“Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.” Mt 25:45 A Three-Legged Stool The Christian faith is like a three-legged stool. The legs are Word, Sacrament, and Service. Remove any of the legs and you have a problem. As Missouri-Synod Lutherans, we have usually been pretty faithful with the first two legs. The LCMS still believes that the Word of God is inerrant. That is to say that if the Word conflicts with anything at all in our lives or in the world, it is we that are wrong, not it. When we encounter something in the Bible with which we do not agree, we have to adjust our beliefs. We don’t attempt to correct God’s Word. We are also good with the second leg, the sacraments. God gives us strength as we remember our baptisms and receive the very body and blood of Jesus in the Lord’s Supper. So, two of the legs on our stool are steadfast. The Word of God is unchangeable and immovable and the Sacraments are administered faithfully. But what about the third leg: service? Look at the muscles in your body. What happens if you sit too much and don’t move around? Soon you become too weak to move around at all anymore. It turns out that writing a check to the health club each month is not enough exercise. You actually have to go there and work out! Our faith is little different from our bodies. It is good to feed our faith well with God’s Word and Sacraments, but if we never use our faith, it will atrophy. That is why we offer opportunities for service at Trinity. When we exercise our faith by placing our own wants and needs second to the glory of God and the good of others, our faith becomes more and more powerful. Just recently, some of our youth went to Detroit to serve the community through Camp Restore. Camp Restore is an LCMS group whose mission it is to restore the 9th Precinct of Detroit and to help to make it into a thriving community again. They spent 4 days mowing, weed eating, working with kids at a reading camp, cleaning, mopping, organizing, and painting. They struggled with the idea that they paid money to come to Detroit, live in unairconditioned dorms, shower in old locker rooms, and eat sub-standard food so that they could help people they didn’t even know. That is putting God and others first and that is the exercising of faith and that makes faith stronger than ever. Service is important. Look for opportunities to put your faith in motion. That might be serving in our community. That might be serving on a board at church or singing in the choir or playing handbells. Whatever it is, we were never intended to be takers. God fills us full of His Word and Sacrament so that it will overflow from us onto the world around us. | 
