Gratitude and generosity are not just polite responses; they are the very baseline of our life together in Christ. Today, as a ministry staff, we find ourselves in a unique moment of transition. We are living in the holy space between the restorative pause of a sabbatical and the daily, faithful work of keeping this congregation moving forward.

Philippians 1:3-5

"I thank my God every time I remember you, constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you, because of your sharing in the gospel from the first day until now."

Reflecting on Paul's words to the Philippians, we are reminded that God always provides exactly who and what the church needs for the journey. When Pastor Lowell stepped away for a season of renewal, God brought us a leader who stepped into the gap with an open heart. Over these past several weeks, Mary didn't just fill a seat or watch the clock. She shared the gospel, carried our daily burdens, celebrated our joys, and offered us her full presence. That is true gospel generosity—giving of oneself freely for the sake of the neighbor.

Saying goodbye is a natural, bittersweet part of our Lutheran tradition of call and ministry. It serves as a healthy reminder that we are all stewards, not owners, of God’s church. Mary’s time with us was a deliberate gift, and our response to that gift is deep, profound gratitude. We are inherently richer for the ministry we shared, even in this brief season.

Prayer

Gracious God, we praise you for your constant faithfulness to this staff and congregation. Thank you for sending Mary to walk with us, lead us, and ease our anxieties during this season of sabbatical and growth. We are immensely grateful for her wisdom, her steady leadership, and the generosity of spirit she showed our community every single day. As she leaves this place, bless her next steps, her family, and her ongoing ministry. Keep us generous in our own work, and prepare our hearts to welcome Pastor Lowell back from sabbatical with joy. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Thank you Pastor Mary!

With gratitude from the LOL Council, Staff, and Congregation

Do you remember a few weeks ago I wrote about the sweater I was working on? I’m still working on it. I’d love to say it has gone swimmingly. When I started working on it, I was asking advice from Jen, my good friend who knits. The response Jen gave me the most was “there is no wrong way to knit.”

Not long after my last post, having completed dozens of what should have been identical rows, I decided to count my stitches to make sure I was still on the right track. I discovered I had several stitches too many on one arm. I put the sweater down for a moment and really thought about my options. It would have been impractical to try to count every stitch in every row until I figured out where the stitches got added. I was too far along to pull everything out and start over. I decided to just keep going, decreasing my stitches over the next few rows until I was back to the right number.

I texted Jen and said “remember when you told me there was no wrong way to knit? Challenge accepted. Here’s what happened …” Her first response was “LOL.” Then after a few moments of typing bubbles at the bottom of my messages, she sent, “you didn’t knit wrong. You Leveled Up. That is exactly what a knitter who has knitted for years would have done.”

Whoa. The sense of relief I felt was palpable. I had accepted that, while I was going to finish the sweater, it was going to be unwearable. But Jen helped me realize it was never going to be perfect. Accepting the mistakes and working to move forward from them is just part of the process.

Have you ever felt that same panic when you realized you made a mistake? We worry that our flaws—our impatience, our hasty words, or the times we’ve simply "gotten it wrong"—render ourselves “unwearable.” We try to live perfectly, fearing that extra stitch (or stitches) will be the only thing anyone sees.

But the truth of our faith is much like Jen’s advice: there is no “wrong” way to be a child of God. We are not expected to be perfect patterns; we are created to be loved in the midst of our complexity. God doesn't wait for us to unravel our mistakes and start over before extending grace. Instead, God takes our dropped stitches, our knots, and our uneven rows, and weaves them into something complete, whole, and beautiful. Our quirks are not defects; they are the unique textures of a life lived in faith. When we stumble, we aren’t failing—we are leveling up. We are learning that grace is not about the absence of mistakes, but the courage to keep knitting forward, trusting that we are held, loved, and redeemed exactly as we are.

Yours in the Journey,
John Johns, Music Director

They say “home is where the heart is”.
But I prefer the Ram Dass quote:
“We’re all just walking each other home”.
Home in this context
contains so many layers.

It can be a geographical place.
A house.
The town we grew up in.
The place we live now.

My yoga mat feels like home,
as does my campsite
at Assateague State Park
where I make a home every summer
for three weeks in my tent.

Home also lives inside of us.
Like when we stop showing up in the world
in ways that others want us to,
and finally figure out who we are
underneath all those layers of expectations.
When we finally come home to ourselves.

Home can also be a place of belonging.
Not where we edit ourselves to fit in,
to be included in some group
we aspire to be a part of.
But the place we can show up
as we are,
with the way we dress,
or wear our hair,
with our beliefs and paradigms
about the world,
and discover we are among others
who see us,
and love what they see.
When we spend time in that community,
we often say,
“I’m at home here”.

Home can also be the place
we’re headed to,
on the other side
of this human journey.
Or the place we came from,
before we inhabited human clothes.

Home… so many layers.

I also appreciate how Ram Dass
reminds me
that while we might be pilgrims
on the way,
others around us
are also on the way.
We do not walk alone.

“We are all just walking each other home.”
Some slide up next to us
for a season on our journey.
Others walk beside us for decades,
maybe co-creating a home with us,
as we also find our way
to the home within us.
In this season,
I’m walking many paths home.
Since Dec 2022 I’ve been
living in temporary shelters.
These beautiful spaces
offered me lovely way-stations.
Peaceful.
Quiet.
Necessary.
They’ve given me time:
    ~ To discern what will,
       and will not be,
       part of my life going forward.
    ~ To release assumptions
       about my work,
       community and relationships.
    ~ To grow into new gifts,
       and practice familiar skills
       in new ways.

I’ve discovered that my life emerging from the fire
needs a very different home
than the one that burned down.
Smaller.
More intimate.
Retreaty.
A place for solitude and contemplation.
More connected to nature,
allowing me to live as close to being outside
as I possibly can.
A shelter for my soul.

My work home has also been disrupted.
Having stepped back
from the non-profit I founded 11 years ago,
and between long term church calls,
I’m listening for what comes next.

This gracious faith community at Lord of Life
has welcomed me into temporary work.
What a delight to come alongside
you beautiful pilgrims during a Sabbath season.

You have welcomed my Sunday reflections…
on Sabbath,
and how Spirit grows fruit in us
that tastes like love, peace, kindness,
gentleness, patience, and generosity.
I find myself at home with you
as we gather for worship outside
beneath the sanctuary of the trees.

This Summer I stood next to one God’s pilgrims
as she lay in a hospital bed.
A former nurse,
now the patient,
realized her body, wracked by pain
would no longer shelter her soul.
“I’m ready to go home,”
she told her daughter,
peacefully confident
of the home she was heading towards.
Her daughter,
grieving,
respectful,
and trusting her mother’s wisdom,
sang her home,
as her mother’s presence left her body,
returning to the Love,
who had birthed her into this human realm.

Like Ram Dass says,
“We are walking each other home!”

And much to my surprise,
Spirit has led me into a new kind of “home” work.
I passed my realtor exam this Summer,
and now look forward to coming alongside others
as they traverse the sacred space
between leaving one home,
and searching for another.

“We’re all just walking each other home,”
Ram Dass said.

Indeed we are.

Who and what shelters you?
What home are you walking towards in this season?
Who’s walking with you?

Shalom,
Pastor Mary

Knitting is complicated. I don't mean that it is difficult. You can pick up a pair of needles and some yarn and, with some basic instructions, make a simple swatch of knitted fabric. But sometimes things go wrong. You might poke your needles through at the wrong place and you're really not sure what you did or how to correct it. Or you set a project down and when you come back to it, you're not sure what stitches you have in front of you. Was that a purl row or a knit row? Are my stitches too loose? Too tight? Why are my fingers cramping?

An experienced knitter can often look and see exactly what has happened. To inexperienced knitters, or to people just admiring someone else's knitting, the loops coming together and looking smooth is something that seems to happen magically.

As I have stumbled through several knitting projects, I've thought about how similar knitting is to following Jesus. Some people are really good at it. Some people are just starting to take it on. For almost everyone, there is some level of mystery to it.

In knitting, one of the most frustrating things you can do is drop a stitch. If you don't catch it right away, that single missed loop can unravel all the way down your work. It feels disastrous. In our daily walk of faith, we drop stitches all the time. We lose our patience, we forget to love our neighbor, or we isolate ourselves when things get hard.

But here is the beautiful reality of God’s love: God is the Master Knitter, and God’s grace is boundless. When we make a mistake, God doesn't look at our dropped stitches, declare us ruined, and throw the whole project in the trash. Instead, with infinite patience, God meets us right where we unraveled. God gently picks up those loose loops and weaves them right back into the fabric of our lives. What we see as a glaring mistake, God is able to redeem and work into a beautiful, textured pattern.

Knitting also teaches us a profound lesson about the church. A skein of yarn is just a messy pile of string until it is intentionally looped together. A single, isolated stitch cannot keep anyone warm, but thousands of them holding onto one another can become a thick, comforting sweater or a blanket. When my own faith feels too loose or too tight, or when my hands are just too tired to keep going, I rely on the stitches right next to me to hold the tension. That is what we do for each other in community. We hold each other together when the world tries to pull us apart.

The beautiful mystery of knitting—and the mystery of following Jesus—is that we don't have to understand every complex technique to be wrapped in the final product. God's love covers us exactly as we are: imperfectly knitted, occasionally confused, yet deeply, profoundly cherished.

How can you be a stitch in community? What dropped stitches can you help to pick up?

Yours in the journey,
John

ASP Mission Trip to Knott County, Kentucky
July 12-18, 2026

“Let your hope make you glad. Be patient in time of trouble and never stop praying. Take care of God’s needy people and welcome strangers into your home.”
Romans 12:12-13

Our group of twenty-two members from Lord of Life Lutheran Church, West Chester, Ohio, received a great send-off from the congregation Sunday morning as we began the long-awaited annual mission trip to join the Appalachian Service Project (ASP), this time in Knott County, Kentucky. It was a joy to see many parents and their young adult children attending, and as the week progressed, working very diligently side by side. Some families have participated multiple times. And for some of our group it was their first time.

Listed below are LOL’s participants, followed by the number of years volunteering with ASP:
Larkyn 7
Tom (Father) 7, Megan (Daughter) 5
Rebecca (Mother) 6, Victoria (Daughter) 7
Michelle (Mother) 6, Lucas (Son) 6
    *Lucas is now on ASP’s summer staff and working in Magoffin County, KY. On his day off, he drove here to join us!
Amanda 4
Angie 4
Danielle (Mother) 3, Zach (Son) 3, Brady (Son) 4
Kevin 3
Oscar (Father) 2, Liani (Daughter) 3
Brian (Father) 2, Jack (Son) 2
Patricia 2
Michael (Husband) 1, Maxine (Wife) 1
Andy (Father) 1, Emma (Daughter) 1
Thomas 1

Besides our LOL team, members from four other states participated in this week’s service projects, making a total of 80 volunteers:
United Methodist Church, Stratford, Connecticut
United Methodist Church, Columbus & Fall River, Wisconsin
United Methodist Church, Minnetonka, Minnesota
United Methodist Church, White Plains, North Carolina
This year, 10,000 ASP volunteers have served counties in five states:
Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, Virginia and North Carolina,

Our housing was at Cordia School, Lotts Creek Community School. This was our meeting place, eating place and sleeping place. Each team was assigned a chore and these were rotated daily. Our daily routine consisted of early morning devotions and announcements, breakfast, leave for work site, eat a packed lunch on site, dinner back at the school, evening devotions, and review for the next day. At our evening meetings, songs were sung and fun games were played, as well as devotions.

At the first work site, everyone shared job duties which involved building a new handicapped ramp behind the trailer-sized home and staining the front ramp that was built last year. The couple living there had multiple health issues and they were so grateful for the help we provided. The second work site involved helping a family of four put some final touches on their home after flooding destroyed their previous home.

While chatting with one of our members Andy, he mentioned that this was his and his 14 year-old daughter's first time to volunteer with ASP. He talked about how nice it was to get acquainted with the host family and also how eye-opening it was to hear their story of the disastrous flood that resulted in their current situation. Just realizing the great needs of so many of the Appalachian people made him thankful for the opportunity to help.

It was truly a joy to be God’s hands and feet this week. We couldn’t have done it without all the support from planning teams, to leaders, to the wonderful generosity of Lord of Life.
Our team of volunteers would like to thank everyone for their prayers, support, encouragement, donations, and especially for their ice cream treats that we all enjoyed at the end of each busy work day!

Blessings,
Maxine Harris Havey

I settled into my usual spot
on the bench in the orchard.
I’d been coming here weekly
listening for the Wisdom of Creation.

This day in late Spring,
I noticed the peach tree
broken by the weight of too much fruit.
An entire limb
torn away from her trunk.
This Is what an unpruned life
looks like, I thought.
“This is what YOUR unpruned life
looks like,” Spirit confronted me.
Ouch.

The truth landed hard.
Many of the balls
I had been juggling
had begun falling from orbit.
I missed deadlines,
and double-booked myself.
Yes.
I was living an unpruned life.

The hard thing about pruning
is removing fruit very much alive….
pulling off three fruits
so the one left
can mature and ripen.
It feels brutal.

But as the peach tree instructed me,
an unpruned life
produces greater violence.

Thomas Merton’s speaks to
the violence of a busy life.
“To allow oneself to be carried away
by a multitude of conflicting concerns,
to surrender to too many demands,
to commit oneself to too many projects,
to want to help everyone in everything,
is to succumb to violence.
The frenzy of our activism
neutralizes our work for peace.
It destroys our own inner capacity for peace.
It destroys the fruitfulness of our own work,
because it kills the root of inner wisdom
which makes work fruitful.”

It took witnessing the violence
of the unpruned peach tree
to notice the cost
of my frenetic busyness:
the frustration of friends and colleagues
asked to reschedule time with me
because I had not kept track
of my commitments.
The impact of missing deadlines
on those waiting
to publish the newsletter,
or submit a grant proposal.

My unpruned life,
inflicted violence.

But what to prune?

“Notice what gives you life,
and what takes life from you,”
Spirit counseled.

Like the suckers growing
from the base of the tree,
these are the first things
to be pruned.

What sucked the energy
from my days?

I knew.
But pruning these would disappoint people.
So I had refrained.
The missing limb on the peach tree, though,
motivated me to release commitments
or look for new leaders.

After noticing what drained me,
Spirit invited me to notice
what made me come alive.
“Prune your life down to that,”
she counseled.

This felt more brutal.
Many of my commitments
did not make my heart sing,
but they blessed others.
“But do they bless you?”
Spirit persisted.

“Not always.
But so what?”
I pushed back.
“A faithful life
isn’t’ only about me.”

“When you spend your energy
keeping a lot of things going,
everything stays small,”
Spirit countered.
“Nothing grows into its fullness.”
You will not be able to attend to your work in the world
diluting your energy
on too many small things,
no matter how “good” they are.”

Frederik Beuchner’s words
came to mind.
“Dont ask what the world needs.
Ask what makes you come alive,
and go do it.
Because what the world needs
is people who have come alive”

Spirit challenged me
to get clear on my unique contribution.
To focus my energy there.
And to trust She would care for
what She pruned from my life.

Pruning removes all that’s not essential,
so the tree’s resources are available
to grow the most beautiful fruit.

Pruning uncomfortably grows us
into offering our best selves
to the world.

I’m grateful for the wisdom of the peach tree.
May I continue
to live into her lessons.

Shalom,
Pastor Mary Laymon