as well, as absurd, hare-brained, utopian, foolish, utterly destructive of a good society and common sense, and even blasphemous.

It’s not so easy any more to have a foot in each camp, that is, to be a seriously spiritual person who nevertheless gets along and participates, at least outwardly, with the larger culture, or to be a member in good standing with the secular society and yet not be uncomfortable with Church doctrines and practices which are antithetical to that society. If you’re all in on one side of the divide, you’re likely all out on the other.  The only other alternative seems to be to remain uncommitted everywhere.

James D. Burns
Pastor, First Lutheran Church (LC-MS)
Benton, Arkansas

Ten Things We are Commanded to Remember, Observe and Hold Dear

(The Ten Commandments in Positive Form)

The Hebrew Scriptures do not refer to what we call the Ten Commandments as “commandments” at all.  It refers to them as the “Ten Words,” or the “Ten Things.”  Neither does it number them, which is why there are several different numbering schemes in use among Christians and Jews. (For example, what some Christians call the Third Commandment, “Remember the Sabbath Day,” others call the Fourth Commandment.) Below is a traditional numbering of the Ten Things which is commonly used in Judaism.  Note that the First “Thing” is not a commandment at all, but a statement of truth, which is probably why Christians have traditionally begun numbering the Commandments with the Second “Thing,” being that it is the First “Commandment.”

The Ten Things are mostly stated in the negative—you shall not—and are very narrow in their scope. They focus on a single particularly egregious example of the very opposite of what the Word or Thing is really about.  For example, God wants us to value human life.  The most egregious example of the opposite of that is murder. He wants us to value and cherish marriage, so he forbids the egregious opposite of marital fidelity, adultery. And so on. So, although they are framed very narrowly, the actual subject matter of each of these Ten Things is not narrow at all, but very broad.

Below I have reframed the Ten Words or Commandments, putting them first into positive form, and then expanding their sense to include more of what each is really about. Together they outline the basic relationships and duties which constitute and govern a human life.

So, without further ado, the Ten Things we are commanded to remember, observe and hold dear:

The First Thing: “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”
There is a God. He created you; you belong to Him; you are uniquely indebted to Him and accountable to Him.

The Second Thing: “You shall have no other gods before me.”
You shall fear, love and trust in God above all things, maintaining absolute allegiance to Him alone. God will reward those who fear Him and observe these things, and punish those who do not.

The Third Thing:  “You shall not take the Name of the LORD your God in vain.”
You shall know God just as He has revealed Himself.  You shall know and revere His Word, believe it and obey it.

The Fourth Thing: “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.”
You shall respect the distinction between the sacred and the profane, reverencing the holy presence of God.

The Fifth Thing: “Honor your father and your mother.”
You shall honor and revere the culture and the people who made you what you are: your parents who raised you; your heritage; and your leaders, laws, customs and social structure.  You shall receive their wisdom and carefully pass it on to the next generation.

The Sixth Thing: “You shall not murder.”
You shall hold every human life to be sacred, created by God, for God, in the image of God, and belonging uniquely to God, from its conception onward.

The Seventh Thing: “You shall not commit adultery.”
You shall honor marriage and the natural family. You shall honor and hold sacred the sexual act because of its purpose, the procreation of human life, and marriage as the sole proper relationship for the sexual act and the procreation of human life.

The Eighth Thing: “You shall not steal.”
You shall engage in meaningful labor throughout your life, taking care of yourself, and contributing to your family, to your community, and to the world, according to your ability.

The Ninth Thing: “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”
You shall support justice and the integrity of human society by speaking and acting according to truth, honoring and elevating only those who are honorable and deserving, and shaming and sanctioning only those whose words or deeds are worthy of shame.

The Tenth Thing: “You shall not covet.”
You shall control and discipline yourself, your mind, your body, your word and actions, your thoughts, your appetites, your desires, and your emotions.

James D. Burns
Pastor, First Lutheran Church (LC-MS)
Benton, Arkansas

Morality and Reality

Suppose technology developed to the point where human beings could be efficiently grown in artificial, easily accessible, test-tube wombs, without the need of sexual intercourse or pregnancy. There would be many advantages to this.  Future generations could be carefully grown under ideal conditions, and only the healthiest test-tube humans, and only as many as needed, and only those with desirable qualities (whatever that might be), would ever be harvested.  No more unwanted pregnancies or inept or unprepared parents who abuse or neglect their biological children. No more inequalities between males and females due to pregnancy. If we had the technology to produce new humans in this way, there would clearly be many advantages to it.

But supposing we could do all this, and be assured of its positive results, and had only the best intentions to motivate us, would it be right? For some the answer is obviously yes—think of the human suffering that could be avoided! They might even yearn for such a world.  For others it is just as obviously no, and they are horrified at the very prospect. How could thinking human beings come to such different conclusions about something so fundamental?  Is moral reasoning that slippery, that unreliable?  Not really. This is not so much a failure of moral reasoning as it is the result of divergent views of reality, not so much a question of what is right and what is wrong, but rather a deeper question, the question of what a human being is.

If a human being is merely the product of unguided biological evolution, then it is hard to see what the moral objection to any of this would be. To be sure, people might not want to give up their old ways, and might resist this kind of radical change; but not wanting to give up your old ways is not really a moral objection. You might not want to give them up, but maybe you should, for the sake of progress. And if you think about it, all we would really be doing here is taking unguided biological evolution, which produced us in the first place, to the next step. Rather than relying on further random acts to determine how we evolve from here, we’d be using our evolutionarily produced intelligence to guide our future evolution. What could be wrong with that? In principle, nothing. Not, that is, if a human being is merely the product of unguided biological evolution.

But if a human being is the special creation of God, created in His image and sacred to Him—if that’s what a human being is, and not the product of unguided evolution—then the brave new world I described above is not right at all, and cannot be right, no matter what benefits it promises. Quite the contrary, it’s a monstrous and dehumanizing world.  If a human being is a special creation of God and sacred to Him, then human life does not belong to humans, but to God. We are morally constrained from doing such things because we are not our own, whatever the promised benefits of reproductive technology.

I don’t think people are less moral than they used to be, nor have they lost the capacity to engage in moral reasoning. What we have lost is a common understanding of reality, including the nature of our own being.  As a culture, the West no longer agrees about what a human being is.

What I mean is this. When a naturalist speaks of a “human being”, they are speaking of a purely biological organism, produced entirely by natural processes, different from a fish or a cat only in degree, not in kind.  But when a Christian speaks of a human being, he speaks of an embodied soul, something created by God and of immense value to Him. Biological similarities notwithstanding, an embodied soul is not at all like a cat! So even if they did agree about the potential benefits artificial wombs and the like might offer, they absolutely would not agree about the rightness of doing such a thing.  It’s not that the naturalist is incapable of moral reasoning, it’s that the naturalist and the Christian are talking about different things. The Christian might breed cats, and sterilize them, too.  But we don’t do this with people. A cat is a biological organism, a person is an embodied soul. The decisive issue is not the rules governing human reproduction, but rather, what a human being is. 

Morals are not arbitrary rules. They are born of an underlying reality and inseparable from it. Whether you think people could be bred in test tubes or not depends first on what you think a human being is. The same is the case with elective abortion, whether that’s okay or not, or euthanasia, or suicide. These things are morally wrong for a Christian not merely because of some rule forbidding them, but because of what we know a human being to be.  Moral rules are a fine thing, and sound moral reasoning is essential, but first we must know what reality is and agree what reality we are talking about!

James D. Burns
Pastor, First Lutheran Church (LC-MS)
Benton, Arkansas

Is There Anything Wrong with Green Hair?

I suppose the first question to address is why anybody would want to dye their hair green in the first place.  The short answer is, they want to express themselves, that is, their unique, inner self, and they want other people to notice (and hopefully appreciate) their uniqueness.  They want to stand out, and green hair certainly stands out in a way dishwater brown hair does not. So also tattoos, piercings, exotic hairstyles, clothing, and makeup can be used to make a person stand out.  Is there anything with that? With calling attention to oneself?

Not necessarily.  But it is not necessarily a good thing, either.

If one believes that individuals, deep down, are truly good and interesting and admirable, and that the more genuine and honest a look we all get at a person’s inner self the more truly good and interesting and admirable they will be shown to be, then individual self-expression of the sort in question is much to be valued. Expressive individualism celebrates the true and genuine self, rather than the façade that adherence to cultural norms seeks to present, and if this is a good thing, then the more true and inner selves we get on display the better.

But what if individuals, deep down, are not necessarily good or interesting or admirable? What if they are boring or rude or offensive or self-absorbed or ugly?  What if there are elements of our true selves that, if others could see them, would be embarrassing, or would cause others not to like us much? What if people who wear the façade of cultural normativity are just frankly easier to live with, and to deal with? What if significant elements of our true inner selves are best left hidden from all but those who are closest to us—or in some cases, from all except God? In that case, expressing our true and inner selves to the world is not a thing always to be yearned for, but a thing most often to be avoided.

Which is why Christianity does not value dress and makeup and mannerisms which are designed to make individuals stand out. It’s not that these things are bad in and of themselves—green hair might be just fine in the Emerald City. But trying to stand out, not by being excellent at something, but just by being different or unusual or even shocking, is not necessarily all that commendable. Christianity instead favors modesty and humility and yes, conformity. The façade that Christians should want to share with the world is not the true inner being that we are, but rather a humble and modest version of the person God wants us to be. That person may not always be very true to what’s really inside, but that person is a whole lot easier for others to get along with!

James D. Burns
Pastor, First Lutheran Church
Benton, Arkansas

On the Way

To the one who is lost and sunk in the practical—or real—atheism of our present culture, to you I say:  Without God, you have nothing, because without God there is nothing. Without Him you will never have anything. The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. If you want to get anywhere, start there.

To those who accept that God is, but who know nothing of what He has revealed, or what He is like, or anything He has done, I say: Look to Christ, who is God, God in human form. Jesus is the light of the world, who reveals God to us. In Him is summed up all that God is, all that He has done, all that he does, and all that He will do. If you know Him, you know God.

To those who profess Christ as the One Sent from Heaven, but who have no congregation, no pastor, no place in the Kingdom—and there are many of you!—I say, seek out a House of Worship, a place where believers gather, where your faith in Jesus can be formed and disciplined—else, your faith is too much all about you.

To those who have a church, but who participate in it only occasionally, and maybe even only rarely, to you I say, get serious. “Hallowed be Thy Name; Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done”—is not a part-time, casual, as-you-feel-the-need-for-it kind of commitment. Get serious with your worship, get serious with your congregation, or I fear you are wasting your time.

To those who have a church home (“home”, I say, for you are serious) but no solid understanding of the big picture, to you I say, seek instruction in the basics, embrace the basics, learn the catechism and the creeds, which are the condensed and distilled wisdom of the Scriptures. This is a firm and sure foundation for all that is yet to come to you. Don’t be ashamed to become a child in this. We all must start out as children. Our post-truth world doesn’t understand foundations.  But you have come to the Truth, which is the foundation.

To those who know the basics of the Truth, the ancient creeds, the catechism’s answers, the sound and cadence of people at worship, at praise, and at prayer, then to you I say, go to the Scriptures, and seek out a yet deeper knowledge of God there.  Learn the stories and the names and the events by which God has made Himself known to us. Study the words and the phrases and the verses and the passages and the images that are the stuff of the Truth.

To those whose faith has been formed by a confession and a catechism and a congregation and a liturgy and the Scripture, whose place in a pew—the very place you sit—is well known to a pastor in a pulpit, to a pastor whose face and voice is well known to you, to you I say this: Sunday morning is not the end of it.  Search the Scriptures daily and pray without ceasing. Yes, by yourself, but not on your own. The Church prays together on Sunday mornings, but it prays separately every day, and you are a part of that Church which prays every day.

To those who have mastered all of this, I have nothing to add. But would you please pray for me? I am still on my way.

James D. Burns
Pastor, First Lutheran Church (LC-MS)
Benton, Arkansas