Jack’s Winning Words 10/31/17
“WWLS  What Would Luther Say?”  (Pamela Nelson)  P M’s article,  noting the 500th Anniversary of the start of the Reformation, lists 3 basic Luther-an precepts.  1) Put the best construction on everything…Be positive.  2) Call a thing what it is…Be honest.  3)  Speak well of your neighbor… Be charitable,   I’m not sure that Luther was consistent in all of these.  Maybe that’s why he spoke extensively about the grace of God.  Good words to ponder today.    ;-)  Jack

FROM HAPPY TRAILS IN NOVA SCOTIA: Was it somebody's joke that I heard that Luther's three precepts for peace of mind were...o amor puellae  o ein butes Bier, und  o spreading manure in the garden?====JACK:  I think that the word, ribald, could sometimes be applied to Martin, especially after a few steins of bier.

FROM TARMART REV:  ...a Pentecostalist would do well to live by them!! One I know of, for sure!!====JACK:  I think that you could actually become a Lutheran, if you'd allow yourself to loosen up a bit.  Drinking beer might be a stretch...but not all Lutherans imbibe.

FROM KIMLM:  Thanks for your daily messages.  Really enjoy them.====JACK:  ...and I enjoy sending them out.  Basically, I try to have the reflect my personality, so it's more like an e-mail conversation.

FROM KANSAN DON:  Amen!====JACK: Are you wearing red today?

FROM BLAZING OAKS:  Since Jan and Hal were Lutheran Clergy, I heard a good bit about Luther, a good man, who sometimes suffered the flaws of human Nature that beset us all...His life makes for interesting reading, and these precepts are worth emulating.====JACK:  Augustana College and the Augustana Lutheran Church had roots in Swedish pietism.  In that sense, they could identify with some of the Baptists.  When mergers linked the Swedish Lutherans with the larger German Lutheran Church, pietism tended to give way to the more worldly German customs.

=FROM OUTHOUSE JUDY:  Luther was not perfect and we know it by his struggles.  But he knew God loved him and it was by grace he was saved.====JACK:  It is hard to fight against, "We are saved by our good works."  Listen to most funeral eulogies.

FROM KF:  Good words to live by!  I have a maize and blue tshirt "WWBD" - what would Bo do? (Schembechler)====\JACK:  If Ann Arbor is heaven (as some say), it follows that God should be worshiped there.

FROM TARMART REV:  By the way . . . St Mary's Catholic Church here in Willmar invited members of the Lutheran churches throughout our small city to their sanctuary to celebrate together the 500th year anniversary of the Reformation. I wished I had attended, I'm sure I would have been welcomed among the 800 present.====JACK:  WWLS?  He'd say that you should have gone.  You're more Lutheran that you think you are.