Friday is always a day of pulling things together, every Friday the church building is my baby. We worship in a building which is 5 miles away from where we have our church office, so this other building, this place where we worship needs someone to step in, dust, adjust the temperature and such. Friday is the day I have set aside to make sure all the arrangements for Sunday’s worship is in order: clean building, current periodicals, Bibles, songbooks, trash taken from the chapel, all resources needed for the coming Sunday’s worship made available, Children’s Five lesson and object lessons in order.. My husband and I alternate weeks for preaching, this week is mine, so today I was spending extra time with my sermon in this freshly vacuumed chapel, relishing the restored order, the clean fragrance of Murphy’s Oil Soap, Woolite Carpet Shampoo and Lemon Pledge. Ahhh!
As you can imagine, this effort can take a few hours if you want it done properly (clean bathrooms are important, don’t forget). Straight. In line. It is a routine that is not menial or oppressive: it has been a restorative well in which I spend hours with God, talking to Him, listening to Him. No blaring music, no quick shortcuts to make it “less time or less of a burden”. You couldn’t wrestle this time away from me if you tried. (Granted, it would be pure heaven to have a janitor, someone dedicated to keeping things clean – but that reality is not in our deck of cards.)
My favorite task of all of these Friday things is preparing the bulletin: Scripture and sermon complemented by hymns which speak God’s character and doctrine, praise music for worship, prayer and celebration, chosen tunes for the hymns are the right ones – that the music fits with the chosen melody – no one wants a train wreck in congregational singing! And within the bulletin preparation this week that I was absolutely and completely wrapped by God’s presence.
The encounters of this week have been intense – and I cannot avoid the fact that I was quite angry because of the absolute void of remorse from those where very wrong. We had expressed our anger to a select few, the details were far to complicated to just blurt it all out. I thought I had released how I felt, that things were fine, until this bulletin preparation. The first item to correlate is the Call to Worship, quite formulaic: beginning with Psalm 150 and proceeding backwards, i.e.149,148, each successive week. It fits in well with our speaking calendar, and you just can’t go wrong when you walk in the Living Word of God. Last week was Psalm 84 so following the formula this week – Psalm 83. Simple.
My oldest daughter A. is the Call to Worship reader – nothing touches me deeper than hearing the Word of God spoken by the voice of a child. She can be very dramatic in her emphasis – she is spiritually “getting it” and it shows in her reading. I try to keep her in mind when choosing the verses of the Psalm (some psalms are quite long! And who wants to trip over words like Philistia and Zalmunna?!.) So I am reading Psalm 83, and found myself struck still.
Identifying with the Word of God, aligning it to this awful situation, God took this anger I hadn’t let go of and spoke clearly “I AM in charge; you cannot see their heart like I can. I have not been silent to them.” The Psalm written as a prayer it was aggressive, angry, calling God to do a mighty work. It convicted me of the anger I was feeling, by the end of the reading , my heart was praying “love them, please love them they need you so much.”
God works through the rough parts of life, the challenges and defenses, and reminds us as we draw close to Him, He in turn draws close to us. So, as I leave the chapel, neat and tidy, paperwork in its place, I smooth out the bulletin and breathe thank you to God who carries me tenderly.
I know no one will be alerted that anything has happened as this week’s service begins with Psalm 82. But the seismograph of my heart rejoices that God removes burdens from our soul.
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