Bungee Cord 5-23-16

Hello,

    I will always remember the first time that I read Romans 5:1-5.  It was my sophomore year in college.

     College, for me, was a well agitated mixture of delight and drudgery.  As I spread my wings on my maiden voyage into adulthood there were times that I felt myself soaring, and there were times that I found myself flapping away and going nowhere, loosing altitude fast.

     It was on one such altitude plunging days that I was sitting at my desk in my fraternity (Beta Sigma Psi….a national fraternity for Lutheran gentlemen).  Don’t know what it was that caused the drop, probably nothing uncommon to the average college experience.

     A knock on my door.  It was Vince, a fraternity friend that was known for being one of few words.  He walked into my room and said, “Read this,” and he set a torn corner of a piece of paper on my desk with “Romans 5:1-5” written on it.

     A little biography of Vince.  Vince was a year older than me.  He had the stocky and muscular build of a high school fullback.  He had perfect hair for those days, a huge natural “fro” of blond hair.  He had grown up in Rockford, Illinois, ninety miles away from the Chicago suburb in which I grew up.  In one of those blessings that college can bring, our lives travelled the same rails for two years.  As I got to know Vince, I learned that the rails he rode before college were tough, far tougher than mine, as he lost both of his parents while he was in high school to heart attacks.  His older brother, who was a couple years older than he, became his shepherd and guide.

     It was out of that history that Vince stepped into my blue funk room.  “Read this,” he said, and placed that piece of paper on my desk with “Romans 5:1-5” on it.

     I read it, Romans 5:1-5, and from that day, those verses from Scripture have been holy words to which I have turned when life has become heavy upon my shoulders.  Although the verses on that piece of paper have stuck with me, I have to say that I have lost track of Vince.  Haven’t heard from him since college.  Don’t know where he is living.  Don’t know if he still has that envied “fro”.

     But I thank God for Vince who worked as an angel of the Lord (angel, by the way, comes from the Greek word for “messenger”).  With his few words, God’s grace took hold of me and my wings.  He was there when I needed the wisdom which he was could give with singular authority.  Who knows when you or I will find us, likewise, in Vince’s angelic shoes?

When Romans 5:1-5 was read yesterday in church, the echo of Vince’s words rang in my ears, “Read this.”

“Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, ²through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. ³And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, ⁴and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, ⁵and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” (Romans 5:1-5)

Have a great week.

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger