To the Reader

I miss Holy Week,” a friend of mine sighed as we left church a few weeks after Easter. I knew what she meant. For many of us, there are particular seasons in the Church Year that stand out in our minds, certain services or commemorations that open God’s Word up to us in ways we haven’t understood it before. Those times, those ah-ha! moments, can profoundly change our understanding of who Christ is and what He does.

September’s Lutheran Witness walks you through those times, through the Church Year, the calendar by which the church orders its days, months and seasons. In “St. Michael and All Angels,” the Rev. Dr. Albert B. Collver III explains a specific day in September found on the Church Year calendar, a day that commemorates the Lord’s holy angels and the work they have done and continue to do on your behalf.

In “Marking Time Is Making Time,” the Rev. Travis Scholl describes the difference between the way the world understands time (here and now) and the way in which the church marks time (eternity). In “Jesus’ Autobiography,” the Rev. Samuel Schuldheisz outlines the history of the Church Year, going all the way back to the first centuries following Christ. In our This We Believe column, “Telling the Story of Jesus,” the Rev. Heath Curtis illustrates the fact that the Church Year is really just a pattern and a method for recounting the story of Jesus and His mercy.

You’ll also find “10 Minutes with . . . Dr. Paul L. Maier,” a best-selling Lutheran author who writes novels about a different time, namely that of the Early Church. And you’ll get a taste of another unique calendar, the one that depicts the history of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod’s official periodical in James Heine’s “A Church Paper in Every Home.”

The Church’s view of time, calendars and seasons is different because “[We] are not of the world, just as [Christ is] not of the world” (John 17:16). Every Sunday, every season of the Church Year, every day the church commemorates a saint points you to Christ and profoundly changes your understanding of who He is and what He does.

The month of September may not look any different from the month before or year after, but you have the assurance that, because of Christ, it is an extraordinary time indeed.