Welcome to the August issue of The Lutheran Witness. It’s been two months since we’ve arrived in your mailbox, or on your doorstep, and a lot has changed in the interval.

Welcome to the month of May. In many parts of this nation—and the northern hemisphere—spring is in full bloom and summer waits impatiently just around the corner. Everywhere we look, we are reminded of the glorious world given to us by our Creator.

April. It’s hard to believe that we are well into A.D.
2010—in the year of our Lord 2010, that is—and
that Easter, glorious Easter, is upon us.

By the time you pick up this issue of The Lutheran
Witness, the story that has dominated the news for the
past two months, the terrible earthquake in Haiti, will
likely have begun to recede from the headlines. Yet…

to have little to do with each other, but they do, in
fact, have something in common. Both deal with
matters of the heart.

April. It’s hard to believe that we are well into A.D.
2010—in the year of our Lord 2010, that is—and
that Easter, glorious Easter, is upon us.

At the heart of it all, as so vividly expressed by Luther’s famous Christmas hymn, “From Heaven Above to Earth I Come”—the focus of two of our stories this month—is the birth of God’s Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ.

As our authors this month remind us, we have much to be thankful for, not only in the temporal sense—from the perspective of the rest of the world, we are blessed beyond measure even in these difficult times— but also in the spiritual sense, for we have been redeemed by Christ, sanctified by the Holy Spirit, and counted as our heavenly Father’s own dear children.

We cover a lot of ground in this issue of The Lutheran Witness, from an overview of the current work of LCMS World Mission to stories about “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” Martin Luther’s most famous hymn

Maybe it’s just our growing older, but each year, September seems to arrive more quickly than anticipated. Suddenly, our vacation is a receding memory, the kids are back in school, Labor Day is upon us, and we are left to wonder, “What happened to summer and all the plans I made? Where did the time go?” One item that occupies much of our time is work.

Yes, print remains a significant means of communication (in spite of numerous premature obituaries); yet new tools increasingly play important roles in the ways in which we hold conversations with one another.

In many ways, this is a “family” issue. Our cover story focuses on fathers and sons. A second story highlights a
strong sense of family and vocation in the vineyards of California, while a third uncovers a bit of “family” history as it pertains to our Synod and its early years.