Faith Works & News 2021-11-26

Make your checks out to Faith Lutheran Altar Guild when you place your order.  No online payments.  Poinsettias may be picked up after church services on January 2.  

  CLICK HERE for more information.

FRUITCAKE AND CINNAMON PECAN SALE
DECEMBER 5

DID YOU KNOW?

Volunteers from Faith Lutheran Church
have given 111 hours of time,
produced 252 copies of 1^st & 2^nd Corinthians
in Swahili 
and 20 copies of a Devotional Book for the blind
in English Braille this year.

Why?  SO THE BLIND CAN SEE JESUS!

YOU can also volunteer for this great Missionary Ministry.
Our group goes to Zion monthly.

Buying fruitcakes or pecans will help, too!  See below:

SUNDAY MORNING ADULT BIBLE CLASS

IN DECEMBER

SUNDAY MORNING ADULT BIBLE CLASSES

WINTER QUARTER:

JANUARY 9 – MARCH 27

LIGHT – FIRE

BY TESS TODD

My pew-mate and I stood waiting while the acolyte extinguished the candles on the altar. When he had finished, she said, ‘Old School’. That’s the way it was.

…there’s something about a campfire…

When I got home I started thinking about candles, light, flame and fire. For safety reasons, smoking, and open flames are not permitted where I live. Concern for one-another and in compliance with rules, our air is fresh. Most of the time that is. On occasion I have smelled something burning in an oven, and I once forgot the eggs I was boiling!

My children and grandchildren have fire-pits. Friends gather around for fellowship, memory sharing, and, at Valle, for poetry reading and sing-alongs. There’s something about a campfire!

When I was a child in Arkansas, our heat came from wood. Mother’s big white Home Comfort cook stove burned wood, kindling, chips and corn cobs. Most homes were well prepared for cooking and heating water in summer and heating the house in winter. Neat stacks of wood and little piles of kindling were handy to the kitchen and fireplace.

I don’t know why, but Daddy didn’t subscribe to that plan. He may have thought the Rapture was at hand, or that God would provide, or who knows what? He was not lazy. He was a hard worker, he just did not believe in woodpiles.  

Mother may have wondered where the next fire was coming from. God must have provided. We never missed a meal or took a cold bath. 

When we lived in Illinois, we burned coal. Delivered by a truck, dumped down a chute into the basement, later put in the furnace down there or carried upstairs to the kitchen in a scuttle. Heat was labor intensive in the good old days! But flames were so beautiful!

In San Diego, during WW2, we enjoyed dependable, no effort gas heat. But after the war, it was back to farm and Daddy’s old method of providing fuel for Mother to run the kitchen and laundry. She never complained. Mother and Daddy are where the tempurature is just right. And Mother doesn’t have to wonder or worry about anything.

During my pregnancy, I suffered morning sickness and Frank would let me sleep. One morning, I got up to find the lid half closed over the spilled skillet of scrambled eggs. He must have been making toast in the oven and when he closed the oven door….Over the years, I’ve smiled at that memory.When Frank and I were first married, we rented a nice little apartment from the widow of the fire chief. It was on a corner lot and we had our own private entrance off the side street. We shared the bath. Our kitchen had a little four burner gas range on legs. It had a cover that closed down over the burners. The only problem was that when you closed the oven door the cover fell down.

Later years brought homes of our own. None had a lid over the burners. Heat came from gas and electricity. Flames in fireplaces warmed us, our family and friends. We shared travel, meals, games, much laughter a few tears and many campfires.

The campfires were usually in hunting and fishing camps. Dinners were cooked over coals in the company of dearest and best friends. Eyes looked at flames and coals and treasured years together. Flames burned down as we watched years of failing health, caregiving and separation by death. But heart and memory are warmed by the memory of flames that burned for so many years.

In a few weeks I’ll enjoy flames, and see sparks fly in my fireplace. For the Christmas season. I’ll sit in my recliner, relax and watch and listen to the fire that fills the big screen of my TV. If I half close my eyes, I can see a young Frank and Mike and Judy as children. I’ll think of Mother and Daddy, well and strong. (Daddy just got up to see if he can find wood for Mother to make Christmas dinner.) The flame flickers, but does not go out. Thanks be to God, from Whom all blessings flow. The Lamb is the Light!   -Tess Todd