Joy Day at church yesterday went pretty
well. That’s the emphasis on the third
Sunday of Advent … Joy. And that is pretty
much my favorite one of the season.
That’s when I have an excuse for leaping and twirling in the air (the Hebrew equivalent of “joy”),
greeting people with a strange foreign word (that would be “Chairo,” the Greek word for “joy”), and blowing
bubbles at church (the Pastor Kelley
equivalent of the word). The
teaching was one of the most “verbal” we have had of late. Of course I’m always somewhat verbal at the
teaching time. This time, however, the
folks in the congregation seemed especially ready to make comments and share
stories and ask questions. That’s always
my favorite kind of Sunday sermon.
To top it off, yesterday was the third
Sunday of the month. That meant dinner
on the grounds as well. We had several
crockpots of soup and some pulled pork left over from Bethlehem Street Market,
so we brought those out. Several others
brought in fresh food of different kinds, and we had a whole table full of
desserts. Lots of folks stayed for the
meal, too. So many that we had to set up
an extra table to accommodate them all.
Pretty exciting stuff.
One of our regulars, Ray, made an
observation about the events of the past few days. With Ed’s heart attack, and Lauren and Cathy,
and I taking off from the market in a flash, and everyone who remained
immediately stepping up to fill in the holes in serving and huddling up in
prayer throughout the day … and with the stories of sending Bibles to the
interior of Mexico and money to support the Humphries family in Alaska … and
then hearing from Cathy that Lauren was reading the countless texts and emails
aloud to Ed while tears streamed down his cheeks … the one word that kind of
summed it all up to him was … family. And
then at lunch I was sitting next to him.
Chris, who hadn’t heard our earlier conversation, commented, “Well, this
dinner on the grounds we are having a real family-eat-up-the-leftovers day.” Yep, Ray … Just Family.
2 Corinthians 5:18 says, “All this is from God, who reconciled us to
himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.”
Father, thank you for … well … family. Amen.
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