Grace of God Lutheran Church

06/14/2026

Kind of sums up what was said in church today

06/14/2026

The way we treat people often speaks louder than the words we say.It's easy to be kind when life is going well. It's easy to be gracious when everyone agrees with us. But Christ calls us to something deeper. To notice the overlooked. To serve without recognition. To offer compassion when it's inconvenient. To love people not because they deserve it, but because He first loved us.

Our faith was never meant to stay inside church walls. It was meant to be carried into our homes, workplaces, neighborhoods, and everyday conversations. Sometimes the most powerful testimony isn't found in what we say about Jesus. It's found in how we reflect Him. If you'd like more encouragement like this throughout the week, we'd love for you to join our free weekly devotional and explore our worship playlists created to help you slow down, spend time with God, and live out your faith in everyday life. Everything is linked in our bio.

06/14/2026

06/14/2026

✝️ In a small whitewashed parish church in a village in Dumfriesshire that most people drive through without stopping, there is a carved stone cross that contains the oldest surviving poem in the English language. It was carved in the seventh century. It is still there. And almost nobody knows it exists.

The Ruthwell Cross was created sometime around 700 AD — within the lifetime of the Venerable Bede — in what was then the kingdom of Northumbria, at a time when the south of Scotland was culturally and politically part of that Anglo-Saxon realm. It is a remarkable object by any standard — nearly five and a half metres of carved sandstone bearing figural scenes of extraordinary quality, inhabited vine scrolls in the Mediterranean style, and runic inscriptions in the Northumbrian runic alphabet that contain substantial passages of the Dream of the Rood — the great Old English visionary poem in which the Cross itself speaks, describing the Crucifixion from the perspective of the wood that bore Christ.

The poem inscribed on the cross is older than the manuscript versions that survive. The Ruthwell Cross is, in a very real sense, the original publication of one of the masterpieces of early medieval literature — and it is carved in stone in a Dumfriesshire field.

The cross was broken and buried during the Reformation — carved images of saints were considered idolatrous by the Presbyterian reformers — and reassembled and re-erected in the nineteenth century, which is why it survives at all. Some pieces were lost in the burial. What reassembled is still extraordinary.

It is not in the British Museum. It is not in the National Museum of Scotland. It is in Ruthwell. You can go and stand in front of it on any weekday morning, alone, with no queue, no entrance fee, and no one telling you to keep moving.

The oldest poem in English. In a Scots village. In a church most people pass through without looking.

06/14/2026

Serve God with gladness; come into God's presence with singing. -Psalm 100:2

Joy is not simply a feeling. It is a way of living that flows from knowing we belong to God.

As we gather for worship today, may our gratitude overflow into acts of kindness, compassion, and service. May we carry the joy we experience in worship into the world God loves.

Blessed Sunday from the Deaconess Community.

06/14/2026

🙏🏾 God of the rainbow,

Thank You for Pride Month and for the beautiful diversity of humanity.

Bless LGBTQIA+ siblings everywhere, reminding them they are loved, worthy, and never outside Your embrace.

As an ally, strengthen me to choose compassion over fear, justice over silence, and love that speaks, listens, and stands alongside others.

Give me courage to use my voice for dignity and inclusion, and humility to keep learning
and showing up well.

May we help build a world where everyone can live safely, openly, and with dignity, and where belonging is shared by all. Amen

-Reed Kirkman
McKinney, TX

👉🏾 Share your prayers with us: https://ow.ly/lCa850Zbqcr

06/14/2026

This is not a denial of Jesus but a deeper discovery of him. The love that Jesus revealed is not confined to people. It is encountered whenever we look into the eyes of all of God’s creatures, human and animal and perceive that mysterious, heartfelt love we call agape. In that moment we are witnessing the very love that God sent Jesus to teach.
Love is not a static belief but a living action. The mystic learns to recognize its presence wherever it appears and to respond with the same love in return. They see Jesus not only in the Spirit of living things but also in the many forms through which divine beauty is expressed. The love found in music, art, compassion, creativity, and wonder can all become windows through which the presence of Christ is revealed.
When the disciples walked the road to Emmaus they said, “Were not our hearts burning within us?” Even before they recognized the risen Jesus, they had already encountered him in the living truth and love that stirred within them. Their hearts perceived what their eyes had not yet seen.
The mystic follows this same path. They search for Christ not only in sacred places but throughout creation itself. In every act of love, in every living being, and in every expression of beauty and goodness, they glimpse the presence of the One who is the image of divine love. Seeing Jesus everywhere, they learn to love everything more deeply.

06/14/2026

Good one! In Samuel 8:4-20, the people of Israel pled with Samuel to beg God, on their behalf, for a king. They were noticing that the neighboring countries had rulers, and insofar as Israel didn’t, they felt the odd one out. Up until that point, God had been Israel’s king, so their request marked a shift not only in Israel’s political structure but in the direction of Israel’s trust.

Samuel did as they wanted, and God agreed to let Israel have a king. However, God commanded Samuel to first announce a warning: Turning toward an earthly king and away from God as King would bring misery and despair upon Israel.

Martin Luther defined sin as misdirected trust: that is, when we trust in something that is not God as if it were. These texts from 1 Samuel may inspire some conversation about gods that we are tempted to worship in our own lives.

This message is excerpted from the Bible study “Let us pray” by Anna Madsen in the June 2018 Gather magazine. Today is the Third Sunday after Pentecost. Today is Flag Day. Today we commemorate Basil the Great, Bishop of Caesarea, 379; Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa, c. 385; Gregory of Nazianzus, Bishop of Constantinople, c. 389; and Macrina, teacher, c. 3

06/13/2026

Diversity is a reflection of the Divine.