Your Jesus Story: Psalm 40 - Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
Last week, when I was preparing to write my sermon, I decided to use my dad’s Lutheran Study Bible. During my recent vacation, my mom had given me several cartons of his vast collection of bibles and hymnals. I felt an immediate closeness to him as I read from its pages. To look at this bible, you’d think it had never been used, except for the dust jacket, which was slightly tattered and faded in a manner you’d expect from a 40-year-old book. My dad was not the kind of person to be hard on things, including his books. Instead of underlining or highlighting his favorite passages, he wrote them down on index cards and affixed them to his desk or his dresser mirror. And he did this a lot. He was a passionate bible-reader, and he enjoyed reading the bible in every translation he could find. His discipline for bible-reading was matched by his discipline in bringing us to church every Sunday. And I mean, every Sunday. It didn’t matter if there was two feet of snow on the ground; if the
