Just Keep Tryin'

In my previous incarnation as a preacher some 30 years ago, I was given a wonderful gift. The gift came while I was greeting "all the saints" upon their departure from the church building following a Sunday evening worship service. Most of them were on their way for the weekly "strawberry pie and coffee" gathering at the local Shoney's, where the glories of the worship time would be relived amid raucous laughter and tidbits of congregational gossip.

I was standing at the door, feeling quite satisfied with my latest homiletical endeavor, completed just a few minutes beforehand. I had (as we said in that tradition) "carried the mail and laid it on the line for the Lord" -- a full forty-five minutes' worth of shoutin' and arm-wavin', punctuated with copious amounts of Scripture quoting while I paced the platform like one of those restless big cats at a zoo. My voice was raspy. My J. C. Penney, three-piece, black suit was damp with perspiration, which signaled the energy I had expended in my preaching performance. All in all, a good effort (I thought) at the preachin' -- especially for a 19-year old kid. In short, my ego was "puffed up", and one of the saints was about to provide a pointed few words that would work like a needle on the thin skin of an over-inflated balloon.

She shook my hand, looked me squarely in the eyes and said, "Just keep tryin', son."

Thirty years later. Even with a 15-year hiatus between my earlier incarnation as a preacher and my current one, I've done my fair share of preaching. The sermons these days take much longer to prepare and the end result takes much less time to deliver. Today's effort, for better or worse, is finished. Next Sunday is already chugging toward me. No time to ruminate about what could have, should have or ought to have been said today. Time to move on. Thirty years later and wonder of wonders, I get to try again next week.