E. Louise Williams through writing,
teaching, retreats and spiritual companionship
encourages people to tend to their relationship with
God. She serves as executive director of the
Lutheran Deaconess Association, Valparaiso, Indiana.
She is an adjunct assistant professor of theology at
Valparaiso University and president of DIAKONIA
World Federation of Diaconal Associations and
Communities. She has served as parish deaconess in
Missouri, California, and Alberta, Canada. She grew
up on a farm near Rolla, Missouri.
“Familiarity can dull our sense of wonder.” When
Augustine wrote the words, he was pointing out that
Jesus’ miracle of changing water into wine is not
really more surprising than God’s making wine the
old fashioned way. God waters the grapes with rain
making them juicy, and the juice ferments into wine.
That’s as much a miracle, says Augustine, as what
Jesus did at the wedding of Cana. But we don’t
always notice that miracle because we are so
familiar with it. We expect it.
Sometimes, we who are active in the life of the
church hear about God’s love and forgiveness so
often that we forget how amazing it really it.
Familiarity may dull our sense of wonder. The God of
all creation accepts us and loves us just as we are.
The Holy One is always ready to welcome us home no
matter how far we have strayed or what we have done.
These devotions invite you to be amazed again at
God’s grace in which we live.
I encourage you to take a little extra time for
devotions during your meetings this year. Give
yourselves some time to use the reflection questions
as a way to remember how God’s grace has been active
in your lives individually and as a congregation.
And take time to talk with one another about
that—either in groups of two or three or all
together.
I encourage you, too, to think about how that
amazing grace of God informs and shapes what you do
during your meeting and, more importantly, in your
congregational activities.
It is amazing that God loves and forgives us.
What is perhaps more amazing even than that is God’s
entrusting to us the job of sharing that grace, that
love and forgiveness, in the world. God so much
loves the world that God sends us as bearers of
God’s amazing grace.
May you know God’s grace deeply and may you share
it generously and joyfully.
E. Louise Williams
Valparaiso, Indiana
Richard Caemmerer is the founder and director of
Grünewald Guild, a community in the Cascade
Mountains, Washington, that celebrates the
relationships between art and faith. He has been the
artist and designer for over 600 church facilities
around the world, and his paintings are in numerous
private and public collections.
The drawings in this booklet are suggestive of
the larger picture that is our life together in
Christ. Hands dominate the images and suggest or
emphasize a particular connection with the
accompanying meditations.
