Monday ... Happy day. I'm so glad I don't dread Mondays, or any day in particular. This is weird enough to note:
My husband stopped teaching Sunday school sometime ago ... for whatever reasons, which I would say from observation, sort of disengaged him from church. He became less plugged in. He also opted to move our family from the big church back to the church where we have worshipped most of the time we've been here in the South. Now we go only to Sunday morning church service. The church is currently without a pastor and the strength and love of longterm friendships lends support. Baptist congregations, unlike some other faiths, are pretty much in charge of finding and "calling" their own pastor. This church is small, and pastors come and go like cars on the Interstate on their way to somewhere else. All that to say this ... when I saw that we were going to stop attending the (big) church, I suggested that we just visit a different church every Sunday ... learn about how different groups of believers approach worshipping God. There are so many different Christian churches. He didn't like that idea at the time. Now, here we are many months later and our youngest daughter wants to know why we haven't joined this little church. And when he answers that question she says wouldn't it be great to visit other churches morning service and see how they do things. I didn't suggest it to her, but I do like the idea of exposing her to different Christian practices and then discussing them with her. So ... He decided that would be okay.
This week we visited a Church of Christ. Our oldest daughter is seeing a guy who worships there. Everyone liked the singing. I like that the sacrament of communion is offered every Sunday. I also liked that the congregation was invited to speak with the Pastor or others about any questions or concerns they might have after the service. This was the weird note ... His sermon was on death! He said he is such a positive, optimistic guy, that he doesn't like to preach on death but ... . The text was from Eccl.12:6-12. I say Solomon must have been the original Goth guy. The pastor organised his lesson around these two questions; 1.) who knows what is best? and 2.) what happens next (after death)? Job asks (Job 14:14) will we live again? and the answer Jesus promises a next life (in John 11:25 among other places in the scriptures).
And for the third week in a row, plus another time from a visitor in our home ... this song was referenced/sung ... Here are the lyrics to the chorus:
Blessings by Laura Story
'Cause what if Your blessings come through raindrops
What if Your healing comes through tears
And what if a thousand sleepless nights
Are what it takes to know You’re near
What if my greatest disappointments
Or the aching of this life
Is the revealing of a greater thirst this world can’t satisfy
And what if trials of this life
The rain, the storms, the hardest nights
Are Your mercies in disguise
Wow.
I'll try to link it under this post's title.
Next week we are going to visit the very liberal Baptist church here in town. Liberal? Okay, twenty years ago when we first moved here a began looking for a church home we visited there. It is a beautiful building ... old, gorgeous. They were without a pastor and the search committee was chaired by a woman (female leadership). They also have a relatively large, I don't know the PC word, gay/lesbian membership. Neither of those Christian subsets give my husband warm fuzzies.
The week after that everyone is wanting to visit a Black church ... My husband wants me to call ahead to the Pastor and ask if that is okay, or set it up with one of our friends who is a member at a Black church. Here in the deep South, Blacks and Whites still worship separately for the most part. That was, and continues to be, a huge surprise to me.
I am very enthusiastic about exploring other Christian faiths and discussing our observations and POVs over lunch. I think it will be a huge help to our children to see the many similarities and also learn about the differences and think about why people believe as they do. I think these visits will challenge and reinforce their own convictions.
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