Faith
I GOT THE MESSAGE
I hadn’t been attending church regularly. It was always too cold. I hate snow. I don’t need to attend church to worship. I can do my own Bible study at home. I had all the reasons why going to church was not necessary and they made sense to me.
My excuses allowed me to go every three weeks or so and even on that third week, I grudgingly attended. My husband, a rebellious preacher’s kid and often burned out, was attending more often that I! Oh well, I thought, I’ve done my share of taking the kids to church without him. I’ve done my share of praying that he’d get on fire for the Lord. It was his turn now to be the spiritual leader.
I started getting annoyed with the children’s constant begging for rides to Sunday School and youth activities. I even yelled at them to stop messing up my routine. So they quit asking and Dad became the designated driver.
They would also get rides from other families even to the point that my son told me that a church member said they could arrange transportation for the church had a list of people who needed the church van to come pick them up. Poor kids. The members probably thought that my husband and I weren’t saved but the children were. They probably had us on their prayer chain.
As I thought about this, my mind traveled to the time when I was in high school, the church bus came to pick my sisters and me up each Sunday morning. Dad was passed out from another night of too much Vodka and Mom, well, who knows where she was. I remembered the embarrassment, the loneliness, and the longing to have Christian parents. I longed for a family who would ride to church together and sit by side during service. This dream of mine never came true. Years went by and Dad died of alcoholism and Mom spends her day wrestling a losing battle of severe depression. Well, that was years ago and my husband isn’t an alcoholic and I’m not dealing with any mental disorder so none of this applies so I shook away the memory.
It’s Sunday morning again and I stayed in my robe, convinced that my Bible time at home was more than sufficient. Wiping down the sink, listening to CD’s, taking my own sweet time was my usual church morning routine for I had all the time to pad around in my robe and slippers. The rest of the family was scurrying around trying to get ready for the service. Why stress yourself out on Sunday, the only day you really have off? I thought to myself. Oh well, to each his own. I, however, am not going to rush around wasting my Sunday morning like that.
But for some reason something kept nudging me to go and at the very last minute, I threw on some clothes and dashed out just in time for they were about to pull out of the driveway. With Bible and journal in hand, for some strange reason I was going to church on this colder-than-usual, frigid morning.
Here I am waiting for the service to begin. Looking around and mentally judging the styles of people’s hair and clothing, I noticed that the smells of various hair sprays and perfumes made me a little nauseated. No wonder I was never thrilled to go. My husband sat in the padded chair and gave me the cold, stiff one. As I continued looking around in distraction, I saw my youngest daughter being held by some girl I didn’t know. Who fixed her hair? It sure wasn’t me! They even put ribbons in it. Who matched her outfit? It wasn’t me for I was too busy padding around in my robe. Wow, she looked beautiful!
There’s my teenager. Wait! Is that my teenager or some stranger who resembled my son? Hair combed, shirt neatly tucked in, and wearing dress pants. It even looks like he showered!
Have I slipped into the Twilight Zone? What was going on here? I haven’t found my oldest daughter. Maybe she has been kidnapped by the strange alien that always appears on the Twilight Zone show. Maybe this is just some strange dream. Oh, but there she is. Surrounded by lots of friends.
To really top things off, who was this man standing beside me singing joyfully to the music? He looked like my husband but my husband doesn’t get into the service like this. He was holding the basketball schedule for he now played on the church basketball league. I’d been praying for years for him to fall in love with the Lord and to get back into physical exercise.
There’s the family who worked for twelve hours straight when our basement flooded. There’s the woman who brought over a plate of cookies one day. Oh, and I see the families who drive my kids to church. There’s the youth pastor who has taken the kids to various events. Oh, I’ve seen those boys at my house playing musical instruments with my son. I never really talked to them since I was too busy doing my own thing but I know they come over often.
Suddenly, I realized that throughout the months, in the midst of “not needing to go to church”, God had been answering the prayers that I had been praying for years. I hadn’t heard a word of what the preacher was saying but suddenly, I got the message. I sat up tall in my chair and focused on the preaching for I wanted to hear more of what God had to say.
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