Be Ready for Every Good Work
Remind them to be submissive to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready for every good work, to speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward all people. For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. The saying is trustworthy, and I want you to insist on these things, so that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works. These things are excellent and profitable for people. (Titus 3:1-8, ESV)
SermonAudio.com has a sermon on this text, preached by Dr. Harry Reeder in Greenville, South Carolina at Second Presbyterian Church. His sermon title is "Grace Regenerates." Look it up and listen.
a tracheotomy delivering smoke
through the thin man selling ice
cream; truck painted colors don't
show the heat outside or the freezers
hip-height lining the walls holding antidote
to sweating barefoot at the driveway's edge.
Bikes wait, held, like child-props; other bikes
lay in the grass, owner's hands in jeans, fingering
a dollar and two coins. Painting a snow scene like a
snow cone, sweltering near a pot-belly stove full of wood
burning up the small room in the kitchen wear mittens drip
and wet socks get peeled off like pain relieving a brain-freeze,
head aching from too cold too fast, and hot, finally the drips stiffen
and shrink the mittens, the socks, while hours dry the leather boots,
years drawn skin around the face of the ice cream man, warming him
self through his tracheotomy, kind to cover his throat to talk the fine print.
in its face, a tint of day, light
falling into moon, rising skims
its entry from beneath the round
mountains, plain trees
watch, their herds listening
green, blue, grays, russet's
dusk waking the lion in
pink, golden, amber hewn
hunger running night, light.