Dear Trinity Family,

A blessed Friday to one and all!  We made it through another week.  While it seems that we are still a ways off from getting the green light to allow us to open the doors of our church home again so that we can once more worship together in person, it does seem that we may be a little closer than we were as the toll of this virus slows its pace, and God willing, allows the whole world a time to recover and find a way to bring this illness to its knees as it has already done to our world.

As our governor begins looking at beginning his plan to reopen the state, it does seem like it may be some time yet before we can look at opening for public worship. We will continue to look at the governor’s recommendations and see how they will work for us. With “Phase One” allowing only “small outdoor religious gatherings”, it may well be that we may only be able to work towards opening again for worship when “Phase Two” begins.  We will continue to wait and monitor the situation and keep you informed on plans and preparations we are making, many of which still wait for further instructions and advice from the state.

Until then, please continue to be in prayer for the world and for our congregation family that the Lord will continue to bless us, keep us safe, keep us strong in faith, and bring us through this moment so we may praise Him for His goodness and mercy.

As to other news…

This Sunday’s bulletin is available on the church website. Feel free to look over the announcements that are there.

A few items of note:

1. Art Simon has some wonderful news about our participation in this year’s Virtual CROP Walk.

2. We have scheduled another Zoom Fellowship call for this Sunday afternoon at 4:00 PM. We hope you can join us, and connection information went out to members in an email. (If you would like to join us, please send an email to Pastor at trinity-elc-pastor@verizon.net so he can get that information to you.)

3. A blessed Mother’s Day to all of the mothers, grandmothers, and mother figures in our midst!

I pray that everyone has a blessed weekend and look forward to “seeing” you all at worship and perhaps at our Zoom fellowship.

As I sign off with this message, I thought that I’d share this as a devotional message today.

Recently, I was invited by my alma mater, Concordia College in Bronxville, NY, to be a part of a “virtual choir” project which they were creating. You may have seen similar videos online, and I thought that it might be fun to participate, and I’m glad to be able to share it with you all.

The college asked for Tour Choir Alumni to send in a video of each of us singing the individual parts of what is a “signature piece” that has been sung by the choir over many years: “Nun Ruhen alle Waelder”.  That piece is two stanzas of an evening hymn authored by the German Lutheran Pastor and Hymnwriter, Paul Gerhardt (1607-76), with the music composed by Heinrich Isaac (c. 1450-1517), in an arrangement by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750). The hymn is still found in many hymnals, especially Lutheran ones, and is in our Lutheran Service Book as Hymn 880, “Now Rest beneath Night’s Shadow”.

The choir sings the first stanza of the hymn in its original German. A close translation of the words would be something like:

Now rest all the woods,
Cattle, people, towns, and fields,
The whole world is asleep.
But you, my soul,
Up, up, you now will begin,
What is well-pleasing to your Creator.

The second stanza sung in English is the fourth stanza in our hymnal:

Lord Jesus, who dost love me,
O spread Thy wings above me
And shield me from alarm.
Though Satan would devour me,
Let angel guards sing o’er me:
“This child of God shall meet no harm,”

What made this a choir signature piece was that this hymn concluded every concert sung by the Tour Choir. Each evening, the choir would make its way into the nave of the church we sang in, usually able to surround the congregation, and we would hold hands singing with one another, looking towards the altar and its cross, offering this as our evening and closing prayer.

Singing this piece was always a special moment for us as choir members. For many of us, the times spent on tour were among the most memorable of our college days because of the friendships which developed, grew, and flourished between us while not only singing together, but also living on a bus for two weeks and all of the other things which made up “tour life”. Each night as we prayed this hymn together, it prepared us for what was another “tour ritual”. Following each concert, we would usually be hosted overnight in the homes of the congregation members; sometimes in our selected “tour partner” pairs, sometimes needing to be separated because of the space limitations which our host families had. In any case, we as a choir were needing to be apart from one another, if only for a night, and so this prayer was one which we were asking God’s blessings on one another while we were away from each other, praying that we would be able to see one another the next day and continue on our journey together.

I have to admit that hearing us sing this hymn “together” brought tears to my eyes because of the memories that washed over me from those wonderful three years I was privileged to sing in this choir, and under the direction of “Doc” Schultz. But it was also because of my remembering the meaning behind this piece which also made me think of the current times we find ourselves in as Pastor and People. This is the same prayer which I offer for all of us as we remain apart from one another in these days: that the Lord Jesus who loves all of us, remains with us, keeping us safe in His care and protection, under the watchful guardianship of His holy angels, who constantly warn the evil one and his hosts: “This child of God shall meet no harm!”

And so we pray: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zK-QL_gu6q4&feature=youtu.be

May the Lord bless us, defend us from all evil, and bring us to everlasting life. Amen!

And may the Lord watch between me and thee, while we are absent one from another.

Peace and blessings,
+Pastor