Adios March 1st

Well, March 1st has come and gone. That was the date that I had proposed sending my final draft to my adviser so that I could send the final approved version to my thesis director. I'm not even close to that possibility. But, I'm ok with that. It kinda hit me at about 11:45 pm on Friday night. But, I'm over it now and working at a steady, if slow, pace. I will graduate next summer, and in fact plan to be done with this before the School year starts in September.

Next week, I get to preach for the first time. Not on Sunday, obviously, but we're having mid-week lenten services and I'm preaching for one of them. The theme for these services which will lead up to Good Friday is "Hope in Troubled Times: A Contemporary Reflection on the Seven Last Words of Christ." My word is "I thirst"; Hope for Social Justice in the Face of Human Privation. I'll be talking about Jesus thirsting for water, but also thirsting for the very water that he offered to the woman at the well. He understands our physical and spiritual thirst because he has felt those thirsts first hand. Jesus has walked this way before. And, so, out of our own baptismal waters, the water that Jesus gives us that springs eternal, we are moved to make choices that lead to social justice and not human privation. The need for water is a life making-or -breaking factor in our lives. Motivated by our new life in Christ, how do we act to help others gain access to clean and abundant water - both H2O and spiritual water?

Meanwhile, the writing for the thesis chugs along... slowly but surely.