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"What's Pastor Holley Thinking?"

January 25, 2005

 Today I am thinking about a trip I went on last Friday with Dick Firebaugh and Charles Shaner. You could call it “Dick, Charles and Bob Go on the Road.”

 Just kidding. What we did was gather in Dick’s SUV and drive up to Harrisonburg. There we went to Heritage Memorials and viewed some granite and a drawing. The drawing is of the seal of Martin Luther, what is commonly known as “Luther’s Rose.” It is beautiful.

 The Shaner family is giving the “Rose” in granite as a gift honoring their mother, Grace. The finished granite “Rose” will be four feet in diameter and will be placed in the concrete as you walk up to the main door of the building. It will be a beautiful, artistic gift that will greet many generations with the remembrance of Martin Luther and his theology of the cross that is at the center of our faith.

 You see the “Rose” will have in the center of it a brass cross. Luther placed the cross in the center of his seal to remind himself and everyone else that the cross is the center of our lives. It is in the cross that we know the grace and mercy, the total forgiveness, of our loving God. It is in the cross, not our efforts, which God reveals a love so deep and complete that God dies there forgiving us.

 How blessed we are to have this lovely addition to our marvelous building. It will be one more architectural statement that will strengthen faith and always remind us of the great truth that we are saved by grace, not by works. What a blessing the “Rose” will be.

Peace, Pastor Holley