The theme that Roots invited us to explore this morning was repentance and to do so via the Greek etymological root of 'metanoia' which can be expressed 'think again'.  A good idea.  A helpful idea.

As I prepared the sermon I found myself recalling some of Benjamin Keach's worst doggerel - the stuff that makes you wonder how it ever was that Baptists came to sing hymns...

Repentance like a bucket is

To pump the water out

For leaky is our little ship

Which makes us look about.

If you want to find yourself unable to get this out of your brain for a week, you can sing it to the tune of 'Our God, our help in ages past' the author which was contemporaneous (roughly anyway) with Keach.

It is dire as hymnody, but as a metaphor I quite like it - repentance as an ongoing process of baling water out of a ship that perhaps leaks or risks being overwhelmed by the rough seas of life... the sense of being all in it together (plural pronouns throughout).  Repentance not as turning round through 180 degrees (never quite 'got' that as it implies oging back whence you came) but as a process that never ends.

If you wanted to link it to some newer doggerel (we didn't) then how about

With Jesus in the vessel you can smile at the storm

Smile at the storm, smile at the storm

With Jesus in the vessel you can smile at the storm

As we go sailing home...

Again rubbish poetry but there is some merit in the idea of Jesus riding with us through the storms of life, not miraculously calming the sea, but sharing the experience.  Not so sure about smiling at the storms, more likely to grimace, but even so, plural language and life that is not all sunshine and absolutes.

So, repentance as a bucket, or maybe an act of baling, that goes on and on, and in which Christ participates... from the doggerel a germ of a helpful illustration, I think.