Hidden Value

by Vice President Thomas Kruesel

When I graduated from seminary and moved to my first congregation, my family had two pressing needs. First, a second vehicle. Second, money. As you can imagine, the second need influenced the decision-making process in meeting the first need. After much searching I was able to find a 1964 Plymouth Valiant available locally for $1,000. It turned out to be a very reliable car, and whatever maintenance it needed I was able to perform myself as everything was very simple. It came with the slant six “perpetual motion machine,” pushbutton automatic, “Armstrong steering,” seatbelts (for the parents!), a heater, and brakes. No air, no cruise, no tilt, no power anything. But it did get me from point A to point B for almost eleven years before I accepted a call and sold the car. For those years it met my needs, even if it wasn’t the pinnacle of luxury.

This past year and a half have been incredibly trying. The COVID pandemic, and the restrictions that grew out of it, have placed incredible personal, financial, psychological, spiritual, and societal pressures on a large number of people in our society. These pressures brought many people closer to crisis than they have been, perhaps, ever in their life. For many, these pressures have also forced them to re-evaluate their priorities. People have realized that the things that they thought were important really are not that important at all. At the same time, they discovered that the things they took for granted were really things of great value and worth.

I remember someone saying that one of the effects of sin is that the value of things in our lives become mixed up. It’s like going into a store and not noticing that the things with little value seem to have the highest price tags, while the truly valuable things are priced very low. COVID has forced many people to re-examine how we value the things in our lives—to rediscover their true worth.

The area I have seen this most clearly in is in the lives of God’s people both in my congregation and in other congregations across Canada. For too long, we in Canada and the western world in general have taken the freedom we have to gather for worship for granted. We have valued other things in our lives with a value they do not deserve. As the words to a classic song go, “You don’t know what you’ve got, until it’s gone.” When God’s people, out of abundance of care for those around them (and in keeping with the government restrictions imposed), stopped gathering for in-person worship, many of us realized of all the things that were denied us during the pandemic, the ability to gather for worship was the greatest loss. We suddenly realized that something we had taken for granted was of primary importance in our lives.

The pastors of Lutheran Church–Canada worked hard to reach the members of their congregation with the Word of God using the tools of technology that God has given us as services, sermons, Bible Studies, and devotions moved online. Our pastors also found ways to bring Holy Communion to the members of the church in a way that cared both for their spiritual and physical well-being.

As the pandemic extended, the yearning to gather around God’s Word and Holy Communion in the fellowship of believers grew. It was with great excitement that our congregations have again begun gathering in God’s house for worship. Just as the time of the captivity of the people of Israel in Babylon created conditions that led God’s people to examine themselves and the priorities in their lives, the pandemic has led the pastors and people in our churches, I believe, to a realization of what is truly important in their life of faith. As I grew to understand of my old Valiant, sometimes the simpler things are, the better they are.

I believe this is a lesson the Church has taken away from our time in exile. My prayer is that we, like the early Christian Church, can cling to the heart of worship as described in Acts 2:42— “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer”—so that as things return to “normal” we will continue to value and treasure the gifts of Word, Sacrament, and fellowship that are ours as God’s people.

Rev. Thomas Kruesel

Rev. Thomas Kruesel is Vice President of Lutheran Church–Canada (LCC).