It’s almost 8:30 p.m. in this strange phenomenon called Central time. How do you people do it? The family is eating turkey sandwiches and I am getting ready to sermonize. I’m listening to the new delirious? cd “Touch” and waiting to listen to the new Sara Groves and new Phil Keaggy cds. I can’t wait to get in the car and go home. There are problems in the extended family over here and we are either 1) helpless spectators or 2) unwelcome examples of a family that isn’t falling apart. I miss my house and my dog. I’ll sermonize for a while since it is the first Sunday of Advent this Lord’s Day. I recall something I stole from Merton and morphed into a line in a bad unfinished novel where this monk is chanting with his fellow monks in the middle of the night, and he says that sitting here by candlelight, chanting the Psalms in that cold church was somehow the very rock bottom meaning of his existence, and maybe the meaning of life. I feel that way about any moments in the Word and especially of those moments preaching. It makes no sense. It does no visible good. I have no authority. Few people choose to come hear me. Yet this is the meaning of my life, and I know that however many heartbeats are left to me, my own brokenness and humanity is rescued by the One who comes to me in that Word. Tis mystery all…

See you all under better circumstances. Pray for our very broken, lost and desperately confused loved ones at least once.