Mother’s Day sermons and blog posts have been trending on The Master’s Table for a couple of days now. Lots of search engine traffic. So it could be preachers mining my blog for sermon material but admittedly I sometimes do a Google search just to see what other guys are doing just to get started.
This post was written in 2009, three months before our daughter Johannah was born. One of the issues some have with recognizing Mother’s Day at church is that some woman that would like to be mothers cannot be while others have lost children. My Mother’s Day sermon in 2009 starts with a look into the experiences of Abraham and Sarah but takes a very personal turn. We had no way of knowing for sure that Johannah would be born healthy and happy on August 11th, her mother’s birthday, nor that subsequent issues would result in our never having any other children.
We feel blessed with our little family. We’ve made a lot of new friends, online and IRL, since this post was written a decade ago. It offers a glimpse into who we were and what we were doing back then. I enjoyed the look back. Here’s the link again, just thought I would share.
I just returned from the 26th annual Rome Prayer Breakfast. The event is catered by Chick-fil-A and various individuals offer prayer for military veterans, police and first responders, business leaders, educators, families, pastors and church staff. Each year a speaker is invited to give an address and this year John O’Leary joined us. I had never heard of John but he shares a personal story of a tragic incident/accident that happened in his childhood. He was playing with fire and gasoline at the age of nine and basically blew up his parents garage. He was burned on 100% of his body. Yes, 100% of his body. 87% of those burns were 3rd degree and he lost all of his fingers on both hands. Today he is married with four kids but his testimony involves a great deal of fighting with endurance. He has a great sense of humor, the audience shared lots of laughs and he closed playing the piano.
If you listen to my Sunday sermon (it’s linked in the left-hand sidebar) there are numerous references to Peter and other disciples fishing. Jesus called Peter by telling him that he would become a “fisher of men.” Peter left his nets behind and that’s an important detail to keep in mind.
If you don’t know about the recent special session of the General Conference of the United Methodist Church, the issues at hand nor the potential for that denomination to split, I’m going to assume it’s because you have been trying to avoid hearing about it. I’m not even going into it here. I suspect you either know all you want to and more or you are really trying hard not to find out.
Epiphany celebrates the wise men or Magi finding Jesus. They arrived sometime after his birth in Bethlehem, possibly a year or two later though this is a subject of much debate. Western Christians officially recognize Jan. 6th as the traditional date of Epiphany but it is increasingly common to celebrate on the first Sunday after Jan. 1st. This year January 6th actually falls on Sunday. 
There is no command in the New Testament to celebrate Christmas. Jesus is not disappointed over losing “his day” to Santa Claus or commercialism or anything else. He never asked for a day but rather we assigned him one. What Jesus wants is a place in your heart not a date on your calendar. He wants to bring each of us into a personal relationship with a loving God. He tells us to abide in him as he abides in the Father.
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