One Month Left?!

I can hardly believe that July is almost over - and I have just under a month left here at St. James! The time has certainly flown by, not least of all because of how busy I've been and how very much I've been enjoying my time here. It seems as though my blog entries are becoming fewer and farther between... a couple things have contributed to this: first off, I've done more public speaking in the past few weeks than I've ever done before in my life, and I seem to be the sort of person who needs to practice and rehearse a talk a good bit before I feel it's ready.

Last Tuesday I shared a bit about my past and my experiences growing up for the 'Friends & Fellowship Luncheon'; I talked about growing up in the public schools and my faith journey up to this point (and realized on the spot that it hasn't quite been 8 years since I would say I was born again... and yet it's hard to recall what life was like before that!). In talking about my high school experiences I discussed the ministry opportunities I had been given (through Operation Snowball, which was a secular program) and how those affected me and equipped me for the work I'm beginning to do now. About three quarters of the way through the talk, once I'd gotten into talking about college life, I realized I had stopped talking about myself and had started preaching - the description of witnessing my Grandmother's death led to a fairly lengthy bit on how understanding the message of Easter subsequently changed my life and my entire outlook (and ought to change yours as well :-). People were very kind and responded with a great deal of enthusiasm, which I appreciated... almost as much as I appreciated James' (Pastor Richard's son's) little joke after I'd finished giving this talk about myself: "You were very passionate about the subject."

On Wednesday I preached another noon eucharist sermon, which concluded the series Andy (the other intern) and I were sharing on the life of King David. The texts were 2 Samuel 11:1-12:15 (David & Bathsheba), Psalm 51, and John 7:53-8:11, all with profound insights into the nature of sin and how we must respond to it in our lives with God. That evening I also led the second session of the group study in 'Godly Singleness', which focused on 1 Corinthians 7 (in which Paul encourages his listeners to be like him - in other words, to be single).

On Tuesday I taught/led the first of a couple studies in Paul's letter to the Philippians for the women's bible study at St. James (I was assured that I didn't need to find a girly topic to talk about...). A link to the audio of that talk should be up soon, once I figure out the best way of hosting the file.

More updates (hopefully) soon to follow (and hopefully better than just summaries of what I've been doing)!