the bowls in hindsight and other more important matters

Just a note that I did predict Texas as the winner of the Rose Bowl and subsequently as the National Champions. Of course, I also had Georgia and Auburn as winners, but West Virginia and Wisconsin, their respective adversaries, were inspired and prepared. I will confess that I have a difficult time staying up until 2:00 a.m. in the morning to watch these bowl games, and even less patience for the endless commercials. Of course, this is an eastern standard time problem, but, nevertheless, I am rarely still with it when these games end. Otherwise I would be yawning through pre-marital sessions, finance meetings and hospital visits the next day, and this would not be good.

Our older daughter and her governor's school alum friends are in our mountain house this weekend. Pray for them all....and for the house...and for our neighbors there. Our younger daughter has a basketball game tomorrow night and a volleyball tournament this weekend. And Pam and I are recovering from the holidays, still, adjusting to a short week, and getting ready for a new year.

It was an honor to be profiled last week at the Locusts and Honey site (see the link under "inside voices"). Having entered a new year, I realize that i have completed two book projects and contributed to three others in 2005: one book is on baptism, and is due to be published by Abingdon in September; the second is on intercessory prayer and was just sent to the good people at the Upper Room last week; I think it appears in a year or so; a chapter is in print now in an Alban Institute book entitled From Nomads to Pilgrims, which is a response to the myth that the mainline church is dying; and I also contributed a few sermons to the 2007 Abingdon Preaching Annual and a study on spiritual gifts for The New Interpreter's Bible Study. These last two can be accessed through the Abingdon Press website, in the "texts' links. They are due to be in print in the spring.

I do not plan any comparable writing projects in the coming year, although I am committed to a couple of short assignments---a sermon for the Biblical Preaching Journal, and three sermons for the Abingdon Preaching Annual (could it be 2008?). It will be nice to read more and write less. Instead, it looks like a year with a little more travel--a mission soon to Haiti with church members and friends, a trip in the spring to China to see our daughter who will be there, a conference in the summer at Sedona in Arizona, sponsored by the Center for Theological Inquiry.

Currently I am at work on this Sunday's sermon, related to the Baptism of the Lord, and I am working with a wonderful image from Kenda Dean's The Godbearing Life, namely the experience of "breaking water", which, of course, is not a male experience, except as a close observer. But what she has to say about the process of birth and its relation to youth ministry and, by extension, to all of ministry and life, is profound.

Meanwhile, I am deeply saddened by the deaths of the miners in West Virginia. That state has known more than its share of oppression, degradation and tragedy, and the pain of the families is almost palpable. Surely God hears their cries and will come down to deliver them...