Marc My Words, Season 2, Episode 4 The Valley and the Voice Fourth Sunday of Easter, Good Shepherd Sunday DeSoto and Freeman Lutheran Churches, April 26, 2026
The Readings
The Hymns
🎵 Gathering, Praise to the Lord, the Almighty (ELW 858) https://youtu.be/JEh7Vt9sxmc
🎵 Hymn of the Day, Shepherd Me, O God (ELW 780) https://youtu.be/YFgZGlZ5t80
🎵 Closing, The Lord's My Shepherd (ELW 778) https://youtu.be/pN4tPkX0MG0
The Episode
This episode keeps the morning reflection that came before the sermon was delivered. A line from Billy Joel's This Is the Time arrived differently on the drive in. You've given me the best of you, but now I need the rest of you. Not a love song that morning. An invitation. God does not want only our polished parts. He wants the rest of us. The tired parts. The wounded parts. The parts still trying to prove something.
Then the sermon. Psalm 23 in a week when the valley is real.
An EF3 tornado tore through Vernon County on April 14. 140 mile per hour winds. Nine miles of destruction.
Verna Fladhammer's memorial service at DeSoto Lutheran is May 2.
The shepherd does not promise the valley disappears. He walks through it.
The shepherd calls his own sheep by name. He goes ahead. Into Good Friday. Into the valley. Into the hard place. So that when you arrive, the shepherd has already been. Peter's word to a scattered church says it plainly. You have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls. Not arrived brand new. Returned. The shepherd was already there.
Acts 2 is what the flock looks like when it shows up. People sharing what they have. Eating together. Praising God in the ordinary rhythm of the days. That is what is happening in DeSoto and Freeman. Pastorless for some time. Doors still open. Coffee still on. People still showing up for each other through hard winters, funerals, and storms.
Sugar Creek Bible Camp sits on 600 acres above Ferryville. Owned by 125 churches. Supported by the La Crosse Area Synod. 2,500 kids every summer hearing they are known by name. Same flock. Same shepherd. Same voice across a wider field than any of us can see from where we are standing.
You did not find the shepherd. The shepherd found you.
The shepherd's voice travels through hands and phones and front porches and pickup trucks on gravel roads.
About Marc My Words
A weekend podcast grounded in scripture, preached and lived in two small Mississippi River congregations in the Driftless region of Wisconsin. Marc Bulandr serves as lay worship leader at Freeman Lutheran Church in Ferryville and DeSoto Lutheran Church in DeSoto.
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Grace and Peace.
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