Sunday Morning

I tried to smile and tolerate my husband's watching the Tour de France and Lance Armstrong. While Lance is a remarkable and outstanding athlete, he apparently left his wife and children for whatever reason, which doesn't make him a hero in my view.

You are right...of all the positive influence Lance has today...His marriage failure is a major difficulty. I struggle with that feature of his life, just as I struggle with marriage failure in my own life. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, we don't have the whole story. I wish this area of his life was more stable. I also pray for him that faith in Christ will be his and that he would use his fame to speak for the Lord.

Great, Lance Armstrong has won again! A really remarkable accomplishment. He could not have done it without his team, and we as Christians could not succeed in whatever we are doing without a team like our church is providing for us. My previous remarks about his marriage are not meant as a judgment on presumably failed marriages in general, or Lance's in particular, rather about Lance leaving his still very small children in the process, and for long periods of times. I think that children do need the steady presence of their father.

Thanks for an inspiring sermon today. Dr. Stevens from First Presbyterian Church writes that he needs about 25 hours of preparations for each sermon to write, practice and deliver. That is more than half a "normal" work-week. You speak freely without notes each Sunday morning, and we admire this greatly. Do you also work many hours on each of your sermons? We are hearing you.

I admire the systematic preparation of folks like Rev. John Stevens. He has been diligent and faithful for years. It shows! His ministry has been a marvelous example of how the Kingdom can expand and grow. I prepare in several ways. Long term planning, development of series themes, detailed work on each component, final manuscript preparation, and then a strange ritual to "pound it" into my head. Preachers are weird!