I'm a preacher's wife, and I think I like it

Please forgive me, but I am going to take a moment to brag on my husband. I never heard BJ preach until after we were married, and before then all I had ever heard was how he never wanted to be a preacher. Well, since then, BJ has preached at several small congregations in order to pick up some deperately needed money. What I keep finding myself amazed by is what a knack BJ has for preaching. Now I know I'm probably biased, being his wife and all, but I'm really harsh when it comes to sermons. Even the preacher who did our wedding said he sat in his office wandering what I might like for the sermon in our ceremony because he knew I was so picky. This being said, BJ keeps passing all my test.

Yesterday morning, we traveled to Nugent for a preaching gig at a predominantly elderly twenty-person congregation. In the morning service, BJ opened his sermon by talking about the TV show Thirty Days. In an episode from this show, a pro-choice woman goes to live with a pro-life, Christian clinic. The youth group for the church there passed out horrendous pictures of cut fetuses to people on the street. The congregation also stood at abortion clinic practically harrassing those entering. The woman was appalled at the confrontational spirit with which these Christians tried to prove their point. BJ told this story and then paralleled it with Micah, eventually hinging the sermon on Micah 6:8, "And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God". BJ challenged a room full of fundamentalist, rural Texan Christians to uphold their faith not through confrontation, but through peace. I was so proud of him.

Later, at the night service, BJ read Genesis 1. I was a little disappointed when he said that was what he was going to preach on because I have heard so many bad sermons on this chapter, but BJ actually did manage to make me think about it in a way that had never even remotely occured to me. He read and told the creation narratives from a couple of the Mesopotamian cultures that were writing their own narratives around the same time Gensis was written. In all of these narratives, violence is a part of the creation process. He then juxtoposed these narratives with Genesis one. Suddenly, the simple statements of "God saw that it was good" took on a new beauty and peace that I had never seen before. For the first time, I really saw the nature of God in that passage.

I've also been amazed by the reception these small churches have given us. I wander what they think when this guy with an earring and wife who looks about fourteen walks in to preach to them? An yet, at the end of a fairly liberal sermon, the people at Nugent complimented BJ profusely, invited us back, told us how they had never gotten that much out of Micah (I don't know if I had ever read it all the way through), and took us out to Dairy Queen. Isn't it just mind boggling how God has the power to close age gaps, culture gaps, and even the gap between generally conservative and generally liberal people when we practice our faith with peace and love? Due to a few sour apples in my home congregation, I have often viewed small, rural Churches of Christ as the enemy to the view of Christianity I hold. But, thankfully, God has shown me in the past few months in places like Nugent and Oplin what a gift these brothers and sisters of mine are.