Today's devotional reading comes from the The Christian Year of Grace and focuses on the Gospel reading appointed for today, Luke 17:11-19.

Marginalia is the ancient term for any words, markings, or drawings added to the blank spaces around the text on the pages of a book. Bible marginalia is nothing new---monks did it, Bach drew inspiration from it, and my grandmother did it. Many of you are already in the habit of adding notes in your margins!

If you ask 50 people in your congregation, “What one attribute matters most for a leader in the church?” you will likely get a wide variety of responses. The truth is, even though the responses may vary, they would likely fit into one overarching theme: a leader’s credibility. Credibility is the differentiating factor between good and great leaders—including leaders in ministry. A leader may have all the skills and knowledge in his or her area of expertise, but will continually struggle if credibility is lacking.

Today's devotional reading for the Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost comes from Concordia Pulpit Resources.

Today commemorates Jerome, Translator of Holy Scripture. The devotional reading comes from the Treasury of Daily Prayer.

A little known fact: our family enjoys the show iCarly. It's probably considered old at this point, but offer up a reasonably clean show with clever characters, for free on Amazon Prime, and you've got yourself some committed Goehmann fans. There is no reason you would need to know or care about this little known fact, save for a thirty-second clip of one episode, involving high emotions and Mexican sponges.

All you have to do is turn on an electronic device with a screen to be bombarded with frustrating news: a presidential candidate has run his or her mouth about the opposition or a certain people group; a commentator on ESPN rails against the actions of players during pregame rituals; or that one Facebook friend is once again offended because, well, it’s Wednesday. It seems that no matter where we look today in the world, we only find a barrage of talking faces spewing “I’m right, you’re wrong” vitriol, and all too often, we as Christians get caught up in that same self-righteousness.

What are the doors like in your house? The front and back doors of my house are painted a jolly white, with six little farmhouse windowpanes in each. If someone knocks on the door, you can easily see who came to visit. There's no straining to see out a peephole or standing on my tippy-toes to assess the identity of an unexpected visitor. The bad part—there's no hiding from anyone either. If you walk near the door to see who it is, your long shadow will fall across the curtains and signify that someone is home. If you tried to crouch down and avoid someone, the sound of your footsteps would be all too obvious. Can you picture me doing this? Squatting down low enough, like I'm playing a game with my two-year-old, hiding from the eye of my visitor?

After school is homework time at my house. The kids are working on their homework, and as I tell them, “Mom has some homework too.” So they work through math problems, reading assignments, and memory work while I tackle emails or other work projects that need to be addressed before the end of the day. Recently, during our homework time, I perked up when my eight-year-old said, “Alexa, open the Small Catechism.” Alexa greeted him, then Connor asked, “Alexa, what is the Second Commandment?”

In this edition of the Writers' Roundtable, we sat our authors down to talk about how speaking engagements can impact their writing and engage readers. Our authors also shared a few best practices they have discovered along the way.