Month: September 2026

The one God designed and gave me for my time on earth lasted over 78 years. I just hope the man-made one I’ll be getting on October 8th will last until I get the new eternal body God has promised me. Yes, it’s time for a total knee replacement.

I assume you’ve noticed the handrail on the platform, and have watched me carefully make my way to the pulpit with a cane. Hopefully, those days will soon be over. How soon, I’m not sure.

I met with the doctor last week and he outlined what I should expect during recovery. He said when I get home, I’ll feel great. But once the spinal wears off, I’ll really need the meds he’s prescribed. After a couple of weeks of agony and PT, I should start feeling better. After four weeks I should be doing pretty well, and after six I might actually think this was a good idea.

So, I guess it’s time for a vacation, or what I’ve heard preachers refer to as a sabbatical. I must confess I’m not really sure what’s supposed to be done on a sabbatical, but I doubt it’s laying around the house in a recliner with ice water circulating around a swollen knee.

Whatever you want to call it, I’m planning to be out of the pulpit for four weeks. Mark will be preaching for the last three weeks of October, and Levi will be preaching on the first of November. And yes, you heard that right.

As you may have guessed, we will be having a youth Sunday on November 1st. Teens will be leading in all aspects of the morning worship service, and my grandson, Levi Hunley, will be preaching.

I’m really looking forward to Levi’s sermon, but I’m also looking forward to Mark’s planned series on discipleship. I hope to be back in a pew for at least some of Mark’s sermons, but can pretty much guarantee I’ll be back in church for youth Sunday. I’m not sure when I’ll be able to lead Wednesday and Sunday night studies, but am confident they will be well led when I’m not there.

I’ve learned to adjust to the limitations I’ve had for eight months, but I’m really looking forward to once again going on walks with Marilyn.

God Bless, Rick

I had to admit I had not. I knew the story, and knew it contained some Biblical teaching, but had no idea how wonderful it is. Having been written 300 years ago it’s not an easy read, but let me share just a little of what Robinson discovered after being marooned on a desert island.

“I finished my fourth year in this place, and kept my anniversary with the same devotion and with as much comfort as ever before; for, by a constant study and serious application to the Word of God, and by the assistance of His grace, I gained a different knowledge from what I had before. I entertained different notions of things. I looked now upon the world as a thing remote which I had nothing to do with, no expectations from, and, indeed, no desires about.

I was removed from all the wickedness of the world here; I had neither the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eye, nor the pride of life. I had nothing to covet, for I had all that I was now capable of enjoying. I had enough to eat and supply my wants, and what was all the rest to me? The most covetous, griping miser in the world would have been cured of the vice of covetousness if he had been in my case; for I possessed infinitely more than I knew what to do with.

I had now brought my state of life to be much easier in itself than it was a first, and much easier to my mind, as well as to my body. I frequently sat down to meat with thankfulness, and admired the hand of God’s providence, which had thus spread my table in the wilderness. I learned to look more upon the bright side of my condition, and less upon the dark side, and to consider what I enjoyed rather than I wanted; and this gave me sometimes such secret comforts, that I cannot express them; and which I take notice of here, to put those discontented people in mind of it, who cannot enjoy comfortably what God has given them, because they see and covet something that He had unto given them. All our discontents about what we want appeared to me to spring from the want of thankfulness for what we have.”

God Bless, Rick