The Preacher and Silly Matt

My father was a preacher who practiced his calling for seventy years.  It goes without saying that he prepared hundreds of sermons.  I have written about this a bit in the past but where I want to go here has to do with the papers he left behind.

I have file cabinets filled with notebooks in which he had stored his sermon outlines, clippings, anything germane to his interests, and that encompasses much of life's quirks, oddities, and yes, triumphs.

Several years ago I started to transcribe Dad's sermon outlines.  After a good number had been done I realized at some point that I was never going to complete the task.  I drifted on to other things and now I am hard pressed to recall even where the digital copies are stored.  Do I even still have the drive on which I stored them?  I am not as well-organized as some people are.

A few days ago I opened the bottom drawer of a four-drawer file cabinet and pulled out one of the notebooks it contained, one I had not gone through before. Yes, it contains sermon outlines, but also some odds and ends of this and that, including this little verse entitled "Silly Matt" which I remember having heard my father recite:

I feel so exceedingly silly,

I say what I shouldn't to ought.

My mind is as frail as a lily

'Twould break with the weight of a thought.

I am so exceedingly lazy

I neglect what I oughtn't to should.

My notion of work is so hazy

That I couldn't to toil if I would.