Prior to WWII, in the town of Saumur in France, outside the church, there stood a placard urging French young men to enter the ministry. In part it read, "There are just four days in anyone's life: birth, confirmation, marriage, death. Would you not like to be the one who would be needed on all four of those days?"

At these landmark points in people's lives, the pastor is there in his flowing sleeves and all. But there is much that goes on between the landmarks, and the pastor is there then as well, even if without flowing sleeves.

Often at a baptism, very few church members know what the pastor's involvement has been prior to that grand moment. He was there to catch the tears of that earlier pregnancy, the one no one knew about, the one that miscarried, the one that challenged a mother's faith.

He was there when the marriage strained under the loss. And now that a baby has come to term and has been born, now that that baby is at the font, he gets to be there then as well. He is needed on that day; he is needed many other days.

At the confirmation, very few church members know what went on behind the scenes to bring the confirmands to this moment. Who heard the private conversations between the pastor and the parents who thought sports mattered more than confirmation instruction? Who saw the hours of preparation in order to show that the catechism and the Bible are interesting and pertinent to junior high life in the here and now?

With adult confirmations, who witnessed the knock at the door, the evening calls that cut off an otherwise nice supper at the parsonage, the patient instruction, the make-up sessions at the prospect's kitchen table? The pastor was there for these things, and on confirmation day he gets to be there as well. He is needed on this day; he is needed many other days.

Naturally, the same things could be said about weddings and funerals. There is an enormous amount of private work, private tears, private counsel, private joy, private and patient teaching that goes on behind these public events, between the landmarks.

And all of these things, all of these important and vital things, run alongside another whole area of service the pastor renders - the meetings, the office administration work, the staff and volunteer management work, the evaluating and implementing of programs, the many things that are half public and half private, the things the pastor does in order to inject himself - inject Christ and His Gospel and Sacraments - into the landmark moments of more people's lives.

Beneath all of this private, semi-private, and public work, there is the lonely, quiet, sometimes hollow, sometimes exhilarating, and very private life of the pastor as a Christian under the stole. There is the pastor as a pray-er, the pastor as a student of the Bible and a student of other students of the Bible.

There is the pastor struggling, weeping, hoping, daring, failing, falling, repenting, confessing, trusting and climbing back into that public pulpit, entirely empty, except that in his hands he holds one precious pearl he got only by diving, or sliding, to the depths of need and sorrow himself. It is 8 a.m. on Sunday. Grace, pardon, life in Christ - that is what is needed. That is what he has. That is what he found this week - again - as if he had never found it before. And today, for someone, this will be a landmark. And the pastor is there, and he was there between the landmarks - there with God, there as a sinner pardoned, a dead man raised, a lamb fed, a shepherd being formed - there with people as a stand-in for Jesus, a messenger from God, a catcher of tears, a spokesman for heaven, a bearer of the mysteries of grace. He points to the cross. He would die without the cross. He knows only the cross. And on each landmark day, and on the days between landmarks, he brings men to the cross.

For precisely these reasons he is needed on "all four days" and on ALL the days in between.