Of course as always “time will tell,” but boy did it feel good today.  Every time I spend the whole week wrestling with a text in preparing for Sunday’s preaching, I relearn the lesson that it is in the wrestling that God works in us.  It wasn’t until Wednesday that I began to have some sense of where I thought the text was taking me, and not until well into Saturday that I could really put it together.  All along I had the sense that there was a strong message there for STLC, but it was difficult to put my finger on.  Going over it this morning with my cup of coffee, I thought it looked pretty good, but I spent most of the time the lector was reading the other lesson deep in prayer asking for help with the delivery – that God’s word would be heard and edified this day.  Even though I know that God’s word never comes back empty, I still feel that some of my deliveries are better than others – yes, we are all human – but I really wanted the Word to come through today without me being in the way.  As I said time will tell.  One highlight from the preparing process was the epiphany to point the potentially “negative” behavior as something that “other congregations do.”  We’ll see if they feel I wasn’t talking about us.  Another thing that I think was done well was the reference to the work of the Trinity.

Blessings to all who may read these words.