BY BONNIE LOMEN

Pastor First Lutheran Church, Pine River

In John 10:11, Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”

In planning to write this article, I thought of many topics or lessons brought out in Scripture. But this week on Jan. 31, one of the shepherds of an earthly flock is laid to rest. This event is foremost in my thoughts.

A friend and colleague, Pastor Marlys Korman, went to be with the Lord following a stroke. She is an earthly shepherd gone to be with the Good Shepherd.

I hadn’t planned to write about guns. Too much has been written and not much has been done on the subject for 40-plus years. I don’t have anything profound to add to the complex matter, but am writing about how we deal with it.

As promised, I am entering some “Classic Last Windrow” columns on this, the 30th year anniversary of writing The Last Windrow. 

I’ve dug into the fireproof files and come up with 30 years of columns. I’ve sorted through them and relived a whole lot of my history over those years. Some of the columns were winners, some were clunkers, but they all told a little bit of my journey. 

What follows is the first column I wrote in 1983. It was actually typed on a real typewriter using carbon paper for a copy. I hope you enjoy some of the “classics!”

PASTOR MARLYS KORMAN

Faith Lutheran Church

This month our book club has chosen Yann Martel’s novel “Life of Pi.” The story tells of a teenager named Pi, the sole human survivor of a cargo ship that sinks in the Pacific Ocean. It had been transporting his family and the animals from his family’s zoo in India to Canada, where they’d hoped to start a new life.