1705 West Broad Street
Bethlehem, PA 18018
610-867-3705
www.rosemontlutheran.com
email: info@rosemontlutheran.com
Pastor's
Message Page
L I F E :
do you have it to live or
do you have to live it?
granted. We tend to think of life as a given. It's just here.
How about you? How do you fell about your life? Is your attitude of life no so much that you have
it to live but that you have to live it? Does one day seem very much like the day that's gone before it?
Is life just a given for you?
That's how many people feel until those times in life when something happens and the awful
vulnerability of life is exposed. We see then that every moment of our life is hanging over an abyss -
an abyss of nothingness - and that it is only by a gift that each day comes to us. It is in these
moments that we realize that life is not given. Life is a gift.
In church, our place of worship, we realize, perhaps more acutely than any other place in our lives,
that life is a gift and that the gift comes from God.
Think of it as breathing. When we breathe in, we receive the very air that is a gift, and then we have
to breathe out. Over the years I have come to the conclusion that the meaning of life is to receive life
as a gift and then to offer it back as a gift. It is an important as breathing in and out. Think about
how terrible it would be if we only breathed in, if we were only on the receiving end, if we were only
takers. We would soon burst. We receive and then we give. We breathe out. We share the gift that
has been given to us.
This is truly the basis of our life, and the basis for our stewardship. If nothing else happens this Fall
during our stewardship campaign, I really want us to get the sense that life is a gift that God has
given to us.
God is with us. God is with us in our joys and sorrows. Jesus lived a life of love. He taught love.
In fact, Jesus is love. Jesus poured out his life in love and it lead him to the Cross. He has given us
his all. That God should love us to much as to give life for us -and then to give it back again - it
should take our breath away!
You and I receive life as a gift. We offer life back as a gift. Our entire program of stewardship is
based on this. Stewardships of the church, yes, but in all of life as well.
Pastor Steltzer