The Strangest Things

By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept.... Psalm 137:1a

Nearly all the churches around here have suspended Sunday worship services.

The session of GPC meets Friday night to discuss whether or not to re-commence Sunday worship.

I don't think it is sound practice to transfer biblical events whole-cloth to our own era and our own situation.

We tend to do it anyway, don't we?

The OT church had the privilege of corporate worship taken from them.

And we know why. It's spelled out for us in the text.

So I wonder: is this us?

And I wonder some more: is this me?

Not just individual me but me as a representative sample of us all.

Have I appreciated the blessing of being able to assemble in freedom with my brothers and sisters to pray and sing and hear the Word taught?

What about those Sundays when my head has drooped and my eyelids have grown heavy?

Or those times when my thoughts have wandered, say to what I might have for lunch?

Or thinking about that nap I'm going to take?

No, I prefer to think that we are undergoing a trial at the moment, a testing of our faith and we will come out stronger on the other side of this.

Scripture tells me to worship the Lord my God with all my heart, all my soul, all my mind.

Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting, -Psalm 139:23-24

Down to the Ground

Opal stood at the edge of the cotton field and watched the house burn.

Her younger sisters were crying as they all huddled together. Glancing at Mama she saw that expression of grimness and maybe underlying anger that seemed to be Mama's reaction to all of life.

Or maybe just life the way we live it.

Poor sweet Daddy was sitting on a stump with his head buried in his hands.

The neighbors had gathered in the middle on the bleak December night. There was a current of relief as they gathered around the burned-out family. When one of these shotgun shacks began to burn there was a good a chance as not of the folks inside burning with it.

Opal's best friend Wiiladean hugged her.

"I'm so glad you all are okay."

Opal merely nodded, too numb to cry or acknowledge her friend or anything else. She could remember Mama crying out, "The house is on fire!" and Daddy rushing into the front room where they slept to grab baby Alice out of her crib.

Mama and Daddy slept in the middle room. Blessedly the fire had started in the back room, in the kitchen. The smoke burned her nostrils as she helped herd her sisters out the front door.

The small Christmas tree stood in in the corner with its meager decorations and the few presents.

No time to save any of that. She could hear the crackling blaze begin to roar as it grew in intensity and burned its way toward the front of the house.

"You'll stay with me," said Willadean. Indeed each of the children would be shared out among the neighbors until Daddy found them another house.

Though times were hard and money scarce as hen's teeth every family scattered on the nearby farms would pitch in somehow. Even those who sharecropped like Daddy did would pitch in a can of beans.

It was what neighbors did. You picked up the pieces and did the best you could.

Fear Itself

I am amazed.

Shakespeare once wrote, "Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad."

A woman in the local Walmart smacked another up side the head with a package of bacon as they fought over it.

Early on in "The Stand," Stephen King describes the chaos of abandoned vehicles and dead bodies blocking the entrance to the Holland Tunnel out of New York City as the super flu wiped out 90% of the population.

There is a city in Germany, Oberammergau, where the yearly performance of a Passion Play is credited for averting the Black Plague during medieval times.

"The wicked flee when no one pursues...."

Is this that?

I hear there was great fear over possible nuclear annihilation in the fifties when bomb shelters were being built faster than storm cellars in Tornado Alley.

Even many of the local churches are cancelling services over fear of infection.

We err on the side of caution, it is said.

What exactly is wise and cautious and when  (if ever) does caution become fear?

"May you live in interesting times," goes the ancient Chinese curse.

Odd, isn't it, that our main source of interest these days comes out of China?

I guess that's what you would call "irony."

"...but the righteous are bold as a lion" goes the second half of the verse quoted above.

I could use some of that righteousness now.

Not the "self" kind, but the kind that I can't come up with on my own.

Where would we get that, do you think?

Comfort and Joy

When you think "comfort", do you think "food"?

Me too.

Simple but filling and tasty. You know, beans, taters and cornbread. You can make your own list.

But a good way to begin to think about the other ways we experience the sensation of comfort.

For example, there's this older (I can't think of them as "elderly") couple I know. They've been married for many, many years.

They have been through the struggles, weathered the storms, raised their children and are enjoying their grandchildren and their retirement.

That's some comfortable stuff.

What about those younger married couples that I know?

I have a friend who is fond of saying, "There's nothing like being married!"

And I think of the several families for whom I pray daily.

And it has occurred to me that comfort is one of the things I should be asking for on their behalf.

Because sometimes we forget to recognize the sheer comfort we get from the blessing of a hard-working, dedicated husband or wife.

Because it's just so comfortable, I suppose, it is perhaps so easy not to appreciate.

I am grateful for the chance to have recognized that comfort, to have been appreciative of it and been made joyful in it.

Here's to you and yours this day and every day.

Peace, comfort and joy be unto you!