Relearning a contextual lesson

Last winter I learned that sometimes all our carefully planning and preparation for ministry activities can go out the window. I had spent the week prepping a sermon for the small country church where I serve as lay minister. But mother nature had other ideas. A snow storm on Sunday morning prompted a phone call from the congregational president, who informed me that if they had church, there would be about 3 people there: the president himself, his wife (the organist), and me. So they called off church. All that prep work down the drain. Or so I thought. About two weeks later, I was at my home church, doing a little prep work for a class I was teaching the next morning. The pastor who was preaching that weekend came in the office and asked me if I had a sermon "in the can." He then asked me if I could preach it at the Saturday night service, which was about 2 hours away. Fortunately it all worked out okay.

So the lesson was the need to be adaptable, because sometimes life gets in the way. Last night, the same type of thing happened. I had prepped my class for the first night of confirmation. Everything was ready, with the exception of me having to bounce back and forth from the classroom to my wifes office to hop on her computer and deal with a work issue. Well, then the moment arrived. Class was ready to start...zero students. They were all taking other classes or had already taken the class that I was teaching. Prep work...no longer required.

So instead, I sat in on one of the other classes with one of the pastors. I guess that it was okay though. As the work issues (problems with semi-trucks at their loading locations...keep in mind I'm a trucking broker by day and seeminly by night as well) continued to occurr, I had to excuse myself from that class several times over as well. Then of course the issues continued as I got home and was working on homework. That's the joys of online learning though. The computer will still be sitting there when the phone call/crisis is over.