The Joshua Victor Theory

April 12, 2020 Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! Amen! Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed! Alleluia! Greetings to my Emmanuel Lu- theran Ohana! I wanted to begin with a personal greeting to you all. It was just about a year ago that I came home for a brief visit to my family after Chaplain School, and preached for you on Palm Sunday. The past year has flown by with my deployment in Afghanistan, and now I am nearly home. As I am writing this, now on Easter Sunday evening, I am at Fort Bliss, TX, having completed my quarantine and getting ready to do the last couple of days of out processing tasks. I should be back on Maui before the end of the week! I look forward to seeing you all soon, though I still will have to complete another state ordered quarantine on return to Maui, but that at least will be in my home. This Easter Sunday is unlike any in our recent memory, as for the first time that most (all?) of us can reme...

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. Did you notice in our Gospel reading, that everything was calm and fine before Jesus and His disciples entered into the fishing boat, to cross the Sea of Galilee? Jesus was leading them into the storm. It reminds me of how the Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness after His baptism, to be tempted. Undoubtedly Jesus did so for this reason—to test their faith, and show them who He was in a yet more marvelous way. Do we acknowledge that God may intentionally lead us into some rough sailing, some real, humbling difficulties in life? Not because He wants to harm us, or even that everything has a hidden “life-lesson”, but that God in His own mysterious ways, has crosses for us to bear, and wants us to lean completely on Him? If Jesus lead them into the storm, you see there is no promise or guarantee that we will be spared the storms and dangers of life, or even that we will be rescued f...