Saturday Night

Here it is Saturday night, and I'm rethinking tomorrow's sermon. We have had another death-- this makes the fourth this month. Three this week. In stead of talking about the serious nature of Lent and the need for repentance, I'm feeling like doing a pep rally-style talk on how good God is; people are really freaking out about all the death. We seem to go through phases where several people die quite closely in time to each other. It's really not a supernatural thing, though, but a fact of the age of the congregation-- but most people aren't really realizing that. In stead they're saying things like, "Oh, no. Now there will be two more..." because they think deaths come in threes.

Isn't that weird? I really never thought about it that way-- once I saw a Clint Eastwood movie where a character said that celebrities die in 3's, and I have always remembered that line. But I never really thought about people in general that way. Kate says that a scientist told her it's just human nature to think that things happen for a reason, and that that's why people say the thing about 3's. Maybe. She compared it to the superstition around certain numbers-- like 13, or 7-- but still, you wonder. One of my former professors, Kris Kvam, said it would be interesting to do a study on the correlation-- whether congregations do indeed have members die in 3's. I told Kate this, to which she responded that people die around holidays because holidays are at the hottest and coldest times of the year. Trust the Vulcan to reason it all out.

I think I'm going to look at this superstition-fixation thing and try to preach on people trusting God, and not leaving things to "fate," or whatever they think is the mastermind behind such weird occurrences. Perhaps assuming God's bigger plan is more important will help them not search for other explanations.