Pete’s Preaching Today

Pete is preaching today. At my church you never know who will be in the pulpit from one week to the next. Most of the time its David Dwight, but there are three or four other guys who take turns. Today it will be Pete Bowell. I know this because it was my turn to prepare the discussion questions for the sermon this week, so I received his notes on Monday. I had seriously considered calling Tera Fleming, the coordinator of this project, and telling her that I couldn’t do it this week. I didn’t feel up to it honestly. But then I started to feel guilty for disappointing Tera by shirking my responsibility, so I opened the email and read through Pete’s sermon notes.

I can picture him delivering this message. This one is right in his wheelhouse. The topic is anxiety, precisely, why it is that we humans constantly worry about everything. The scripture is from the 6th chapter of Matthew’s gospel, right in the middle of the famous Sermon on the Mount. As fate would have it—if you believe in fate—crushing anxiety was the very thing that almost caused me to bail on this responsibility this week. Had I followed through on the bailing I would have missed my encounter with the words of Jesus in Matthew 6: 25-34. It was exactly what I needed to be confronted with this week. The worry and anxiety had become debilitating, it felt like I was wearing a thick and heavy winter coat in the midst of a heat wave. Reading this passage and Pete’s thoughts, along with a few encouraging and wise texts from Tera brought me back into a place of relative strength and peace.

So, there are many lessons to be taken from this experience. First, don’t shirk your responsibilities. It was my turn to do the discussion questions. My mood of the moment was irrelevant to that responsibility. Second, the scriptures are alive with the power to inform and correct, no matter how many times you have read them. They are new every morning.

So, I will listen closer than usual this morning to Pete’s words. He will make me laugh out loud at least once. He will add things that weren’t in his notes. But I will come away from it feeling more confidence and less fear.