March 20, 2026
I must confess that as an observer of human nature I take pleasure sometimes in observing petty conflicts. These conflicts are mostly harmless and are born often of stubbornness and pride. Coon Valley Lutheran Church had had an anniversary for which they had spruced the place up quite a bit, including the taking apart of the cast iron gate to their cemetery and completely rebuilding it. In the rebuilding of it the N in Coon for Coon Valley Lutheran Cemetery was put back on reversed and no one noticed. Except the pastor who they called after the anniversary. The pastor who would bring it up at every single council meeting demanding that it be fixed. And at every single council meeting the minutes reflected that the council voted to fix the offending N. Only they never did. The reason that they never did was because there was just a personality conflict between the pastor and a couple of members of the cemetery committee who the pastor had flippantly made a joke about. The pastor served there until his retirement and the N never got fixed. Mere minutes after the moving truck left the parsonage with the pastor and his property the N was cut off of the fence, reversed, welded back into place, the gold paint was reapplied.
The lesson: be careful about making flippant comments because everybody is loved by somebody.
Let us pray: Father in Heaven, for Jesus’ sake make us careful with our words, make us careful with what we think is funny, and make us mindful that everybody is loved by somebody. In Jesus’s Name, Amen.