Reuse ourselves?

Semrau’s point in this article is, “Conserve, reuse, recycle. More and more those words are becoming guidelines for our existence.” The point lead to Semrau discussing how these words were guidelines in his life.  Semrau’s first decision was that he wanted to work until he died and the second decision was that he wanted to be “green” and also be productive in his older age. Semrau had a dream to go to medical school to become a surgeon. He was going to reuse himself or, “use what you have until it can no longer function.” I feel that Semrau kept out some information on why we should join in on what he is doing and the fact that he was going to medical school as a cadaver, not a surgeon.  Semrau was going to follow his second decision by using his body after his death as a cadaver which would allow him to be “green”. This did not help the intent because he did not elaborate on this topic well enough so we did not know why we should also do this. I do believe that Semrau was effective on discussing on how we should reuse ourselves throughout our lives.

Savior of the Nations, Come!

As you read the hymn “Savior of the Nations, Come”, the theme that shows through was that Christ was born to be our Savior.  Luther begins by stating how Christ came to earth to take away our sins. He then tells the story that Jesus was born of a virgin, but conceived through the Holy Spirit. Luther continues to state how we are sinful and sometimes take for granted our great and majestic God. As the fourth and fifth verse approaches Luther states Christ’s death and victory over death and the devil. The last two verses cover how God’s truth brings light into our lives and through our faith we receive eternal life. We should give God all the glory in all that we do.

Luther used climax as his literary device. The way he proves this is by in the beginning, he slowly begins by telling Christ’s purpose in coming to earth and then lists how he was born of a virgin, dies on the cross, and his victory over death and the devil. At that point though, he reaches his climax. Luther says we should give Him all honor and praise! It is because of him that through our faith we are given eternal life! Thanks be to God for all he has done!

Are we just listening or are we understanding?

1) I listed Jesus mentioned 22 times in the sermon.

2) Some verbs I found where Christ was the subject were reigns, makes, lives, slain, took, died, rose, smiles, and more. There were some more that were repeated also.

3) In Edwards' sermon, he mentioned very little about Christ's love for us and how he died on the cross for our sins so that we may receive eternal life.  I found this interesting considering this was a six hour sermon. In this time, one would assume that he would be enough time to talk about Christ’s love for us and not only about God’s wrath.  Borghardt’s sermon was shorter than Edwards.  Yet, Borghardt still had time to cover Christ’s mercy and that because of this mercy we will be with Him in heaven and there will be no suffering there.