conjectural navel gazing; jesus in lint form

surreality and sermon thoughts

Every morning I check my sitemeter account. This is the nifty bit of free plug-in that lets me track who has visited my site and for how long...and from where! That last one is sometimes interesting. I can unearth geographic information as well as the links that were followed. This morning someone came through Google. This happens. And I find it interesting to know what they googled to get me. Today it was "baptism of jesus" "willow creek"...yep, just like that. And of the one hundered and twenty-three sites that pop up if you google that particular combination, mine is the first. How do these things happen?

In sermon news, I have been chatting with and listening to some friends who listen for a living. Two are journalists and one is a lawyer. It is interesting to discover how they understand listening. The purpose of my interviewing them is to unearth a deeper understanding of the passage from James this week. I believe that the idea of being "doers of the Word" is predicated upon being accomplished listeners of/to the word. I wonder if the reason some of us hear the Word but do not act is because for some reason we cannot hear or discern God in the Word of God, whether from holy writ or our life together.