September 2026

Dear First Wausau Family of Faith,

I am grateful for the sensors and backup cameras that help keep us safer on the road. As we head into fall, I find myself wishing my car had deer-detection technology, too. Those tools remind me of blind spots in our faith. Many of our blind spots come from cultural assumptions we do not always realize we carry. For example, ancient biblical languages and cultures often treated numbers and dates more metaphorically than we tend to do. Names of people and places carried deep, layered meanings, and history and nuance shaped faithful priorities and decisions. The ancestors of our faith noticed things we often miss because our own cultural lens can limit what we see.

Getting to know people from around the world, whether through travel, conversation, reading, or shared community life, can be an invaluable way to upgrade our faith blind-spot sensors. At the end of September, I’ll be spending time with my daughter in Valencia, Spain, and we will also visit Marseille, France together. We have both learned how important it is to expand our vision and understanding by stepping outside our cultural bubble for a while. Whether or not international travel is possible for you, a very helpful book on this subject is Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes: Removing Cultural Blinders to Better Understand the Bible, by E. Randolph Richards and Brandon J. O’Brien. As we travel this road of faith together, may God’s grace help us see what we might otherwise have missed, and may that clearer vision lead us to live with deeper love.

Gratefully,
Pastor Rebecca