Justified by faith?

Having been involved in non stop activity since getting home I did something I've done very rarely before yesterday. I used an old sermon.
Normally a sermon gets forged over two days, sometimes more but this week there was simply no time.
I went looking for a sermon written for Trinity 4. I finally found one using the same readings on my old computer so I think it was at least six years old.
The text was "justified by faith" which was a quote from St Paul of course.
I printed it straight off with no time to juggle, amend or change anything.
So when I started to preach yesterday I had really no way of knowing how the words would flood out of me.
I stayed with the text some of the time but left it to cover global events not even glimpsed when it was written..
In particular I realised that it also covered the desperate words spoken by the killer of Jo Cox.
I do not now remember the words I used as I preached....I can only tell you that some wept and that afterwards there was a huge outpouring from the congregation about my old sermon being so relevant today...
I ended with words of peace , quoting W B Yates from his wonderful poem on Innisfree.
"And I shall have some peace there for peace comes dropping slow"
Peace is what we all need now...sweet, gentle life enhancing peace.
The peace of the Lord be with you. .


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