Recently, I was guest-preaching in a church where the choir and a visiting singer presented a wonderful special just before the sermon.  As they were finishing, the singer, an older gentleman, had some kind of seizure and toppled from the stool where he had been sitting.

Immediately, two things happened: most of the congregation went into momentary shock and  a half-dozen people jumped to their feet and rushed to tend to the man.  They helped him out of the sanctuary and ministered to him in the foyer.  (A subsequent note from a minister assured me the man is fine, that a few hours in the hospital to stabilize his heartbeat and he was on his way home.)

I asked the minister, “Who were the people who got up and came to help him?”

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This week, my dentist and I have worked to compensate for the continuing deterioration of my teeth, all part of the natural process by which my earthly body gradually sloughs off parts that will not be needed for my final flight to Heaven.

In Heaven, an all-new body will be provided, one which we are not told but presume will not be subject to tooth decay and arthritis and hearing loss.

Thursday, Dr. Jim sent me to the lab across town where I left a piece of my confidence–well, okay, a bit of dentures–alongwith instructions to the lab on what they were to do. Twenty-four hours later, I returned to pick them up, presumably allowing me to resume a more or less normal existence.

The laboratory is an interesting place. Not laid out to impress visitors, this is a working space, upstairs, reached by something much like a fire escape. The few desks were unoccupied at the moment, but were messy and crowded with papers and sacks and boxes.  Along several rows up and down the large room were literally hundreds of plastic trays, each holding a work order along with molds of teeth, dentures, bridges, etc. It was an ugly sight, I’ll tell you.

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“I will build my church…” (Matthew 16:18)

It’s His church and not mine.

It’s His church and not yours either.

Settle that or nothing else will matter. Get it wrong and everything else you do will be off kilter.

The moment you think it’s your church (you’re in charge) or my church (someone else makes the decisions; you have nothing to do with what happens), we’re all in trouble.

It is indeed the Lord’s Church and He is its sole owner.  He takes no one in as a stockholder, franchises no part of His operation out to denominations, and asks advice from no expert of theology.  Furthermore, He promised that the gates of hades will not prevail against His church.

And, He has populated His church with frail humans like you and me, and wonder of wonders, assigned some of us to responsibilities within that church. What a risk He was taking!

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You get the impression newspaper editors begin their staff meetings by asking what their constituents need to be worrying about today.

This Memorial Day, 2013, we have our choice of several juicy issues, any one of which can keep you up at night….

–The crumbling highway infrastructure. We’ve had three bridges knocked out in this country this week alone.

–The weather.  Tornadoes destroyed much of Moore, Oklahoma a week ago, taking 24 lives in spite of the advance notice.  We’re told that Oklahoma is the number one target for these monster storms.

–Terrorism. A British soldier was gunned down on the streets of London a few days ago. Nine suspects have been arrested, several of them apparently terrorists.

–The continuing assault on traditional morals and the definition of the family. The Scouts will accept gay kids into membership and more and more states are legalizing same sex marriage.

Okay, had enough?

If one enjoys worrying, he can always find good cause.

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There is a reason very few who write articles for the various “preacher” online services such as churchleaders.com, sermoncentral.com, and crosswalk.com reply to those who leave comments.

It messes up their day.

Case in point. This morning, I decided to check the replies on an article of mine which one of the above services had sent out recently to 50,000 of their closest friends. There might have been 15 or 20 comments.  Several said things like, “You didn’t give us a remedy” or “You misinterpreted that text” or “You didn’t quote Bonhoeffer” or “What do you have against preachers?”

Ugh.  I hit reply a time or two and left notes. And then regretted it.  It’s so hard not to sound defensive when you are trying to explain why you said one thing and not something else.

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“The silk we love for its softness and beauty is also one of the strongest and toughest fibers in the world. It has a strength of around five grams per denier compared with three grams per denier for a drawn wire of soft steel.” (From “The History of Silk,” by Harold Verner, quoted by Liz Trenow in her novel “The Last Telegram.”)

Soft and beautiful. Strong and tough.

You gotta love it.

What some in our day have called “a velvet-brick” and others “a steel magnolia.” Soft and beautiful, strong and tough.

A pretty apt description of our Lord Jesus Christ, isn’t it?  We see His softness and beauty in a hundred things He did: took time to receive the little children and bless them, responded to the cries of the leper and touched him, restored a dead son to his grieving mother, forgave an adulterous woman who had been publicly humiliated by religious bullies, and saved a five-times married woman of Samaria.  He invited the dying thief on the cross next to Him to spend eternity with Him in Paradise, and prayed for His executioners.

Our Lord said, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30).

No wonder people are so enamored by this Lord Jesus Christ.

He was a beautiful man.

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“But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (II Peter 3:18).

The pastor had been called from his rural church to another part of the country. He was excited about the new challenge, as he well should have been. In a parting comment to a friend, he assessed the state of spirituality of the church members he was leaving behind:

“There is enough ignorance in this county to ignorantize the whole country.”

What happens when a pastor gets called to a church like that? A church where the members and leaders alike do not know the Word of God and have no idea of how things should be done (what Paul called “how one ought to conduct himself in the household of God”–I Timothy 3:15), or why it all matters.

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“Not that I have already obtained it, or have already become perfect, but I press on…” (Philippians 3:12).

No matter how accomplished you become in sermon-building and how comfortable you feel standing before crowds delivering the Lord’s message, you should never get to the point of phoning it in.

The time never comes when a preacher can switch on automatic pilot.

There are good reasons for this limitation….

1) You are not big enough for that.

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