Farmington is blessed with several talented song leaders. Today's song leader is a man who not only leads in worship, but in all aspects of the congregation. He is a man that one immediatly respects because there is this sense that he is truly, deeply, sincerely a Christian. I noticed today at the morning service that the song leader said something to BJ as he walked to the pulpit for the sermon. Tonight, he did the same, so I listened carefully. The man said, "The lord be with you, brother." I thought that was a really beautiful thing to say.
I think my new role as "preacher's wife" has made me particularly atuned to the significance of that little sentence as BJ steps to his podium. Everytime BJ starts a sermon, I get this sense that something extremely important, something much bigger that us, is about to happen. I realize I am hypersensitive to the signifigance of the sermons now that I am the "preacher's wife," but it is still a sobering feeling. BJ pours hours each week into his sermon, and I spend my own fair share of time readying them for showtime. He brings me a rough draft Wednesday or Thursday, and I try to proof them and make sure that BJ's message will come our clearly to his audience. By the time we get to Sunday morning, we have thought about every nook and cranny of the text, tweeked nuancing and swithched words around, and (in my more anal retentive moments) corrected grammar and spelling. But I still get anxious that we might have missed something, that some sentence may have a double entendre we never foresaw, that someone will be offended, that we'll find people don't agree with us and resent us for it, or worst of all, that the happiness of the past month will turn out to not be real. And every time the fears start darkening like the red storm clouds that blow over Abilene, I have to remind myself that it is in God's hands. And, yes, that the Lord is with BJ. He is with BJ because people in the congregation like our song leader pray that it will be so, because BJ prays that it will be so, because I pray that it will be so. And it is so. Week after week, it is so.
2 comments:
Kalyn, this is such a beautiful post. We are also praying that God is with you both...love and hugs from the land of the red storms, Allie
I always wondered what he said also. One of the first and few times I had to preach a man told me, "be confident, it is God's message, and you are his man". I was ready after that encouragement.
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