"My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four unless three other people were present." - Orson Welles

Doubles tennis is such a macho sport.

Try this: lay on the floor in front of and close to your TV and look up to watch a basketball game. Weird!

Chrysler filed for Chapt. 11 bankruptcy today. The market reacted by dropping 17 points, less than 1/4 of 1%. Why? Wasn't it supposed to plummet 400 points?

Al is back to eating normally. He just ate 3 cups of his dry food for dinner, a normal serving. He's fast asleep in the floor now but in a few minutes I'll take him out for his constitutional.
Life is pretty warped when you measure your day in part by how firm your dog's stool is.

Johnny had been sitting on the toilet for longer than normal so his mom went to check on him. He was fine, but he sat there banging on the top of his head.
"Are you OK, Johnny?"
"Yes, I just haven't done doody yet."
Mom says, "That's fine. You sit there as long as you want. But why are you banging on your head?"
"It works for the ketchup."

I mentioned that I wasn't happy with the rolled edging I put in between the fine and coarse gravel. So today I went up the hill to Home Depot to look at options. They don't sell treated 1x4's here. Don't know why. They also don't sell 16" bricks, only 8". And they're 69 cents each. Ouch!

I've found the stock and prices of Home Depot and Lowe's to be almost identical but I decided to drive across the street (!) to check out Lowe's options. They don't carry treated 1x4's either but they do sell a 2x2x12 brick for 39 cents. Score! So I got half of what I need and am working on getting them installed. I'll do the other half sometime next week.


One of the things I tried to impress on my homiletics students was the importance of propositional preaching. That term means that every sermon should have a proposition - what in a term paper they call a thesis statement. We refer to it as "the sermon in a sentence".

For example, a term paper might have as its thesis statement: "The alarm over the swine flu is unwarranted." That sentence, or something very similar, should appear by the bottom of the first page and everything in the rest of the paper should serve to illustrate, prove or inform according to that very narrow thesis.

Likewise, sermons should have a proposition, a sentence that encompasses everything in the sermon. You'd be surprised at how difficult - and how effective it is to stick to that system. The sermon becomes a bullet instead of buckshot.

I'd tell my students that if I stood in the foyer after the sermon and asked people exiting the auditorium, "What was that sermon about?" the people should be able to answer me with one sentence, and that sentence should be the same as the one at the top of their notes.

No truth not directly related to the proposition belongs in the sermon., It may be very true, very important and very applicable, but if it doesn't fit your proposition...kick it out and save it for another sermon. Way too often people walk out of a sermon and, whether they articulate it or not, think, "He said a bunch of true stuff but I have no idea what that sermon was about." A proposition, carefully written and diligently executed keeps the sermon focused and much more likely to hit its mark.

Consider the following example:
Proposition: God answers prayer
Points:
1. God has commanded us to pray.
2. God is powerful enough to answer any prayer.
3. God delights to to answer our prayer.

One of those points is very true but has nothing to do with answered prayer and doesn't belong in this sermon.

I spent time this morning working on my sermon. Step One: study the passage thoroughly. Step Two: write the proposition. Sometimes the second step comes easily and sometimes, like this week, it's really hard to identify the essential truth of the passage and express it in one sentence. I know what Paul is saying, but getting it into one sentence...
Preaching is a rewarding effort that I thoroughly enjoy, even when it's hard work. I am blessed to have this responsibility.
OK, sometimes I'm not so thrilled with it Sunday afternoon but that has to do with the doofus that didn't get it right.