In Luke 24 the two disciples encountered a stranger who “beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.”  Again, forty days later as he was about to ascend into heaven Jesus, with the disciples gathered around him, “opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.”

Becky and I have two grandchildren being confirmed this month.   It remains a wonder that so many confirmands and their parents believe that the whole of scriptures has been opened to them by the time they reach 13 or 14 years of age.

Well here I am, nearly 50 years a pastor, in a couple of weeks it will also be 50 years of marriage with four children and I am still finding that the scriptures continues to be opened for me.  I wasn’t fully ready to be a pastor upon graduation from the seminary on May 26, 1967 nor for marriage when Becky and I were wed the next evening at Redeemer Lutheran Church in Desoto, Mo.

Just as I had to figure out and, am still doing so, how to be husband and father and now grandfather, so I am still figuring out how to live as a child of God and brother of Christ and a pastor even in retirement.  The scriptures have much more to say to me in these latter days than when as a 13-year-old I knelt before the altar at Christ Lutheran Church, Pipe Lake and promised I would rather die than give up my faith in Christ.

Thus, one of my favorite prayers speaks of reading, marking, learning and inwardly digesting the Word.  And so, it is.