A Day of Prayer

Ne 1: 5-9 - And I said: "I pray, LORD God of heaven, O great and awesome God, You who keep Your covenant and mercy with those who love You and observe Your commandments, please let Your ear be attentive and Your eyes open, that You may hear the prayer of Your servant which I pray before You now, day and night, for the children of Israel Your servants, and confess the sins of the children of Israel which we have sinned against You. Both my father's house and I have sinned. We have acted very corruptly against You, and have not kept the commandments, the statutes, nor the ordinances which You commanded Your servant Moses. Remember, I pray, the word that You commanded Your servant Moses, saying, ...'If you return to Me, and keep My commandments and do them, ... I will gather them from there, and bring them to the place which I have chosen as a dwelling for My name.'"

     May is a busy month. The whole month has been designated Better Hearing and Speech Month. May 9-15 has been established as National Nursing Home week. And we have set aside May 30 as New Member Sunday because it is Pentecost Sunday, the birthday of the Christian church. May 6 is National Day of Prayer.

     We all get requests to support this or that and many times we do get prayer supplications. If you have an e-mail address, you irregularly get a prayer concern from us at Zion to pray for a specific need that has been brought to our attention.

     Well, what about this May? Yes, we want you to hear better. Get your hearing checked and get help if you need it. We want you to hear your friends on Sunday morning! Yes, we want you to know about nursing homes and be thankful for those that work in an environment that many may find depressing, because it takes a special person to minister to those folks that need daily care like this. Pray a blessing on those who work at the Foley Nursing Home where we bring worship once a month. And yes, pray for new members and friends that visit us, that they may find a home at Zion. Be thankful for God's gift to us, the Christian church and especially our Lutheran heritage. It might be good to pray that the Lord would rebuke those who mock our efforts at prayer.

     But how about a focus? Let's take a closer look at May 6, the National Day of Prayer. There are several web sites that have been set up to give some direction to our prayer life, and they may edify us if they bring us to prayer. But don't we really need to go to God's Word to get a sense of how we are pray for our nation?

     There are two different Scriptures here that deal with prayer and focus. We don't talk about Nehemiah very often. This Old Testament selection above is only a portion of his prayer. He was one of those at the end of the Babylonian Captivity, not even living in Palestine. Israel no longer existed as a nation and God was giving Nehemiah a vision of what God wanted to do in Jerusalem for His people. Looking at these verses, do you see how God is attentive to the needs of His people and faithful to His promises? Nehemiah expresses sorrow for sins, not just his own sins, but for all the sins of Israel. And there is prayer that Israel return to its God because God is faithful.

     As we look at our National Day of Prayer, perhaps we could take our lead from Nehemiah. Many in our nation have ignored the Lord and His claim on us as a nation and a people. Can we not confess our sins as a nation that get in the way of our relationship with God? Jesus Christ died for the sins of the world, to take away the barrier that separates us from our Heavenly Father. Because of Jesus Christ, we can pray a prayer like this for our nation.

     The Apostle Paul, hundreds of years after Nehemiah, prayed for his brothers and sisters in Israel. The Bible tells us that we as Gentiles have been grafted into Israel. We need to pray for our nation, but we also need to pray for our Jewish brothers and sisters, that they might be saved. Those who are lost within our families, need our prayers.

     Yes, we can pray for our nation and we can pray for family and for specific people groups that live among us. Perhaps this would be a good time to pray for the Moslems and other non-Christians in the United States and in the world that they might know the saving grace of Jesus Christ obtained for us through blood spilt on a cross 2000 years ago.

     Keep praying. ~Pastor Dave

     There has been a lot of prayer through the saints at Zion Lutheran Church through almost a 100 years, and maybe the official beginning is May. Pastor H. F. H. Hartelius gathered Lutherans in the Silverhill area together and organized Evangelical Swedish Lutheran Church on December 18, 1905, with 16 charter members. Pastor Hartelius had been ordained in Moline, IL, about the time Silverhill was developing. He had attended Augustana College and Seminary, and served in Marshfield, OR, Concord, NE, and Sweaburg, NE, before coming to Thorsby, AL, in 1904. Pastor H. F. H. Hartelius was sent to Silverhill by the Augustana Synod to follow up on ministry that had been ongoing since 1897 or so.

     The formal church name would become the Evangelical Swedish Lutheran Zion Church the next month. Record documentation would be filed in the Office of Probate in Baldwin County on May 21, 1906. A constitution was adopted.

     The first members of the congregation were: Sam Jacobson, Hugo Valin, Herbert Jacobson, Jonas Hammarstrom, Lina Hammarstrom, Gilbert Jacobson, Benet Johnson, P. M. Johnson, Carl Johan Swenson, Emma Kristina Swenson, Mr. and Mrs. P. W. Paulson, Lars Peterson, Tilda Peterson, Erick Ulrickson and Mrs. Otto Anderson.

The Rosebud

It is only a tiny rosebud,
A flower of God's design;
But I cannot unfold the petals
With these clumsy hands of mine.

The secret of unfolding flowers
Is not known to such as I.
GOD opens this flower so easily,
But in my hands they die.

If I cannot unfold a rosebud,
This flower of God's design,
Then how can I have the wisdom
To unfold this life of mine?

So I'll trust in God for leading
Each moment of my day.
I will look to God for guidance
In each step of the way.

The path that lies before me,
Only my Lord knows.
I'll trust God to unfold the moments,
Just as He unfolds the rose.

Luther's Wisdom on the Living Word of God:

"The Bible is alive, it speaks to me;
it has feet, it runs after me;
it has hands, it lays hold of me."

~Martin Luther

     Zion Lutheran Church had minor surgery on April 19. The bell tower/steeple repairs were accomplished by chief surgeon Eddy Denk, Jr., some 50 feet above the ground. The central steeple cross mounted upon a 24 inch globe, signifying the "Cross of Christ's Triumph over the World," rests upon the point of the steeple, the top of the cross rising a total of 54 feet above the ground. Since Zion Lutheran Church was constructed in 1915-16 and since wood ages dramatically in our climate, the original steeple cross had been retired perhaps 15 years ago and replaced, but its heart-wood pine globe was only caulked and returned to service, and caulked again only eight years ago. The globe was now showing substantial weathering.

Eddy Denk, Jr., hangs precariously in a basket 50 feet up as he removes the globe base of the central steeple cross at Zion Lutheran Church of Silverhill.

     Here entered Eddy Denk, Jr., Eric Denk, and Dallas Ford from Denk's Metal Erectors of Robertsdale. Using a "cherry-picker" to lift Eddy to the fifty-foot steeple summit, Eric and Dallas maneuvered the lift cage to within inches of the globe assisted by Zion Lutheran Church members Charlie Canning and Pete Midgarden who managed the coordination and implementation of this project. Eddy dismantled the globe in a few short moments, affixed plastic sheeting to the base of the cross, and applied mankind's miracle helper, duct tape, to the task, creating a watertight seal until the globe can be replicated and returned to its precarious perch.

    Zion Lutheran Church will reinstall the globe after fabrication by Pete Midgarden. Friends and the curious may view the cross sans globe in the interim on the steeple.