The Sunday worship service was held this year in the Juanita G. Hammonds Center for Performing Arts near the Missouri State University campus for the first time. Inspirational music and an outstanding sermon concluded with a communion service. The Performing Arts Hall has no center aisle and 80 seat rows stretch across the auditorium. Instructions to the 1800 attendees were to turn left down the row of seats in front of you, receive communion at the far wall, and turn right down your row to return to your seat.
After reverently receiving communion, we found other people in the next row! Complete chaos ensued as no one could get back to their seats. I have never seen such joyous confusion. People smiled, shook hands, laughed and kept milling about trying to get back to where they had started.
Special needs people in walkers and wheelchairs just gave up and headed to the outside foyer. The music was provided by two impressive church choirs and a flute ensemble of 12 who kept repeating their selections over and over until finally, people were able to sit down again.
The bishop stood up and said, “By the grace of God, it worked.”
I think this is a metaphor for how United Methodists get things done. Perhaps for life itself. By the grace of God, it works.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Celebrations
Fifty years of friendships. . .fifty years of bonds between people working and having fun together, raising their children and living in neighborhoods together, engaging in community projects and organizations together.
People who share values and concerns and who make good things happen for each other. . .
Friends recently hosted an anniversary celebration: a celebration for all of us who have exuberantly participated in the continuity of small town life, who have watched ties between our own children and their friends, between people whom we have seen grow up before our eyes and whom have become personal friends as adults.
Joys and sorrows crisscross as we have lost some whom we love. Troubles have been there. But gossamer threads have encircled us as we have grown and changed over the years.
Nowhere today do I see a public account of the richness of life which many of us have experienced together in decades of living in rural Mid-America.
Do people know what they are missing?
People who share values and concerns and who make good things happen for each other. . .
Friends recently hosted an anniversary celebration: a celebration for all of us who have exuberantly participated in the continuity of small town life, who have watched ties between our own children and their friends, between people whom we have seen grow up before our eyes and whom have become personal friends as adults.
Joys and sorrows crisscross as we have lost some whom we love. Troubles have been there. But gossamer threads have encircled us as we have grown and changed over the years.
Nowhere today do I see a public account of the richness of life which many of us have experienced together in decades of living in rural Mid-America.
Do people know what they are missing?
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