Some days I think that this blog cycles over the same message. The same things. I have written the same post over a thousand times.

I’m already totally stressed out and busy, and I’m starting to get the feeling that I’m just repeating myself. Sometimes I think, “I should write a post about THIS!” and then I realize that I’ve already written a post about that. Twice. Nevermind.

And like Alte, it’s fairly stressful in the extended family: we have at present more than our fair share of sicknesses and kids with problems — including dealing with the bureaucracy, punitive and incompetent teachers (different kids, one with each) and a run of difficult, high risk cases. But this blog continues.

Because I disagree with Alte (for I have quoted from her last post at TC). Repetition is good. Repetition is what the church is about. We do not have to invent or be novel. We have to preach the gospel, using words if needed.

Philippians 3:1-11

¹Finally, my brothers and sisters, rejoice in the Lord.

To write the same things to you is not troublesome to me, and for you it is a safeguard.

²Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of those who mutilate the flesh! ³For it is we who are the circumcision, who worship in the Spirit of God and boast in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh — ⁴even though I, too, have reason for confidence in the flesh.

If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: ⁵circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; ⁶as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless.

⁷Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. ⁸More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ ⁹and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. ¹⁰I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, ¹¹if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

i am not a apostle, and I don’t think my words are a safeguard. But… the main thing this blog is about is posts like this one. The lectionary posts. The ones that often are not read — if I wanted controversy I can go snarky: sarcasm and bitterness are my default positions.

we need to remember that, though our righteousness is in the end based completely on the work of Christ, and that we do not deserve salvation, that most of the witnessing we do is not by what we say, but by how we live. In this fallen time, if you even attempt to live as Christ demands we will not need to speak. For the pagans within the Church will freak, and the pagans without look — in shock — at people who live as they say they do.

And both will try to shut you up.

So, why we can repeat the gospel, men, let us do so. Our sisters will inevitably get tired. They will feel the harsh sting of the sisterhood (while we generally don’t care — in fact we would prefer that they shut up, and will swing the banhammer to ensure that happens)

But learn what my oldest son is finding the hard way as he starts university. Repetition is good, because the stuff you are learning you have to memorize to the point that it is automatic. And that important stuff includes scripture.