	Announcements: The Worship Plan for Sunday is located under the Live Stream menu above. Our weekly Sunday morning services are at 10:30am Join us in person, Live on Facebook or Listen to us on 89.5 FM from our church parking lot. Sunday School for all ages is at 9:00am

Message from the Pastor...

Greetings Immanuel Lutheran Family,

Welcome to 2025! I have a memory of a teacher in school who asked us to imagine what the year 2025 would look like, and what we would be doing or where we would be. I must have been about 10 years old, so it was 1985. This was the summer that Back to the Future was released in movie theaters and our answers about what the future would look like were vastly influenced by that movie. You can imagine my disappointment that we don’t have flying cars and teleportation devices yet (I am joking!) but if I could show 10-year-old self the life I live now and the blessings it is filled with, I don’t think I could fathom it. It looks nothing like I imagined, but it is so beautiful.

This is the way God’s Holy Spirit guides and shapes the lives of Disciples, the life of God’s church. All our imaginings and plans are subject to the movement of the Holy Spirit, and God’s love and grace abounds in that movement. We cannot return to the past, but we can embrace the gifts we have received from that history and foundation for our lives. We cannot predict the future, but we look to it with unreasonable hope, because God provides abundantly for God’s people, and we see this in our own lives. There is a prayer called the prayer of Good Courage that I pray regularly for our future as a community. I invite you to join me in this faith practice this year.

Lord God, you have called your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown. Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us, through Jesus Christ our Lord. AMEN

Peace,

Pastor Katie