I suspect that all my life Sunday has been a special day. Being raised a Christian, Sunday is the day we set aside for a time of Worship, Word and Fellowship. The Muslims have Friday, the Jews have Saturday, and we get Sunday!
For the past 30+ years of ministry (actually it’s feels closer to 100…), my Sunday morning has a routine that involves rising earlier than normal. Generally I just tell myself to get up early the night before and around 4am I start rolling out of bed. Even when church does not start till mid-afternoon, I still get up early. In the summers of Alaska, the sun would be up for a long time before I got up. In the winters of Alaska, I would beat the sun up by half a day!
After breakfast and coffee I retire to my study (kitchen table, living room or office) and begin to polish my Sunday message. It used to be that included printing, but this past year I acquired an iPad and now everything is on a screen. This sure makes it easy to update on the fly and have a good copy to transfer back to my laptop for storage.
Every so often a Sunday morning comes around where I do not get to preach. This is one of them. I actually allowed myself to sleep until 5:30, had breakfast, and now have several hours to myself with nothing to get accomplished. So, I spend time on the computer getting things done that I did not get done in the days gone by.
It’s storming outside. The wind is pounding on the South side of the house (the back), and there’s a little rain mixed in… It is only 57 which tells me this storm is a Warm Front and there’s no snow at sea level, but probably so in the mountain passes. There will be some that stay home due to the weather, but this does not stop the prep work for those that will come to Church! In Alaska, we cancelled church several times when it snowed so much that the streets were not yet cleared, or when the ice storms essentially shut down the city making it unsafe to drive. In Texas I remember only one cancellation and it had to do with a storm (maybe a hurricane) that passed through and flooded all the streets around the church.
Regardless… Sunday is here, church is soon, and I’m ready!