Good morning.

When I've talked to some of you, after I've preached, a few of you have expressed the desire that it be me preaching, not you, because public speaking wasn't something you were comfortable with.

And I can relate to that. For some people, it's a nightmare.

Like the nightmare I had on Friday, where I was going over the sermon in my head, as I do, and I was preaching in this dream.

And about in the middle of the dream, when I wasn't done with a sermon, there was some communication mix up, and someone came up and started giving

announcements, which I'm hoping won't happen.

But if that doesn't happen, I can't promise you what I promised the first service was that

this was going to be my best sermon all year,

but I guarantee top two, within the top two. When Pastor Ben looked at the lessons in the

lectionary for today, for those of you who are not familiar, the lectionary is where we find out

what particular lessons are assigned for a given Sunday. And usually there is an Old Testament

lesson, a New Testament lesson, a gospel, and a Psalm. But for this particular Sunday, there are actually

three completely different set of lessons and three completely different themes. And so Pastor Ben had to choose between these three themes.

The first theme was New Year's.

It is New Year's Day and Happy New Year to all of you,

but that is not the theme he chose.

And so we'll take off our party hats.

We'll put those away for another year.

He also could have chosen this is the second Sunday in the Christmas season,

the first Sunday after Christmas. Christmas lasts, as you know, for 12 days. This is the eighth

day of Christmas, for those of you keeping track, if I've got my numbers correctly, so it would be

maids of milking. We are not talking about that today. So again, we're here in

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