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This Friday we will have been married 33 years.  Doesn’t seem that long but carries a pile of memories.   As the saying goes — “It’s all good!”

So today, I headed in to work on my usual day off.  That way, perhaps a few hours on Friday and Saturday can be stretched out to provide good memories as we celebrate those 33 years.

We’ll see how the plans continue to unfold.  After 33 years, for us,  a bit more time together is a welcome thing.  And for that realization I am thankful.  Not everyone finds the same enjoyment in their relationships. 

For our companionship, I am very thankful!  Thanks to a great wife and thanks to God!

Usually Saturday morning I awaken thinking about a sermon I’m about to preach on Sunday.  I may even find I’ve got illustrations and further thoughts running through my head.

This week I had the sermon completed on Thursday.  This morning, Saturday, I awoke and wondered what I was preaching on.  I read the passage of I Peter 1:18-25.  On the other hand, I recalled vaguely my general points.  In my haze, I couldn’t connect the dots.  What a great fear for a preacher!   To know the Bible passage and to realize there is a sermon but maybe it doesn’t fit the passage.

So, I headed off to our church building.  Where I pulled out my sermon. 

Read it aloud. 

And realized it actually made sense. 

In fact, some of it struck me in a new way.  Which is a compliment to God’s funny bone.  That a preacher can write but God can make a point!

Tomorrow morning I trust God for physical strength to deliver a speech.  But more, I trust God to make His points for those present.

For the last while I’ve been dealing with what appears to be GERD (reflux acid from the stomach going up the esophagus).  This often results in scarring of the throat and worse.  The cause can be both physical and stress related.

My physical symptoms would be easy to deal with if it were just pain.  The nausea is what concerns me more.  I end up distracted and sometimes left in a fog.

Funny how mentioning this to a group you soon find others with similar conditions.  You can place yourself as to the severity of your symptoms based on their experiences.  I’ve learned that I definitely have the outward signs. 

In a week or so I’ll have a scope go down my throat and look at what is happening.  Should be fun – in a warped sort of way. 

For the moment I’m on various medications and trying to see how well balanced they are.  The last two mornings have been less than stellar – maybe that’s what morning sickness is like?

So, my hope is to awaken tomorrow a little better.  We’ll see!

We had to turn on our furnace today.  The winds are blowing and the mercury on our thermometer is going lower each night.  

After a bit of anxiety over a problem that I encountered, I returned to a “fix” we had paid for a year or so ago.  Looking back over the past helps us for the future winter.  With that fix in hand, I’m glad to forecast that things will continue to get colder.  I think I’m fairly safe in that prophecy.

Now, the past often needs to be consulted to form a usual result for the future.  Sometimes the past must be overlooked to obtain a “new” result.

I was reading in the Worship Leader magazine a quote that was tucked in the midst of a review of a new CD – “Leeland – Love Is on the Move.”  Here is the quote found on page 56 of Worship Leader for September 2009:

However, here is the significance of this release:  If you want to know what congregational worship is leaning toward next decade listen to Love Is on the Move.  It won’t change overnight, but as the Millennals begin to overpower the Boomers and the X-ers in sanctuaries across the country sing-along songs will trend toward concert cuts.

I thought we had fought this fight before.  Will contemporary Christian Music soon go the way of the Church Choir?  When Church Choirs began to present more and more special music in church services, and congregants did not have to participate, or when they were asked to participate the music was too difficult, we became spectator churches.  The Worship renewal in the last few years was about participation.   And the usual church choir disappeared in many churches.  Is the death knell for Worship Bands being sounded?  What would replace the Worship Band?

Or, is there a “new” result that should replace our current definition of worship?