Funny Messy Life

   My pastor recently delivered a sermon that I needed to pay extra attention to. It’s not that I don’t always pay close attention to the sermons, but anybody who’s spent much time in the congregation of a church will tell you that on occasion a person’s mind can wander. When I was an early teen, I was in love with the preacher’s daughter and so my mind was on the two of us skipping gaily, hand-in-hand through meadows of dandelions while the theme song from The Neverending Story played on the wind in the background. In fact, thinking about her now brings back an embarrassing memory involving her from those days and I’ll tell you about it at the conclusion of this episode. I’m Michael Blackston and this is my Funny, Messy, Life.    Nowadays, I’m more apt to stay engaged with the sermon and only mentally stray when he mentions food, or football, or food. But this recent sermon was different because he was going into detail about deaconship in the church - what it really means and what’s expected of someone who’