By Pastor Suzanne Clemenz
Scripture: Luke 24:13-35

How many of you enjoy a really good story? I wish we had time this morning for me to ask you all about your favorite stories. Yesterday at the memorial service for Eldon Hood, his oldest son Steve shared about a favorite story of his from his growing up years in the Hood household. It turns out that Eldon Hood loved musicals and especially the story My Fair Lady – some of you may have seen the 1964 film starring Audrey Hepburn – and Eldon passed the love for that story on to his children. Here at Trinity this week on Monday evenings we are launching a new study that will examine faith through some of the popular stories we know as fairy tales. Over the next six weeks in worship, Pastor Tracey and I will be in conversation with these stories in our sermons. Now, fairy tales are a unique, time-honored form of story, and there’s a reason they’ve been around a long time. Take the tales of Hans Christian Andersen, for example, who authored the stories we’ll be looking at. Over 175 years ago he wrote such classics as The Emperor’s New Clothes, The Little Mermaid, and The Princess and the Pea, just to name a few. The titles still ring a bell, don’t they?

By Pastor Tracey Leslie
Scripture: John 12:2-24

Just yesterday I presided over the graveside service of a dear Trinity saint, Marty Moll.  Marty was who inspired me to seek treatment for my dry eye.  Until speaking with Marty, I never realized that dry eye could lead to vision loss.  The ability to see is so important.  As I mentioned during my sermon last week, today we understand how vision occurs; we understand that light enters the eye through the cornea, passing through the pupil, lens and vitreous humor until it reaches photoreceptors on the retina.  But it goes beyond that because the optic nerve must then carry signals to the visual cortex of the brain to make sense out of what our eye has received.  So, the ability to see requires the eye and brain to work in sync to comprehend the significance of what is being seen.
But, there is, metaphorical vision as well, represented by phrases like “Oh, I see what you mean.”  This kind of vision requires the eye and heart or spirit to work in sync.