I find myself in unfamiliar territory with mixed emotions. On Thursday afternoon we had a power outage here…while I was working on my computer. It lasted about 1/2 hour. On Saturday morning when I arrived in my office the power light on my computer was blinking and would not turn on.
Oh by the way, I hadn’t printed my sermon off yet.
Needless to say I was not a happy camper. Then I started to think, "Maybe this is God’s way of telling me that the sermon that I wrote is not the sermon God wants me to preach on Sunday." Then I thought "Well God, there are easier (and cheaper) ways to tell me that". Either way, I got another sermon prepared that is completely different from what I wrote before. And you know something…I feel better about this sermon.
Normally the prayer I write here is the prayer I pray during the sermon. Since I lost that prayer on Thursday, this is a new/different one. I guess that is alright. Besides…can you actually lose a prayer?
Anyway…Let us pray…
Gracious Lord God…you work in mysterious ways. Sometimes things happen that cause us to be angry and sometimes with you. We don’t understand. Maybe that’s because we get so locked in OUR ways that we fail to see you working in our lives and the world around us. Open our eyes to see your glory. Open our ears to hear your loving word. Open our hands to serve our neighbor. Open our mouths to preach the Good News and open our noses to smell the richness of the life you give us. Through Jesus Christ you love us beyond measure. Use each of us to your glory and give us patience to follow wherever you may lead. Through Jesus Christ, your dear Son, we pray, Amen!
May your computers always turn on and your hard drives keep spinning 🙂 Have a glorious day praising our Lord and Savior.
-edh-
The Heart of a Pastor 
Funny thing…
Maybe on Thursday, I had composed a note to add to your text study on the Gospel lesson about the 10 lepers. As I tweaked it a little here and a little there, each time previewing the post, my internet connection got confused, and my note was ultimately lost.
I thought about trying to reconstruct it, but decided not to, thinking (like you) that maybe God was telling me something.
As I thought more about the 10 leper story, I realized that my first reaction was not on target anyway.
I came to see the 10 lepers story as about seeing with faith, which only the Samaritan did. It makes a nice pair with the 2 Kings story about Naaman, a proud man (Behold the proud, the spirit is not right in them, but the righteous shall live by their faith), who comes to see that his power and wealth has no sway over God, who freely gives His gift of healing — something his humbler servants were better able to see in the first place.
Even though my hard drives fail, and my internet connection is lost, I will exalt in the Lord.
As you can see, studying Habakkuk was a compelling experience for me.
Tom
I am an Elder and get to preach once a year. Right now I am working on my November 4th sermon. I was thinking of keeping a backup copy on a flash drive so that I don’t have to start over.
I am guessing it would take me longer to write a new sermon, then it does someone who writes more often.
Right now I need all the backups I can get.
Michael
Sorry to hear about your computer. I will read your sermon a bit later, we just got in about an hour ago and I have a paper due tomorrow. Fortunately, I have a bck up on my flash drive just in case.
Tom — That is sort of the direction I took with the sermon. The Samaritan looking with faith.
Michael — I have a USB portable drive that I am going to start using to back-up my sermons now. By the way, it doesn’t get “easier” the more I do it. Thanks for stopping by.
David — I followed your lead in the sermon about verse 19 “Your faith has saved you”. Thanks much.
I wish I had a hard copy of the sermon I preached, but I didn’t write a manuscript. I jotted down some notes and preached of those. I will try to organize those and post those later (probably later in the week if my office computer is fixed).
Ouch, that is one of my Saturday evening nightmeres: that I will wake up to a computer crash and no sermon. Glad to hear that it worked out so well.
By the way, Five Questions are posted on my site for your interview.
Shame,
I’ll admit I smiled a bit at the circumstances and the response.
Living in Africa power outages are something we’ve learnt to deal with but thank God I’ve not lost any preparation as of yet.
How did things pan out?
In Christ,
Mark
I mentioned I felt better about the new sermon I wrote and it went very well that Sunday. God works in very strange ways sometimes in order to get our attention. Praise be to God!