I stopped by Drug Mart on the way home yesterday and had to weave my way through the onslaught of Christmas merchandise filling the aisles already. Here we go…the biggest season for me of working on balance and priorities has begun. Don’t get me wrong, I do love Christmas, but it also adds stress to my sense of being in the world.

One Christmas, all my daughter wanted was a Barbie Train. She never really asked for much so I was determined to give her this hot item on everyone’s Christmas list. It was expensive, it took stops at several stores, and I finally found one across town (this was before online shopping). I was overjoyed that we could give her what her heart desired.

She was thrilled when she opened it, and her Barbies rode that train for several days. But after the initial glow wore off, the train was parked in the corner for weeks. When I asked her why she wasn’t playing with it anymore, she said in her sweetest 7-year-old voice, “The commercials made it look more fun than it really is.” What an astute observation for both of us. The worldly things that we think will bring us happiness, frequently don’t.

Throughout the year and especially in the holiday season, I can get caught up in materialism and expectations. I know I still battle in my head when I’m at the store or looking online. What do I really need? Is this the gift that will bring real joy? I have the money, but is this my priority? What is enough? Even setting a budget doesn’t always soothe my heart.

I try to live my life generously. I know first-hand the freedom and peace that it can bring. Using my time and treasures to help others and support organizations that do good in the world lifts my soul more than any material items. So, why do I struggle with the desire for worldly things? How about you? What are your struggles with materialism and expectations?

I will continue to pray that on my journey of faith I remember the lesson of the Barbie Train: The shiny things in the world that can suck us in usually don’t bring us the joy that we anticipate. They don’t outweigh the peace of knowing that my treasures and hopes are in Jesus alone. That joy comes from sharing our time and gifts in ways that lift others up and do good in the world. I’m praying we all enter this season grounded in the sustaining love and hope of Jesus. It will be the guiding light for our priorities.

Peace always,
Angie Seiller, Director of Faith Formation

Sometimes it is easy. It is easy to go help your best friend with a project or give them a gift when you happen upon something that reminds you of them. It is easy to care about causes that affect you, personally. It is easy to be kind with people you identify with or who you already know. It is easy to be generous with your time when you enjoy doing the activity you are being asked to perform. It is easy to spend money when we feel passionate about something we want or give to a charity we have a vested interest in supporting.

It isn’t as easy to be helpful when we aren’t feeling our best. Or to care about a cause that we are barely aware of. Or to be kind when we are angry at someone. Or give up our precious downtime when we know we aren’t going to enjoy something. Or spend our hard-earned money when we aren’t invested in the recipient.

Most of our decisions to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God aren’t even as easy to categorize as easy or hard. There is this whole grey area where we know the right thing to do, but we feel meh about it or just don’t wanna. We end up expending a bunch of energy deciding whether to spend our time, abilities, and money on something we know is good, but doesn’t make us feel anything. And each of us can only do so much with the resources we have.

So where do we put our energy?

Well, I can’t answer that for you. How we choose to spend what we have is tied to our individual core values, and those are as different for each of us as the gifts we have to share. But Jesus gives us some really helpful hints that might help us in our discernment.

First, he tells each of us to love your neighbor as yourself. He didn’t say, "Love your neighbor who looks like you, thinks like you, or gives you good vibes." This immediately pulls us out of that 'easy' zone and challenges us to look beyond our immediate comfort. It means being kind to the coworker who always annoys you, or donating to a disaster relief effort on a continent you'll likely never visit. It pushes us toward the uncomfortable good.

Second, Jesus models a focus on the marginalized and the unseen. He didn't just spend time with his friends; he sought out the sick, the poor, the outcast, and the people society actively avoided. This is perhaps the greatest litmus test for that "meh" feeling. When you’re faced with an opportunity to do good, ask yourself: "Who benefits if I say 'yes,' and is that person or cause being overlooked by everyone else?" If it's a cause that doesn't affect your community directly, or a person who can offer you nothing in return—that's often where the truest kind of love is required. That’s where you have to rely on your values, not your feelings.

The goal isn't to make every single decision a painful sacrifice. That’s a recipe for burnout, not justice. The goal is to consistently shift our baseline of "easy" and "hard" so that the 'meh' decisions start leaning toward generosity.

Think of it like spiritual weightlifting. We start by being generous when it’s easy. Then, we intentionally step into that grey area and push ourselves to do one small, good thing that we really don't feel like doing. Maybe it’s an extra $5 to a random charity, spending an hour helping with a thankless task, or genuinely listening to a viewpoint you disagree with.

We are all limited, but we are also all called. Instead of letting that 'meh' feeling paralyze you, let Jesus’s model be your simple, witty guiding principle: Go where the love is needed, not where the love is easy. Do that enough times, and you might find that the 'hard' becomes a little less so, and the 'meh' starts feeling a lot more like 'yes.'

Discerning with you,

John

Last summer, I spent six weeks doing some rehabilitation on my right knee. It had been pestering me every once in a while since a bicycle wreck a few years ago, but the pain and swelling increasingly grew and began to limit my mobility. A central part of my physical therapy was stretching. Working the knee, as well as the adjacent muscles and tissue, was the best path to health. I stretched to restore and strengthen. I stretched for flexibility in the future.

Micah 6:8 reminds us that the Great Physician has prescribed a series of movements to restore us to health, too. Doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with God don’t always come naturally to us, but they are the path to helping us love God and our neighbors with our whole being. The Micah mandate requires us to move, serve, and bend in ways that activate our entire being.

Part of these stretches are restorative. We all yearn for a deeper relationship with God and long to hear the Holy Spirit speaking to us, inviting us into God’s compassion even as we care for others and creation. Another part of our stretching is future focused, preparing us for where we hope to be. Flexibility in our heart and mind opens pathways for motions and activities we haven’t yet considered.

Doing justice is a stretch. It pushes us beyond a static yearning and hope. What would it look like for God to activate our hearts and minds to pray, speak, and act in the ways of justice? How can we invite and empower others to do the same?

Loving kindness is a stretch. Kindness is good, but all too often we are reluctant to fully embrace it. Imagine how we would be transformed—how the world would be changed—if we actually loved kindness! What would it look like for God to open our hearts and minds to celebrating moments of kindness?

Walking humbly with God is a stretch. When we do justice and love kindness, we begin to think that we are self-sufficient. Our hubris takes over. What would it look like for us to recognize that there are always more ways for us to stretch, learn, and grow and let curious humility lead us?

I’m grateful that Lord of Life is a healthy and resilient community and hope that stretching of the heart, soul, mind, and strength continues to be part of the rhythm of our lives together. As I look at our calendar for the coming month, there are many opportunities to stretch us. Have you considered welcoming Family Promise guests, donating food for Reach Out Lakota’s Fill the Gap, or serving at Matthew 25? How would you be stretched if you served in worship on a Sunday morning or helped with children or youth?

Looking at the proposed Mission Spending Plan for 2026, I see us positioning ourselves for a vibrant future as we consider an additional pastor, upgrade our main restrooms, care for our campus, and continue to grow our generosity in our community and around the world.

Centering ourselves in God’s promises, let’s stretch so we can be a healthy body of Christ. I pray that our lives can bring more justice, kindness, and humility to the world in Jesus’ name.

Stretching toward a future with Hope,
Pastor Lowell Michelson

Be sure to join us for Celebration Sunday – November 16! We’ll give thanks for where we’ve been in 2025 and gear up for 2026 as we select new leaders, vote for our 2026 Mission Spending Plan, and share a meal together.

While working as the director of a preschool, I would get kids out of the car for morning drop-off. Many times, even before saying hello, their first comment to me, as they beamed with excitement, would be “look at my new shoes” or they would just wiggle them in my face until I noticed. Above all other pieces of clothing, shoes were the biggest thing to show off. As a teacher, I then had to walk the balance of meeting their happiness without emphasizing that their self-worth was tied to something new and shiny.

This past month, we encountered a young man who was attending a self-help program at Lord of Life. He had hopes for a new start in life and was lamenting that he couldn’t afford a pair of work shoes that were critical to getting started at his new job. In addition, we had an unhoused person who came to LOL looking for assistance. The blue barrel overflowing with shoes gave hope to both. Digging through the shoes, we found a pair that could minimally be called work shoes that didn’t quite fit, but the young man was thrilled with the find. Unfortunately, even though our mound of shoes was huge, we were unable to find a pair that fit the other person. However, we were able to assist him in securing a place to sleep for a night and provided some additional monetary and food help.

The pile of shoes that we recently gathered as part of The Faith Alliance collection has been a reminder of how critical shoes can be both physically and metaphorically in acting justly, loving kindness, and walking humbly with God (Micah 6:8). They can provide dignity, protection, comfort, and even joy to youth and “God moments” to others in our community who feel the crushing stigma of poverty and hopelessness with insurmountable circumstances in their daily lives. A new pair of shoes and people who recognize their humanity can lead to confidence, hope, and a new lease on life.

This fall has been incredibly busy at LOL with us stretching ourselves to live generously and working together for the good of the community. I pray that the huge pile of shoes will stay in our memory as a reminder of the goodness we can do together with God’s help and guidance. Or that each time we look at our own shoes or our well-stocked closet, we can find empathy, kindness, and generous hearts for others who find themselves without the dignity, comfort, and peace that even one pair of shoes can bring.

Where is God leading you next to act justly, love kindness, and walk humbly with God? How can we support each other in being the heart and “sole” to uplift others up as the constant love of Jesus Christ lifts and sustains us daily?

Walking with you in God’s grace and peace,
Angie Seiller, Director of Faith Formation

P.S. We collected 182 pairs of shoes to add to the other 416 collected by the other churches in Faith Alliance for a total of 598 pairs! A generous donor also pledged $5/pair (up to $2500) for even more new shoe purchases!

With temperatures dropping, I’ve enjoyed spending time in my garden the last couple weeks. I’ve reshaped some flower beds, gotten rid of weeds that have crept in over the last year, and planted a bunch of new flowers for the bees, hummingbirds, and butterflies that come to visit.

If you’ve gardened in southwest Ohio, you know that as soon as your shovel gets through the first couple inches of soil, you hit clay, which is the result of thousands of years of glacial movement leaving fine silt behind. My trowel hits the clay with a dull thud, and I pry up a shovelful of thick, goopy, yellow mess that doesn’t drain and won’t provide the right nutrients for the plants I want in my garden. So I’ve spent countless hours digging out and amending my garden beds to make them more hospitable for the ecosystem I want to create in my yard.

Of course, while I’m toiling away in the dirt, my mind is wandering and eventually it presents to me this quandary: Over and over again in scripture, we’re reminded not to focus on earthly things; that we should set our minds to things of heaven.

Well, shoot. I really like my garden. Am I supposed to let the weeds take over and not worry about keeping it nice? The township might have an issue if I let it get overgrown. I continued to dig in the dirt while I pondered my spiritual dilemma. This great weather won’t last forever.

My train of thought led me to some deep truths about how some Christians interpret the Bible. There are groups of people who are really focused on heaven and how to get there. These “salvation at all costs” folks are quick to identify sins in others and either try to help them “see the light” or cast them out of their social circles for being sinners. This is not what Jesus meant when he said to focus on heavenly things. As a matter of fact, he was pretty specific about loving everybody, whether they are sinners or not; whether they are “unclean” or not. He didn’t say to love them “as long as they start acting the way I think they should.”

We’re left with a Gospel that asks us to bring the joy of salvation here, on earth, in the present. “On earth as it is in heaven,” right? It seems like a big task. With so many difficult things going on in the world, how can any of us make a difference? In my garden, I have added nutrients and organic matter to the clay slowly over years to make it better for my plants to thrive. In our lives, we can strive to be the loving, healthy space for other people to live and grow. That’s how we can focus on heavenly things while maintaining our connection to the physical world.

What are some ways you can bring the joy of God’s love to other people and creation?

Blessings, 
John Johns, Music Director

“God only gives you as much as you can handle.”

Growing up, I heard this phrase more times than I could count. I would get stressed and overwhelmed about all the things happening in life, and my mom would always say, “God only gives you as much as you can handle.”

Last week had been a hectic week with a sick kid, my new administrator training, family visiting, a friend in need, what felt like one million activities for my three daughters, a surprise 2-hour delay of school, two upcoming preschool field trips, and, to top it off, my husband was on another work trip. I was sitting at gymnastics watching my younger two girls practice while helping my older daughter with homework while simultaneously trying to respond to a parent email. That’s when THE TEXT came: My husband's flight was delayed AGAIN, and he now would be staying in an airport hotel overnight. I quickly switched tabs on my computer to look at our family calendar for Friday. I now have to figure out how to get my middle daughter to school, my oldest to a doctor appointment, and my youngest to school at the exact same time. Not to mention that we now have two teachers out sick, so I will need to be substituting also at the same time. Thoughts are racing in my head when my oldest daughter says, “Don’t forget that tonight we need to get my costume together for the school walkathon tomorrow” (which is something one of us parents always stops in to watch). Then, the next text that comes in tells me that my after-school care plan for my youngest has fallen through. Now my phone dings again. It’s my husband reminding me our van is done at the shop, and it has to be picked up and the rental car dropped off by 5 p.m. tomorrow. Slowly but surely, I felt like I was melting into a puddle in the lobby of the gymnastics center.

After taking a deep breath, I reached out to a few friends, fixed my transportation woes, and moved the doctors appointment. I crossed my fingers that my husband's plane would land in time for him to visit at least one of the girls at the walkathon while planning how I might squeeze in a visit to the other. I went to bed stressed and overwhelmed with what felt like a neverending week but said to myself, “God only gives you as much as you can handle.” In the morning, I got all the girls on their way and rushed to work only to realize I had forgotten my coffee. I ran to the library to use the Keurig before heading into the classroom. I started to make my coffee when someone needed me. I took care of the need and headed back to pour the water into the Keurig. As I poured the cup of water in the machine, the water began overflowing everywhere. As you can guess, I had already filled the water reservoir on my first attempt to rectify the no caffeine situation. I was frantically cleaning up the spilled water when I stopped and said, “Okay, God, I hear you. Are you saying you sometimes give me more than I can handle? Sometimes, life’s stressors will overflow?”

I think that is exactly what God was telling me. After a short google search, I found that the saying “God gives you as much as you can handle” comes from 1 Corinthians 10:13: “No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.” Meaning yes, God will give me more than I can handle, but with him, I will find the strength to endure and get through anything that may come my way. Now I lead into this week with a new mantra: “God doesn’t give us what we can handle. God helps us handle what we are given.”

Getting my strength from God,
Nicole Wells