May 2025: Spiritual Allergies

Blessings, and a happy May to each of you.

Thank you to everyone who was involved in making Easter a success at Trinity this year. There are lots of people behind the scenes to ensure things go very smoothly, especially the Altar Guild, our secretary Tanja, and the many volunteers who help services run smoothly. Thank you!

May is an interesting time of year. It’s just past Easter, but school isn’t quite done yet. It’s a time of Graduation parties, beautiful weather, and a time to have a big breath outward as the school cycle comes to an end. Unfortunately, sometimes that breather is interrupted by the nasty part of spring – Allergies.

I spent a bit of time in St. Louis right after Easter and the pollen levels were off the chart. If you haven’t spent spring in St. Louis for any amount of time, the pollen literally builds up on your cars. It can be a serious pain to work through having allergies. Something you might not know about allergies, though, is that they are something that develop over time. You can lack an allergy at one point and develop them later. Thankfully this also can work in the reverse as well.

This is the same with our spiritual life. What do I mean? Take, for example, coming to church. It might be the case that we think “Church happens every week, I can go next time.”  It’s something you do from time to time and it’s not really a big problem. But before we know it, we haven’t been to church in a while. Or the same could be said with prayer or reading scripture. If it’s not something that we keep at, we can develop a habit of forgetting to take the time to do it. If we don’t take in that fresh air, it can be hard to breathe in our lives of faith. It can be a serious pain to get back into those good habits for our spiritual life.

Of course, God is a God who has cleansed our hearts of all the sin in our lives, and we aren’t doomed to only go one direction with our spiritual life, our church attendance, our reading of scripture, or our prayer. Sometimes we just need to take some intentional effort to return to our practice of these things, a shot of antihistamine you might say, and they’ll come right back to something that we naturally return to again. God will send his Holy Spirit to be with you in the times where you feel like you’ve been away from good practices too long to remind you of his grace, love, and the open arms of our loving Father.

So, the next time you’re there coughing or sniffling, find some medicine, and then take some time to pray or read God’s word this spring. Even if it’s something that has gotten away from you, come by church on Sunday and stay for our Bible study as we read through Luther’s Large Catechism.  I promise it will be a breath of fresh air for your spiritual life. God be with you this May!