Today is Pentecost Sunday, the day the Holy Spirit descended on the Disciples, converting thousands and creating the fledgling Christian Church.

          This is also Memorial Day weekend, a time to remember life with all its frailties and joys.  Tomorrow all across America, people in cities and small towns will watch the local parade with relatives and friends.  They'll gather at the city cemetery to hear their school marching band play "America the Beautiful" in formation around the war memorial.  And at the appointed time some chosen youth, fearful and trembling, will step forward and recite, "Four Score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."  I was in the tenth grade when I recited Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.

          Then another chosen youth, perhaps a girl this year, will step forward, raise her trumpet and play "Taps" and tears will flow.  Another bugler will echo "Taps" from a distant tree, and then six over-sized men in badly fitting military uniforms will lurch forward, raise their rifles and fire three volleys into a distant tree.  Children will cry, Grandma will feel faint, but others will wonder if that was the tree where the bugler was.  And afterwards, people will walk around and look at the graves of the old ones, the fallen ones, friends and relatives at rest now.  Then they'll go home, light the grill, and stand around in shorts as they grill hamburgers, maybe drink a beer and tell their stories.  It's Memorial Day, a time to remember life.

          Life is wonderful.  It's a gift.  On this weekend I always think of the old ones and all the memories I have experienced with them.  Of my parents' generation, the eight in my mother's family and the nine in my father's, only Aunt Grace is left.  Now my generation is considered "old", and I wonder if we have left behind good memories like I have of when I was a child.

          Allow me a moment to remember my family.  There was Uncle Bill, single and mysterious, traveller, hunter and philosopher; Uncle Ernest and his huge family of eleven, always on the edge of poverty; Uncle Karl, a genius who died young; Aunt Marie, single nurse for 52 years; Aunt Emma, demanding yet gentle housekeeper for Great Uncle Theo; Uncle Jack, owner of 100 school busses; Irish Uncle John whose whisper could be heard across the street; Aunt Catherine, social gossiper; Uncle Paul, withdrawn to quietude by a harping wife; Aunt Lil and Uncle Francis who had the courage to live outside the borders of Minnesota or Iowa.  Mother and father were the best of the bunch, by far.  And there were the distant relatives, all German, all slightly odd and boisterous, a bit eccentric yet always kind.  All were Lutherans, and even those who hadn't had Lutheran leanings.

          Life is precious, even though many today have made it cheap, and even try to extinguish it in ways not considered right.  Abortion and euthanasia are no longer unthinkable.  To many they are already acceptable and moving towards preferable.  God's Word encourages us to value human life, our most precious earthly gift from God.  My fervent prayer is that mankind will cease playing God, whether through laws or science.  God is God, we are not, and that's the truth.

          We have become a generation of idol worshippers.  Whether our idols are possessions or pleasure, whether it is religious fanaticism or secular humanism, whether it's the newest American Idol from Hollywood or the oldest idols of human nature, we bow down and pay homage to humanity's fickle notions.  God's truth is regularly exchanged for our latest fancies.

          Christ came to forgive the sins of us all -- all sins by all kinds of people, my sins and yours.  However we may feel about what is happening in Iraq or Washington, we must pay heed to the truth - God's truth from His Holy Word.  This is the truth that Christ died for us on Calvary, and that He rose again from the dead, the Son of God and Savior of the world.  And only by trusting Him completely can we have eternal life after this earthly life.

          David speaks of human life in Psalm 139 (p. 445).  His words express how I feel about human life.  I like his word pictures - "You knit me together in my mother's womb... I was woven together... My frame was not hidden from you... You saw my unformed body."  God is the weaver of life.  He knows anatomy.  He wrote the book!

          A weaver takes thread and makes it into cloth.  He makes a beautiful rug from old rags.  He sits at His loom with thousands of strings, and passes the shuttle back and forth, introducing new colors and designs into the wharp and the woof.  He gives us precious life, and then we shape it by what we do.  There are good times with the threads of gold or red, and there are the normal times of browns and grays.  Sometimes sorrow creeps in with its black threads.

          But whatever the pattern of our life, God is the Weaver.  We may choose colors, but He puts them together, a body and a personality, if we're a male or female, with blue eyes, or are left-handed, or short or blond, with big feet or with a soprano voice.

          But God doesn't stop with our body.  He gives us a unique personality.  Our personalities can be similar, but we're all still different.  Some of us are like lions who take charge.  Others are like golden retrievers, kind and gentle.  Some are carefree and playful like otters, and still others are busy beavers, always doing things carefully and right.  God, our Wonderful Weaver, makes us all different.  That's what makes life such a blessing, and often such a challenge.

          But there's one more ingredient in the pattern we can't forget - sin.  Sin is not just a different thread - it's foreign thread.  Sin is the gum in the hair, the fly in the milk, and the doggy-doo on the shoe.  It stains and ruins the pattern.  It's out of place, and it destroys everything.

          Sin doesn't belong in our life and God didn't put it there.  Our parents passed on to us Original Sin, a part of the mess, but you and I are still responsible to clean it up.  Yet therein lies a problem.  There's not a brush or a solvent strong enough to remove sin.  We can't fix it by ourselves.

          Sin is always with us, and only God can remove it.  In faith we must humbly ask Him to.  When we do, He forgives us and cleanses us.  Sin will show up again, like spaghetti sauce on your white shirt or grass stains on your knee.  But He's there to forgive again.  That's why we need God all the time.  There's never a moment when we don't need God's forgiveness.

          Sin shows its worst in our pride.  Pride shows up everywhere, whether obviously like when we make fun of people or subtly when we just ignore them.  Pride is behind world wars and behind family wars.  Pride moves people to mock and to ridicule, to hurt and to scorn.  It moves us to abuse and to kill.  The sin of pride is behind all attempts to get rid of people we don't want, whether it's six million Jews or sixty million unborn children.  Pride moves us to act like God.

          If you think of it, baby Jesus was not convenient.  He was not planned.  By some in Mary's family, He was surely unwanted.  He rudely interrupted plans, sullied reputations and could have ruined careers.  And yet God had a plan for this "unwanted" one.  Jesus went through much of His ministry unwanted by the religious authorities who finally got rid of Him - or so they thought.

          Jesus is the Son of God, the only Way to heaven.  He was hated by those of His day who didn't want to hear Truth.  But Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  On Calvary He laid down His Life for us and on Easter Sunday He took it back again.  Because He did, all who trust Him for life are made right with the Father.

          You and I are God's people, created in His image.  Our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit.  By God's grace we've been given a life to live.  The world doesn't owe us a living.  You and I are alive in an amazing moment of history.  Think of all the advances we've come to depend on - travel, information, medicine, communication, comforts of living.  What are we going to do to repay God for the amazing life He's has given us?  What can we do to make the world better?  What are we giving back for all we've been given?  We all must give something back, not just keep taking.  Our life is God's gift to us; what we do with it is our gift to Him.

          "I praise You, O God, because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful."  Praising God involves more than words.  It means sharing the hope we have.  It means sharing our hope with those who've lost hope.  It means sharing truth with those who have reinvented it.  We must stand for the truth, yet do so with love, and in so doing give people hope.

          God is our Wonderful Weaver.  He weaves the threads into a pattern that we might not choose, but one that's best for us.  We don't always understand where He's going with His pattern.  There are two sides to every weaving, the upper side with its delicate design and the under side with its random strings.  There's a poem that helps us understand how God works in our life.

          The underside of life's pattern will not always make sense.  One day God will unroll your canvas and show you what it all means.  This Memorial Day let's remember whose we are - we're children of the King!  Let's thank God for life and for all who've gone before us.  "I praise You, O God, because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful, and I know that full well."  Amen!

Copyright © 2004 by Pastor Bob Tasler.  All rights reserved.