Trinity Presbyterian San Jose

Trinity Presbyterian San Jose We invite you to worship with us this Sunday; come celebrate God's love with us! To learn more about Trinity visit our website: www.sjtrinity.org

06/07/2026

Scripture: Ecclesiastes 4:12; Genesis 25:19-34

06/05/2026

E.G.R

The other day, I was reminded of a former student from my youth group about twenty years ago, when I first entered ministry. He was in my middle school group, and to be honest, he was not my favorite student at all. He was loud and annoying, and he would do anything to disrupt the class. You know how middle schoolers are! One rowdy kid could turn the entire class into chaos!

And there I was, fresh from Indonesia, struggling with my English and still trying to figure out my way in the U.S., and God gave me this guy in my class. Looking back, I realize God used him to shape me as a Christian in ways I never expected.

There were many times when I wished he would just stop coming to youth group. Just the thought of this guy gave me chills. I even convinced myself that our class would be much better without him around. But believe it or not, he kept coming back—every single week, loud and annoying as always. And to my surprise, he was one of the most faithful students in the group. He rarely missed a youth group meeting. I tell you, God has a sense of humor—sometimes a very strange one! HA!

One moment really got me. One week, he actually missed youth group, and I have to confess, I thoroughly enjoyed the peace and quiet. For the first time, I experienced a youth group meeting without having to wonder what he was going to do next! It felt almost too good to be true. But then he came back the following week, walked up to me, and sincerely apologized for missing the meeting. That caught me completely off guard. In that moment, I realized that he needed the youth group more than anybody else in the room.

I remember that this was during the time when the W.W.J.D. (What Would Jesus Do?) campaign was very popular in San Jose. So I found myself asking that very question: What would Jesus do with this annoying kid? Deep down, even though I didn't want to admit it, I knew the answer. Jesus would love this student just as much as He loved the other kids who were obedient, respectful, and easy to work with.

Around that time, a friend introduced me to the term E.G.R.—Extra Grace Required. He said, "In ministry and in life, you will always encounter people who require extra grace. So give it." I've never forgotten those words. Grace is undeserved favor. It is the kind of love that Jesus extends to people who don't deserve to be loved—a marvelous gift from God despite all our shortcomings and failures. My former middle school student was one of those E.G.R. people in my life. The truth is, we often don't know the battles people are fighting. We don't know what they are carrying, what they are going through at home, or what pain may be hiding behind their behavior. Perhaps if we knew their story, we would have more mercy, more patience, and more compassion for the difficult person standing right in front of us.

How much grace, then, is enough for an E.G.R. person? Remember Peter's question to Jesus: “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?” Peter probably thought he was being generous. But Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.”

In other words, grace is not something we measure. We don't keep score. We extend grace again and again because that is exactly how God has treated us. The truth is, when we talk about E.G.R. people, we often forget one important thing: we are E.G.R. people too. It is easy to identify the difficult person in the room, but much harder to recognize that we ourselves require extra grace every single day. We may not be loud, disruptive, or annoying in the same way as someone else, but we all fall short. We all have weaknesses, blind spots, failures, and sins that require God's mercy.

Perhaps the reason Jesus calls us to extend grace so freely is because He knows how much grace we ourselves have received. If God has shown us grace more times than we can count, then surely we can offer a little extra grace to the E.G.R. people He places in our lives, including remembering that, before God, we are one of them.

Love and prayers,

Vincent Arishvara 06052026

05/31/2026

You Me and God Sermon Series, Scripture: Ecclesiastes 4:12; Genesis 29:15-35

05/24/2026

Pentecost Sunday; Scripture: Acts 2:1-41

05/17/2026

Scripture: Acts 1:1-11

05/10/2026

Scripture: Matthew 15:21-28; Luke 2:41-52

05/08/2026

Mom's Words

Having a mom is a gift, one of the treasures of my life that I have learned not to take for granted. My mother still lives in Indonesia, and because of the time difference, I call her every morning. Most days we talk for about thirty minutes. Most of the conversations are simple and ordinary. I listen as she tells me about her day (nighttime in Indonesia when I call in the morning): how she unexpectedly met one of her former students, how she spent time caring for a dying friend, how she talked for hours with her buddy on the phone, how the catechism class she teaches went, or how she volunteered at church and checked in on people who were lonely or struggling.

And in the middle of all these stories, almost without fail, come her lessons. Somewhere in the middle of an ordinary conversation, she gently slips in a moral teaching, a piece of wisdom, or a spiritual reflection. It is simply who she is, as long as I've known her.

One moment, she may be talking about someone who once had a good reputation but later fell from grace, and suddenly the story becomes a lesson about integrity and faithfulness. “My lifelong prayer,” she told me, “is for all of you (my children) to finish well and never bring shame to God.” Another time, while speaking about someone who had been unkind toward a friend, she said, “Mama (she always addresses herself in second person when she's talking to her children) doesn’t like it when people take things for granted and forget to be thankful. Gratitude is my life principle.”

I know she is not scolding or lecturing me directly. Still, once a child, always a child. And as her son, even though I am now a fifty-year-old man, I suspect that in her eyes I am still the little five-year-old bratty boy who needs reminders about good life principles. HA :)

And honestly, I am grateful for that.

Even though I'm not always in the mood for them. Yes, there are mornings when I am not fully awake yet, still trying to gather my thoughts and drink my coffee, and the last thing I expect is a moral lesson before sunrise. But who among us does not need reminders? Who does not need someone who loves us enough to keep shaping our hearts, even indirectly?

I realize that my mother’s advice is not merely instruction, it is love expressed through words. It is care wrapped inside her daily stories. It is wisdom earned through years of joy, suffering, faith, disappointment, endurance, and prayer. And perhaps one of the greatest blessings of adulthood is discovering that even when we think we have grown independent, we still need the voice of someone who lovingly reminds us who we are and who we ought to become.

This Sunday, as we celebrate Mother’s Day, may we take time to honor the women who shaped us with their love, patience, prayers, sacrifices, and even their repeated reminders. And perhaps the greatest way we can honor them is not merely with flowers or gifts, but by living the very values they tried so hard to teach us.

After all, long after a mother finishes raising her children, her words continue to raise them still.

Love and prayers,

Vincent Arishvara 05082026

04/25/2026

I Want To Go Home

Visiting a 96-year-old woman in an assisted living facility felt like stepping into a sacred space where time had slowed and life had been gently stripped down to its essence. Her body was frail, yet there was a quiet strength about her. What struck me most was her clarity of mind. Despite the many years since we last saw each other, she recognized me instantly. She even asked about Vania and the children, recalling them with surprising detail.

Yet beneath that lucidity was a longing that could not be hidden. “I want to go home,” she said softly, her face carrying a sadness. “I miss my husband,” she spoke about the man who had passed away many years ago. Beside her small bed sat an 8x12 photograph of him, smiling. I know what she meant. She wasn't talking about her house, but her eternal home where her husband is now.

Then her face brightened as she spoke about her family. “When my kids, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren come to visit, it makes me so happy, very happy.” You could see the joy those visits brought her. But even that joy, as real as it was, did not fully quiet the deeper longing within her. “But I don’t have any need,” she added. “I just want to go home.”

Her words stayed with me, as I thought about the contrast between different stages of life. When we are young, we are filled with ambition, dreams to pursue, goals to achieve, a strong desire to build something meaningful. We long for accomplishment, recognition, progress. Our energy is directed outward, toward making a mark on the world.

But as time passes, something shifts. The urgency of achievement begins to fade. The things that once seemed so important slowly lose their weight. It is not necessarily disappointment, but rather a reordering of desire. After decades of living, after love has been experienced, losses have been endured, and life has been fully tasted…there comes a point where the soul no longer hungers for more accomplishments. Instead, it longs for something deeper and quieter.

In her, I saw that transition clearly. At 96, she was not speaking about what she still wanted to do or achieve. She was not holding onto unfinished ambitions. Her desire had simplified into something profoundly human: to be home. A place not defined by walls or location, but by peace and reunion with the one she loves the most.

It also made me reflect on how our understanding of “home” changes over time. In our younger years, home is something we build, something we shape with our efforts and dreams. But later in life, home becomes something we long for, a place of rest of being gathered into love that does not fade.

Her quiet words felt like both a confession and a kind of wisdom. After nearly a century of life, what remained was not a list of needs, but a single, steady longing. And perhaps that longing has been there all along, hidden beneath our ambitions, waiting patiently for the day when we finally recognize it for what it is: a deep desire not just to live, but to return, to belong, and ultimately, to go home.

"For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands." 2 Corinthians 5:1

Love and prayers,

Vincent Arishvara 04252026

04/10/2026

Easter Check In

It’s been a few days since Easter Sunday. The music has faded, grocery stores have moved Easter chocolate bunnies to the clearance shelves, and decorations are being packed away. The whole industry shifts to the next big thing on the calendar: Mother’s Day, the Fourth of July, and whatever comes next.

For me, too, as a pastor, I’ve just come out of one of the most intense seasons of ministry. Lent with its silence and reflective nature, and then comes Holy Week with planning services, preparing messages, walking people through sorrow, and finally the explosive joy of Easter. For weeks, it’s been go, go, go for me, spiritually, emotionally, and physically.

So now that Easter Sunday has passed, my natural instinct is: “Yay! Finally… I can breathe.”
I know that instinct is not wrong. Even Jesus withdrew. But I must continue to remind myself: Yes, the schedule slows down. But the resurrection life does not. Because Easter was never meant to exhaust you and then release you into spiritual neutrality. It was meant to ignite something that continues.

I am convinced that the resurrection of Christ is not confined to a single Sunday morning. It is not a story we revisit once a year and then forget about it until next year. If Christ is truly risen, then He is risen today, still alive, still reigning, and still transforming lives. The empty tomb is not an artifact of history. It is the foundation of our present and the promise of our future.

And this truth challenges us.
Because if Jesus is alive, then we cannot go back to living as though He is not. We cannot return unchanged to the same patterns, the same attitudes, the same spiritual complacency. Resurrection demands transformation. It calls us to live as people who have encountered victory over sin, fear, and death itself.
To live in the resurrection is to wake up each day aware that we are no longer the same. The old self has been crucified with Christ; the new self is alive in Him. This is not mere self-improvement, it is a new life.

As Paul declares:
“The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20)

So the question is not, “How was your Easter?” The real question is, “Are you still living it?”

Love and prayers,

Vincent Arishvara 04102026

02/06/2026

Pain is a Personal Matter

This morning, I had a conversation with a friend about the struggles another friend is facing. In the course of our talk, I said that within his close circle of friends, every person in the circle is carrying some form of trouble at one given moment. My friend replied, “Yup, and each of them believes their problem is greater than everyone else’s.” Hearing that, it got me thinking, at first, I heard it as a judgment, but then the more I think about it, I realized that that's a human truth. Pain is personal.

Anthony de Mello illustrates this powerfully in a story from his own life. When his mother was diagnosed with cancer, his sister wept and cried out to him, “Tony, Tony, why would God allow this to happen to our mother?” De Mello gently responded, “My dear sister, last year a million people in China died of starvation because of a drought, and you never once raised that question.” His words were not meant to dismiss her grief, but to reveal something deeper: suffering only becomes an urgent theological problem when it knocks on our own door.

We can sympathize with victims of war. We can feel sorrow for those enduring chronic illness. We may even be genuinely moved by the pain we see in others. Yet until suffering touches us personally, we do not truly know what pain is. From a distance, pain is a concept; up close, it becomes a reality that reshapes us.

As a child, I cried when a friend died, and my tears were sincere. But it was only when my father died from lymphoma that I felt the true weight and finality of death. As a pastor, I have walked alongside congregants suffering from chronic illness, and I grieved with them. Still, it was only when cancer struck my wife that I fully grasped the relentless cruelty of bodily suffering: the exhaustion, the fear, the vulnerability that illness imposes on both body and soul.

Pain teaches us not by explanation but by experience. It humbles our assumptions, deepens our compassion, and reminds us how fragile we truly are. And perhaps that is why every person feels their pain most acutely, not because they lack empathy for others, but because pain, by its very nature, speaks most loudly in the first person.

The prophet Isaiah speaks into this deeply human experience through his vision of the suffering servant, a vision that leads our hearts and minds to our Lord Jesus Christ:

“Surely he took up our pain
and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
stricken by him, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.”
(Isaiah 53:4–5)

Jesus understands that pain is deeply personal. He does not remain a distant observer of human suffering. He takes it personally when He sees His beloved children walking through pain. And so, He takes the pain of our humanity upon His own shoulders and bears it Himself, so that we never have to carry it alone.

Many can sympathize with suffering. Fewer can truly empathize. But only One has the power and love to take our pain upon Himself in order to set us free. This is the mystery and the mercy of the cross.

Alleluia for this amazing grace!

Love and prayers,

Vincent Arishvara 02062026

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