Bill Ferren

Bill Ferren, an old friend to me and to many others at my parish of St. Luke in the Fields here in New York, died this morning at 8AM. He was a longtime pastor, first with the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, and then with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. In his last years, he was part of our Episcopal congregation of St. Luke in the Fields. He was a native of Missouri. We gratefully remember his time with us and thank God for his service.
Though we die, and those who remember us shall die, and our place shall know us no more, we rest in hope knowing that though the world forgets, God shall always remember us and will summon us each by name. May Bill rest with the saints in light.

From John Donne's Meditations:

IF I were but mere dust and ashes I might speak unto the Lord, for the Lord’s hand made me of this dust, and the Lord’s hand shall re-collect these ashes; the Lord’s hand was the wheel upon which this vessel of clay was framed, and the Lord’s hand is the urn in which these ashes shall be preserved. I am the dust and the ashes of the temple of the Holy Ghost, and what marble is so precious? But I am more than dust and ashes: I am my best part, I am my soul.


All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated. God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and His hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to another.

Because I live, so shall you live also
--John 14:19-20