It happens every Sunday morning at every congregation: As soon as sinners gather, they start to compare themselves to each other.

How often do we go for gold in grumbling? How hard is it for us to let someone else be more wretched than we are?

The Lord put His Church together so that each member is an important part of the Body. We are incomplete when even one of our members is missing from our fellowship.

“You’re going to be out of a job soon, Pastor Bob,” I said to our pastor in the handshake line the other Sunday. “Not you personally. But preachers everywhere.”

Every “now” of our lives is a good time to pray. Whether we are content or troubled, each day is a good day to pray to the Lord.

Our life together should certainly include bearing one another’s burdens and interceding for the sorrowful, but it is also important to celebrate together — to “rejoice with those who rejoice” even as we also “weep with those who weep” (Rom. 12:15).

God does not call on us to don a cape and trounce bad guys, vigilante style. But He does take care of our neighbors through our rather mundane actions as we fulfill our various vocations.

As far as the east is from the west, so far does Christ remove our transgressions from us.

On the surface, confessing your transgressions unto the Lord sounds like a very bad idea. If you can’t get rid of your faults, it’s only human to hide them.

The backpacks are loaded; the school clothes are laid out. The kids are ready — but are you?

Even when “all other ground is sinking sand,” our hope in Christ is an expectant hope. It looks forward and is confident that all the promises of God are “yes” in Jesus.

As we visit sister congregations this summer, let us never fail to remember what the Church is: not a five-star resort for visiting saints but a haven for sinners, including us.