There weren’t many bugs in Greece. I didn’t notice right away, but after we remained unpestered during the fourth meal we ate outside, I realized that at home, I would have been swatting away gnats or flies. That’s why it was so surprising when we were coming down the mountain at Delphi to see a little girl squatting on the ground, blocking the narrow path, trying to corral a ladybug.

Her mom was being so patient. We were surrounded by ancient history - the Temple of Apollo, the seat of the Delphic Oracle, the stadium where the Pythian Games were held, the Athenian Treasury, a theatre that accommodated 5,000 spectators, and countless other relics - and this five-year-old child was blind to everything but the bug taking its time getting across the stepping stones. I would have been beside myself trying to get this child to look up from her beetle obsession to see the ancient history around her. But then what?

If mom had dragged her away from the ladybug without any sort of conversation or transition, what the girl would have remembered was her disappointment, and maybe a meltdown. The rest of the visit might have been lost to her. All she would remember about visiting Delphi was that it wasn’t any fun and she wasn’t allowed to see what she wanted.

We see this "ladybug logic" in our churches every Sunday. People walk through our doors carrying their own versions of that beetle. Maybe they are hyper-focused on a minor grievance, a specific social program, or even just the comfort of a familiar seat. From a "big picture" perspective, we might want to shout, "Don’t you see? The Creator of the Universe is here! Why are you worried about the carpet color or the length of the announcements?"

But if we force their heads up before they are ready, we risk losing them entirely. Like the patient mother at Delphi, we have to meet people where they are. If someone is fixated on a "ladybug," it’s often because that is the only thing they feel they can control in a world that feels as massive and overwhelming as those Grecian ruins. To help them see the Temple of Apollo, we first have to acknowledge the beauty of the bug they’re watching.

This patience shouldn't stop at the church foyer. When we interact with the world around us, it’s easy to get frustrated by people who seem "blind" to the spiritual significance of life. We see neighbors and coworkers consumed by temporary stressors—the "bugs" of politics, career ladders, or material gain—while the eternal landscape remains ignored.

Our instinct is often to lecture or pull them toward "what really matters." But true ministry looks a lot like squatting down on a dusty path. It’s about building a bridge of empathy. When we show interest in what they care about—no matter how small it seems to us—we earn the right to eventually say, "Hey, when you're ready, take a look at the view from here. It’s incredible."

In the end, the goal isn't just to get people to see the ruins; it's to make sure they enjoy the journey enough to want to stay. What are your ladybugs? How do you think you might get others to look up from their ladybugs to see God’s love around them?

On the journey with you,
John Johns, Music Director

It was wonderful to be with you one final Sunday, as I complete my season at Lord of Life. I look forward to joining you for two weeks later this summer, near the end of Pastor Lowell’s sabbatical. I know you will be in excellent hands as Pastor Mary cares for you and you for her.

I want to extend a heartfelt word of thanks to the Lord of Life community. I began my time with you in October, having one of the most abrupt and unexpected employment transitions of my career. I was uncertain what the future held, had a mix of grief and anxiety, and wondered what future work or ministry may look like. And you provided a soft, spirit filled place to land. With kindness, support and words of encouragement, you fully welcomed me into the community. I feel a deep kinship to you all and will have a long-standing spiritual connection to Lord of Life for years to come. I look forward to visiting you in the future and keeping you close as a prayer partner on my faith journey.

As I depart in this season, I want to offer you words of hope and encouragement: Keep being the Church!

Through your weekly worship, fellowship, education, and service to the community, you encompass what it means to love our neighbors. This was evident the first time I walked through the doors, and every week since. You know who you are because you know WHOSE you are. The reason we gather is to proclaim Christ crucified and Risen for the sake of the world. We gather to be refreshed and renewed and to go forth in service to others. I have rarely seen a community so centered and committed to this mission.

In our time together, you have reaffirmed my calling, showed God’s love, and offered joy and laughter week after week. Our world needs you and your faith.

Following Jesus, being a disciple, and living in community doesn’t mean everything is smooth, that we’ll never have tension and that we’ll always get along. Discipleship means we have to find courage to speak against oppression, against idolatry, and to turn to the early church for comfort and inspiration. To know there are people who went before us and experienced hardships—people like Stephen, the first martyr, whom we read about in this week’s scripture (Acts 7:55-60). People like the freedom fighters of the 1960s. Women who sought the right to vote and to be pastors and proclaim the Word.

The path of discipleship is not always an easy one. And that’s why communities like Lord of Life are so essential. It’s through places like this gathering, breaking bread, serving, laughing, and living in community, that we have the courage to speak truth in these times. So keep being community. Keep asking hard questions. Keep loving your neighbor and advocating for the immigrant, for the LGBTQIA+, for ALL children of God who need YOU in this world. Keep being the living Body of Christ.

Until we meet again…
Pastor Tracy Paschke-Johannes

Two continents. Two countries. Nine cities. Thousands of miles. How do I begin to summarize an epic pilgrimage to Greece and Turkey in a short blog reflection? Since I’m a geek who loves to dwell on the parts that some people might find boring, I’ve decided to focus on Plato. If you were on the trip with us, you might be scratching your head. Did anyone mention Plato the entire time we were touring the ancient cities? Not as much as I would have liked. And here’s why: to follow the "Footsteps of Paul" is to realize that the Apostle didn’t walk alone. Long before he stepped onto the dusty roads of Greece, the groundwork for the Gospel was being laid by the giants of human thought. Our journey wasn’t just about the geography of our travels, but about a long, divine conversation between the mind and the soul.

While many of the sites we visited didn’t have a direct "Paul slept here" sign, they resonated with the echoes of the men who tilled the soil of the Western mind. In Athens, we were surrounded by the legacy of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. These men weren’t Christians, yet they spent their lives seeking "The Good," "The True," and "The Beautiful."

The rise of the early Church was possible because these philosophers had already challenged the world to look beyond clay idols and toward a higher, singular reality. They created the vocabulary of the soul. They were the "silent preachers" who prepared the world to finally hear the message of the Logos - the Word.

This connection hit home most powerfully at Mars Hill, where Paul pointed to their own altar to an “Unknown God” to reveal the One the Jews had known for generations. Two thousand years later, it’s hard to see it as much more than natural rock formation. Its edges have been smoothed by foot traffic and now it is a slippery and treacherous climb. Back then, it was a bustling center for Greek thought. Like the rock, the path of human logic is slick and precarious until faith gives us a place to stand, and Paul was the ultimate bridge-builder. He stood in the shadow of the Parthenon—the pinnacle of Greek reason—and didn’t tell the crowd they were wrong to seek truth. Instead, he told them that the Truth they had been searching for through logic had finally become a person.

At places like Thessaloniki and Corinth, Paul spoke to people who were already asking the "big questions" posed by the philosophers. He was taking the skeletal frame of Greek logic and putting the flesh and blood of Christ upon it.

Our final stop was Istanbul. While It is difficult to find a direct connection to Paul here, it felt like the natural conclusion to this intellectual and spiritual arc. While Paul knew it as Byzantium, it eventually became Constantinople—the capital of the empire that codified the very doctrines Paul pioneered in his letters. Istanbul sits at the crossroads of Europe and the Muslim world, and it was here that the Logos was kept alive. While the West entered what we think of as the Dark Ages, it was the thinkers in this region who preserved the works of Aristotle and Plato.

Walking through the Hagia Sophia, I was struck by how the "seeds" of Greek thought didn’t just grow into the Christian Church, but also nourished the Islamic Golden Age. The same logic Paul used to explain Christ was later used by Muslim scholars to understand the nature of God. Istanbul is a living testament to the fact that we are all, in some way, traveling in the same footsteps, looking for the Truth.

This trip challenged me to look at my own faith through a wider lens. It asks us to consider: Are we willing to see God’s hand in the "secular" world around us? In the faiths of others?

Just as Paul used the philosophy of his day to reach the hearts of his neighbors, we are invited to find the divine threads in our own culture. The road of the seeker is long, and it is paved with the thoughts of those who came before us. Whether through the logic of a philosopher or the devotion of a saint, may we all find our way to the "Unknown God" who has made Himself known.

Yours in the Word,
John Johns, Music Director

“I thought this was a ‘Footsteps of St. Paul’ pilgrimage, but we’ve only taken one step with Paul.”

A group of 35 of us have been island hopping for the last several days throughout the Aegean Sea as part of a pilgrimage through Greece and Turkey. Please visit the Lord of Life Facebook and Instagram social media pages if you would like to follow our travels.

We started in Athens and Corinth, focusing on the places and ways Paul interacted with the various communities, but then pushed off for several days away from the mainland. The Apostle Paul never made it to the islands of Mykonos and Santorini, as far as we know, but the Christian faith has taken deep roots here. His life and legacy made a profound difference here. 97% of Greece is Orthodox Christian.

Throughout the centuries, Paul’s message of forgiveness, redemption, and hope took root in communities and spread as other missionaries shared the news of the One risen from the dead, as well as those sharing stories through commerce, immigration, and other means of connection.

In the coming days, our tour will take us deep into the places that Paul visited on his second missionary journey, including Thessaloniki, Berea, and Philippi.

The work that he did there planting seeds of faith through conversation, teaching, and common labor with others transformed people and communities in Jesus’ name.

As we travel and think about Paul’s ministry, I’m reminded of the Parable of the Sower from Matthew 13. It is a powerful story about a farmer who tossed seeds everywhere they went. Some landed on the path, on the rocky ground, among the thorns, and on the good soil. Not all of the seeds survived. Some were gobbled up, blew away, or were choked by thorns. But some took root and thrived!

Musician David Scherer (AKA Agape) embraces a different metaphor and encourages us to “sprinkle sunshine.” All the time, everywhere we go, God calls us to sprinkle sunshine. On the good days, sprinkle sunshine. On the challenging days, sprinkle sunshine. In our sorrow and in our joy, sprinkle sunshine. We can’t control where it will land, how it will be received, or the impact it will make, but we pray and trust that God will use it to change the world.

Whether we are at the locations of the Apostle Paul’s speeches and ministry or on the other side of the world in Ohio, I’m grateful for the countless ways that God continues to use us to sprinkle sunshine into the world. May God work through us in mighty and powerful ways to all yearning for hope and peace.

Wishing you Peace on your journey!
Pastor Lowell Michelson

Have you ever been on a trip without a destination? Have you had to do something you had never tried before? Have you ever gone on vacation without a set itinerary before you left?

When I moved to Cincinnati almost two years ago, I had very little semblance of a plan. My new husband was finishing a degree at the University of Cincinnati and I chose to move down here to support him and for us to start our life together. I didn’t have a job lined up or a community to jump into. All I knew was that I was leaving the places I loved, my friends from all different stages of life, my family, a job I loved, and a church that had become so important to me. What a hard pill to swallow. During this time of immense grief, the Lord spoke to me so clearly through scripture. The same passage kept popping up in my life over and over again from various people and sources: Hebrews 11.

“By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.” – Hebrews 11:8

Abraham was called by God, which means he was given an invitation by the Lord to do something spiritually significant.

I knew that God had called me to move to Cincinnati. I didn’t know why or how it would work out, but I knew I had to go. As much as I have loved being here in Cincinnati and at Lord of Life, I know that God is now calling me and my husband to move back to Northwest Ohio, even though we don’t know exactly where that will be or what we will be doing when we get there.

My encouragement for you is to go where God calls you, even when you don’t know the destination. Do what God is nudging you to do, even when you aren’t sure how the situation will turn out.

Hebrews 11:1 says, “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” By faith and only through faith in God, we are able to do, survive, and endure things that seem impossible.

Maybe you’ve already surrendered your plans to God, but you still don’t know how the situation is going to turn out. A dear friend once told me that God showing us only the next step is one of his greatest mercies. Psalm 119:105 tells us, “Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path.” Notice how it’s not an overhead light or a bright headlight, but a lamp. A lamp won’t light the entire path, but it will illuminate the next little section for you to walk through. If God showed me the whole big picture, I know I wouldn’t follow through. He is so gracious to show me a little bit at a time and lead me gently into what’s next.

Even though he did not know where he was going, Abraham obeyed and went. Is there somewhere God is calling you to go or something He is calling you to do? Are you excited? Hesitant? How can you use this calling to strengthen your faith?

Going without knowing,
Maddie Pease, Office Manager

Expect the unexpected.

On April 9, 25 of us from Lord of Life will join 10 others from Epiphany Lutheran Church in Dayton to embark on a Footsteps of St. Paul Pilgrimage through Greece and Turkey, visiting many of the biblical sites where Paul and others preached, taught, and lived during his missionary journeys. Part of our trip was going to take us via ship across the Aegean Sea to Ephesus, Mykonos, Patmos, Santorini, and other island excursions. Not anymore.

Tony Abuaita of Good Shepherd Travel recently received news that our ship, along with others from the cruise line, are stuck in the Arabian Peninsula after the winter cruising season in that region. From the cruise line: “In light of the ongoing situation in the Middle East, which has resulted in a delay to safely reposition our ships back to the Mediterranean, we would like to inform you that, following careful consideration, we will be cancelling all departures scheduled for April 2026.”

Our travelers have been talking about expecting the unexpected on our pilgrimage and the importance of flexibility, especially as we travel in a large group, but we had hoped there wouldn’t be such a major shift in our schedule so soon. Good Shepherd Travel is exploring other options for our canceled days at sea.

This isn’t the first time any of us have had to adapt to the unexpected. Each day, all of us begin with certain hopes and expectations that morph and shift in response to whatever the day brings. A flat tire, a detour, a cancelled appointment, a flooded basement, and other inconveniences disrupt many of our lives. A little pivot here and there might be aggravating, but they don’t usually dismantle our lives.

Other unexpected moments do. A fatal car crash, house fire, declaring bankruptcy, or being fired unexpectedly flip our lives upside down. We wonder how we’ll ever get past a terrible season.

As we move through this Holy Week, I wonder how the disciples and other followers of Jesus managed the unexpected events of those strange days. The palm procession, the foot washing and giving of a new commandment to “love one another,” the betrayal and arrest in Gethsemane, the accusations and beatings, the violence of the parade to Golgotha followed by the unthinkable crucifixion. None of them could’ve expected that the week would take such a dark and tragic turn.

They also could never have expected what would happen on Easter morning. Resurrection. New life. Hope and promise beyond the grave. Jesus spoke with them and once again promised to be with them forever.

As we hear these stories again this Holy Week, they remind us that no matter what life throws at us and no matter how the evil swirls around us and masks any sign of relief, the power and light of God continues to vanquish the darkness and radiates resurrection hope into all the dead and dying places of the world.

This is a message for you. This is a message for all. In a world full of expectations and unexpected moments, let us sing, pray, speak, and live like we expect Jesus to show up.

Living in Hope,
Pastor Lowell Michelson