Sermon: “The Roses Will Bloom Again”
by on September 12, 2008
Here is a sermon I preached at First Baptist New Orleans this summer called “The Roses Will Bloom Again.” The great Baptist preacher R. G. Lee was pastor of this church in the 1920s and he preached a sermon with this same title just before the Great Depression hit. It was a crazy time back then. World War I had reeked havoc on the optimism of the previous century. Charles Darwin insisted that humans only get better and better, and people began to realize the cold and shocking truth that humanity might not be as pretty as we thought. If anything, we were getting worse. Trench warfare and genocide were on the forefront of the American mind. And it is against this background that Lee preached “The Roses Will Bloom Again.” In his sermon he talked about the hurricanes of life, the storms that we can’t understand. Lee’s most famous sermon is “Payday Someday,” preached thousands of times in thousands of churches across the south. But “The Roses Will Bloom Again” spoke to the mysterious way God reveals himself, sometimes even in the storm.
In light of hurricane Katrina and all the devastation First Baptist Church sustained, I picked this text because I wanted to offer a word of encouragement to the congregation. Many families in this church left and never came back, other lost everything in the storm.
Continue to pray for this church as they are faced with a rather active hurricane season.
