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Loaves of bread: Minister: Faith starts from a seed |
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Thursday, 18 March 2010 |
 The Rev. Steve Nelson, pastor of First English Lutheran Church, talks on the “Seeds and Loaves of Bread” during Wednesday’s Community Lenten Service at St. Joseph Catholic Church. The services are organized by the Wapakoneta Area Ministerial Association. Staff photo/William Laney By WILLIAM LANEY
Managing Editor
Holding a loaf of fresh-baked bread, a local minister explained the similarities between a seed germinating in the soil which eventually is used to make bread and the growth of person in faith.
Incorporating the biblical passage of the mustard seed into the Lenten theme of “Be What You Are ...,” The Rev. Steve Nelson, pastor of First English Lutheran Church, discussed the three parts of the seed and compared each to a person and their faith.
Nelson explained a seed is composed of an embryo, a seed coat and food storage. He compared the embryo to a person’s faith and the food storage, which nourishes the embryo, to those people who have had an impact on a person’s life and faith.
He said the food storage permit the seed to break through the seed coat and break through the soil to become a plant.
The people, who he compared to food storage of a seed, assist with a person’s faith and are working to help them grow so they can grow, learn and pass the knowledge they obtain onto the next generation.
“The foundations of our faith have been built literally through the help of others who taught us about faith and what it meant to them,” Nelson said during the third week of Lenten Services. “The Holy Spirit works through others’ actions and that helps us to believe, too.”
Nelson, who is a pastor and a father, said he, too, has made promises to pass on his beliefs and to encourage growth in faith to his congregation and to his children.
“We help people to grow and to become closer to Jesus Christ so they will become something wonderful,” Nelson said.
Nelson noted the love Jesus Christ has for all his followers.
“Jesus Christ gave up everything on the cross, including his own life, so that we might know God’s grace,” Nelson said. “By Jesus dying on the cross, we were given a glimpse of the great world that waits for us all.”
Reflecting on his own life, Nelson talked about his parents, his choir instructor and his Sunday school teacher and the influence they had on his faith and his life.
He said the Holy Spirit works through them and others to help a person develop faith and “that faith does not grow overnight, but it is long process.”
Faith also grows through a church’s traditions from baptism to learning the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostles Creed. Generations of the faithful maintained those traditions.
“They believe a faith placed in us would grow and become something marvelous,” Nelson said. “Remember who helped you to grow in faith. Remember them and thank them and we do that best by taking what they have taught us and passing it on to others.”
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Last Updated ( Friday, 19 March 2010 )
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