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  • Welcome
  • Worship
    • What to Expect
    • Worship Video
    • Sermon Podcast
    • Return to In Person Worship
  • Good News
    • Worship video
    • Pastor's Reflections & Various Sermons
    • Contemplative Sit
    • Bible study
  • Facebook Page
  • This Month
    • This Week
    • Subscribe
  • Give
    • Give Now
    • Listen, God is Calling
    • Thank you!
  • Contact Us

Pastor's Reflections & Various Sermons

Monthly faith reflections and other ponderings and sermons from the pastor.

Abide is a Verb

4/29/2020

 
In the early 1990s, when I was at peak coolness, the Christian rap and hop-hop group DC Talk dropped their hit song, “Luv Is A Verb.” I listened on cassette, so I speak with authority: love is a verb, not a feeling.
Hope is also a verb. So is abide.

As Susannah can tell you, verbs are action words. But abide may seem like one of the least verby verbs. For me, abide’s action has much to do with stillness, silence, and solitude. For the Gospel of John, abide has much to do with obedience—obeying Jesus, imitating Jesus. 

There is a give and a take to abiding in Jesus. I know by experience that stillness, silence, and solitude with Jesus make it possible to obey and imitate Jesus. Apparently, this is exactly what Jesus meant when he said, “Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.”
“Words come easy but don't mean much,” sang DC Talk.
​
No matter when we get to worship in person again, every day we get to make abide mean everything. Abiding in God and God abiding in him made Jesus the Christ. Abiding in death, Christ brings life. Go and do likewise.
Thanks be to God.
Pastor Clark Olson-Smith

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563-242-4102
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St. Paul is a congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Southeastern Iowa Synod.
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715 South Third Street, Clinton, IA  52732

at the foot of the south bridge
Photo from frankieleon