My part of this morning's sermon

We each carry out our servant assignment. I planted the seed, Apollos watered the plants, but God made you grow. It's not the one who plants or the one who waters who is at the center of this process but God, who makes things grow. Planting and watering are menial servant jobs at minimum wages. What makes them worth doing is the God we are serving. You happen to be God's field in which we are working.

1 Corinthians 3:7-9

Close your eyes for a minute or two. No, don’t go to sleep!

Picture the drive on I-## east of B[...]on. Houses, industrial buildings, 6 lanes of traffic, more houses, shops, restaurants… Now imagine only half the traffic. Picture building after building, house after house…empty. It’s dusk, but there are only occasional street lights illuminating nice middle-class, comfortable, suburban neighborhoods…a Wal-Mart, a Lowe’s…

Most of these buildings and houses have no windows, some are missing part or all of their roofs, a few are burned. Every once in awhile, a driveway holds a now-familiar FEMA trailer. The mall lot is empty; the mall has no walls.

It looks like a science-fiction movie set: The Day The Martians Came. But no: it’s suburban New Orleans, 10 months after Katrina left.

However, what it looks like isn’t what it’s about. What this is, is a community and a country making the valiant effort to rebuild, just as all of us are called to build God’s Kingdom every day in the face of tragedies—enormous and personal—and despair—the unexplainable and the obvious—and a universally uncertain future.

Being in D’Iberville, seeing the Gulf Coast and New Orleans, led me to the experience of being used wholly by God as His tool in His plan. It was an astonishingly large feeling.

Or, to put it another way, we are God's house. Using the gift God gave me as a good architect, I designed blueprints; Apollos--or Paul, or John, or Marty--is putting up the walls. Let each carpenter who comes on the job take care to build on the foundation! Remember, there is only one foundation, the one already laid: Jesus Christ. Take particular care in picking out your building materials. Eventually there is going to be an inspection. If you use cheap or inferior materials, you'll be found out. The inspection will be thorough and rigorous. You won't get by with a thing. If your work passes inspection, fine; if it doesn't, your part of the building will be torn out and started over. But we won't be torn out; we'll survive

1 Corinthians 3: 9-15