Who Knows? Who knows?

This year’s road trip is behind us. It was a good venture with opportunities to be useful to others in their ministries. Now the time has come for someday jobs. Having caught up on major yard work neglected for two months, and with the agenda for the next six months solidified, the long overdue round-to-it project may no longer be put off – the re-filing of sermon notes.

It is an ambitious effort. Some have been tucked away under subject headings, others have been stacked in a box, only a few are easily found. Now, at last, there they are, heaped together to be arranged and cataloged by title, subject, and when-and-where delivered.

It is a formidable project: forty-three years of pastoral preaching book-ended by other opportunities create quite a stack; but it is well worth the effort in memories. It is also humbling when I come across sermons which prompt a shaking of the head and a whispered, “I can’t believe I said that.” Congregations really do endure a lot, and not just from the new guy in the pulpit. But there are the good moments. The moments when I realize, with a little retooling, a message would be well worth dusting off, given some fresh study, and delivering again someday. 

Then, there is something else. It is the realization that sermons like suppers are not stored in the memory of those to whom they were served or, for that matter, of the one who served them. The heart asks, “Have they done any good?” And, the mind replies: “Who knows?” And God says, “Fret not. My Word accomplishes what I want.”