A season for considering power.

Billman, Kathleen

The author of Preaching Helps for the June issue of Currents is the Rev. Dr. Stephanie Salinas, pastor of the First Baptist Church (ABCUSA) of Bangor, Maine, where she resides with her husband, the younger of two sons, and a house rabbit named Prudence. She earned the Master of Divinity degree from New Brunswick Theological Seminary and the Doctor of Ministry degree from McCormick Theological Seminary, one of the participating theological seminaries in the Association of Chicago Theological Schools Doctor of Ministry in Preaching Program.

Craig Satterlee, the former editor of Preaching Helps, served as Dean of that program, and over the years called many of its participants into service as writers for Preaching Helps. When Dr. Satterlee resigned his faculty position at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago and the editorship of Preaching Helps to become Bishop of the North West Lower Michigan Synod ELCA, he left the Currents staff with a list of authors already recruited for 2013-14. As we come nearly to the end of that list of authors and begin preparing for a new editor, Barbara Lundblad, to take over the editorship of Preaching Helps, we give thanks once again for the faithfulness of those who, like Craig, shouldered tasks and kept their word about what they said they would do, so that a common venture could move forward without undue stress on the other partners.

Pastor Salinas begins her commentaries with the statement, "August is a season for considering power." She chooses focus stories in each of the readings and ends the readings for August with a reflection on metaphor in Genesis. Following the same format, she chooses focus texts for each of the Sundays in September and concludes with a pastoral reflection on forgiveness and responsibility.

A bishop I deeply respect commented to me recently that more and more people today are being held responsible for things over which they have very little or no control, and the result is depression and rage. Daily we are reminded of overwhelming situations that confront the largest of nations and the smallest of families. What does it look like in action to embody the "serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference"? It helps me to remember that this longing for clarity, so familiar to those in Twelve-Step programs, is expressed in a prayer for help--in the fervent hope for a kind of discernment that relies on God's grace and strength, every day. In this larger "resting" of responsibility for the outcome of things in God's care, there is--paradoxically--the daily strength to do what I can.

August and September are months that, for many preachers, hold both breathing space and the press of "beginning again" after summer's alternate rhythms. May both spaces be filled with holy wisdom, holy word.

Kathleen Billman, Interim Editor of Preaching Helps