Sunday Sermon

"To give thanks in solitude is enough. Thanksgiving has wings and goes where it must go. Your prayer knows much more about it than you do."
-Victor Hugo

Dear lord,

Please pray for my many friends who have experienced great loss this past week and for those who still have unanswered questions and are holding out hope.

Amen.

Hope is a four-letter word.

We hope for the best and let God take the reigns from there. Yet, there is something magical in having some say in the eventual outcome.

I went home for the holidays last month and did my usual field trip to old neighborhoods and stomping grounds. It helps me to maintain my sanity and focus.

"No matter how bad you think you got it, someone got it worst."
-Wyclef

It struck my as pretty interesting that some of the old hoods I visited this time were now enclaves for massive housing projects. Liberty Hill is no more. North Park Village is no more. John C Calhoun Homes are no more. Just large single-family homes amidst downtrodden double-wides and shadowmoss eerily reminiscent of abandoned air force bases.

"Things done changed."
-Biggie

We can hold out hope that what we've always come to expect will still be there time after time, yet forever ain't promised.

Once upon a time, I hit that fork in the road. Up until that point, life was going its normal course and would have reached its eventual conclusion. But bad judgment and circumstance combined to to make mirrors cloudy. Due to the intervention of someone who didn't have to intervene on my behalf, I went home that night.

And to this day, I never said thank you.

Well, until Wednesday, December 30, 2009.

It's strange how a 30-year-old man can get butterflies walking into someone's corner office, but it happens. I felt 13 again. I shook his hand, thank him, and hugged him. I felt good. I certainly was on the verge of spiraling out of control. He probably saved from my life. Its never to late to give thanks.

Thank you, Ed Barfield.