Welcome to Sunday night, Memorial Day weekend.

It was my last Sunday on the pulpit supply, at least for this go-around.  I preached at Elm Grove Baptist Church near Curryville this morning, and it was a pleasant experience.  To be quite honest, I wondered if my last Sunday as a supply guy would be kind of poignant, being as I loved short-term ministry so much.  But it wasn't.  The Lord really showed me today that Elm Grove is a really good church, a church which deserves a really good pastor, and that I really had no role in the matter.  And I'm very okay with that.  A nice service this morning with a decent holiday-weekend crowd of about sixty, with good music. There was something of a pall over the day, however, as the church had lost two deacons in the course of the last week; I know I'm called to be a pastor because I couldn't help but grieve somewhat today for them.

I drove back, uneventfully, and ate a nice lunch.  I've decided I really like the Light Miracle Whip better than the original.  Maybe it's because I feel like a fundamentally more moral person for eating low-fat salad dressing, I don't know.  I've also decided to make myself stop napping in the afternoons.  This should help stop my recurrent cycles of poor sleep (like the last two weeks); I sleep for fifteen minutes only, then wake up.  A fifteen-minute nap, studies (and experience) show, has a refreshing, rejuvenating effect, while a two-hour nap just screws up the rest of the day.  So after my fifteen-minute catnap, I got up, worked on my never-ending task of finishing grades at the school, then came back home and wrote the evening sermon.  On the drive back to Curryville this evening, I ran into one of those old-fashioned summer gully-washer thunderstorms, and it was raining so hard on 61 that I had to pull over to the side of the road for about five minutes.  The congregation was amazingly expressive tonight during their testimony time, really pouring their hearts out about many different things and taking several occasions to pray for specific people and situations as a church.  I've been struggling as a pastor with how to appropriately integrate testimonies as a regular part of weekly worship, and I think I learned a lot about how tonight.  We're going to open up evening worship at Pleasant Grove to testimonies in a much broader way, and I'm interested to see what happens, to be honest.  I preached from Leviticus tonight (the theme today was the cost of sanctification, and I was in II Peter this morning), and I have to admit that I always feel just a little ornery preaching from Leviticus.  It's like nobody expects it.  Leviticus is like the annoying old uncle of the Bible in some people's minds; it's there, it kind of looks ugly and maybe even smells bad, but boy, it's good to know once you give it some effort. 

So back to the parents' house and relaxation now (and a wonderful late dinner here) in advance of Memorial Day.  It goes without saying that I can freely blog, and enjoy my convoluted, but fulfilling life, only because some brave, supremely dedicated men and women gave their all for this country.  Memorial Day has to be more than a great barbecue, but rather a time to reflect on the joy of American freedom as a terribly precious thing, a reflection that takes the form of enjoying the families we have the freedom to enjoy, as well as quiet reflection in certain moments. 

Tomorrow's plans? Rest, and food, and preparations for the big move to Bucklin Friday.  And great family time.

Until tomorrow night...