Sometimes I notice what I keep doing.  I'll be speaking (as I did this past weekend) on elders, congregationalism, membership, the Gospel, and I'll think "I'm saying this again.  I've said this many times before.  Now I'm saying this again."  I stop and talk to an older saint, and hear how much she is called to endure in her following of Christ.  Reflecting on my own life, and my own congregation, I am reminded that I'm always in need of learning the same things   again.  Just as meals in a family are patiently prepared again, and clothes are washed again, and children are corrected again, and spouses ask forgiveness or enjoy one another again, or God forgives us again, so we in our daily lives are called to do much that we do   again.

That is the nature of this life.  But then I'm encouraged by what Martin Luther said, “This life, therefore, is not righteousness but growth in righteousness, not health but healing, not being but becoming, not rest but exercise.  We are not yet what we shall be but we are growing toward it.  The process is not yet finished but it is going on.  This is not the end but it is the road.  All does not yet gleam in glory but all is being purified.” 

But a day is coming . . . .