It's About That Time
Alright, November is barreling toward Thanksgiving and Christmas is just around the corner. The stores have already had their shelves stocked for the holidays for nearly a month and I just can't wait any longer. I broke out the Christmas music yesterday with a new soundtrack I bought for Ethan, but I must admit I've been enjoying it too. He has a great affinity for the movie
The Polar Express and so we purchased the music. The CD is enjoyable with a number of new and old songs. The instrumental theme captures the season well. It probably won't be long until I pull out the other seasonal releases I have. I wonder if you may have a favorite and if you have already caved and loaded up the Cd player or ipod?
Sunday Sideshow - Conclusion
Of course there is really no end to the sideshow. There are many more selections that could be highlighted such as the not-so-subtle whisperer who manages to commentate on various subjects throughout the hour and the busy-Bible reader who manages to find a text separate from the sermon passage and feverishly study as if he has to combine his quiet time with his public worship. Now over the years I have seen these sideshows and I admit that at first they are quite distracting, but they have never truly disturbed me. I know how it feels to desire God and battle distractions the whole hour. I know what it feels like to have heavy eyes and a constant twitch to move. I’ve crinkled candy and sketched on sermon notes. On occasion, I’ve even had to make my way back to the bathroom. When I think of myself and fellow believers in the midst of any given service my mind is drawn back to the words of Jesus to Peter, James, and John when he found them asleep in the Garden on the night of His arrest: “The spirit is willing, but the body is weak.” The desire of most Christians is to delight in the Lord and therefore with great anticipation the worship service is embraced and welcomed by most church members. What we fail to anticipate however is the challenges we will face when we enter a room with fellow believers and have to focus our attention on Christ. The world is not so easily left behind at the door. Our worries and anxieties don’t wait in the car. Our physical exhaustion doesn’t remain in the bed after we have risen. Our temptations don’t encounter some barrier that confines them to the church parking lot, and certainly our adversary the devil doesn’t take the day off as a holiday. This means that as much as we would love to enter a service and rest in the Lord, there is work we must do!
To see our desires match up with the direction of the service, we must be willing to prepare for worship before it begins. Rather than come at worship much like a booster shot we need to immunize ourselves from sin for the coming week, we need to build up an immunity to the world throughout the week as we worship God daily. This allows our worship of God throughout the week merely to transition to a worship of God with fellow believers during the weekend. In simpler words, worship is never to cease. Work to worship God throughout the week and worship on Sunday becomes much easier. We must take to heart the seriousness of Paul’s words in Philippians 1:27: “Conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel.” If we live for the gospel throughout the week then on Sunday we come together and make minor course corrections. However, it is quite a bit harder to right the ship on Sunday if you have been sailing in the opposite direction the rest of the week.
Secondly, we need to prepare for the act of corporate worship itself by knowing how our flesh is weak and taking actions to reduce physical distractions. If you are prone to sleepiness, a good night’s rest can do wonders for your mind and body. Yet are you willing to forgo other activities to ensure that you are well rested and wide awake? If your mind tends to drift away into other activities or future events, find a way to help center your focus. Are you willing to take notes and follow an outline to help keep your thoughts on target? By identifying our weaknesses, we can develop a game plan that refuses to let these hindrances keep us from delighting in the worship of our God.
Finally, let us remember that we come together not only for self edification but for edification of the whole. So as we stand and sit and sing and listen we desire not only to keep ourselves focused on God, but to make sure we don’t prove to be a distraction for others around us. Our actions are rarely contained when it comes to consequences, and often we unwittingly include others in our own disruptions. Truly as we work at worship, we are working toward the worship of all. Scripture tells us in Romans 15:2: “Each of us is to please his neighbor for his good, to his edification.” In this we see the concern Christians have for one another and the love that leads us to build one another up.
There will always be some distractions on this side of heaven. Others will cause us to be distracted and we will cause others to be distracted. At some point we just have to laugh at ourselves and thank the Lord that by His grace we are being transformed. One day our worship will be perfect and there will be no more distractions to pull us away from the glory of Christ. There will be no weaknesses or temptations to deprive us of the delight of God. In that day, worship will be beyond wonderful, but until then let us work to see the glory of heaven here on earth!
The Sunday Sideshow - Part 2
Then of course who can forget the candy connoisseurs who walk into the service more well stocked than the local supermarket. The sugary confections which are carried into the service through the purses and pockets of these members could fill the Christmas stockings of all the world’s children. Now why they feel the need to carry this much candy I will never know because they simply pull out the same piece they fail to open every week. You see, every good candy connoisseur knows that it would be improper to open the confectionary treat before the singing is done. How can you sing with a jawbreaker the size of a golf ball in your mouth? So once the song service is done and the sermon starts this member will quietly pull out their prized piece of candy and come face to face with the unanswerable dilemma that constantly confronts them at this point of the week. Standing between the object of their desire and the enjoyment of that desire is a wrapper more tightly bonded to that candy than a tube of superglue. Now why these wrappers seem to guard the candy more tightly than a guard at a maximum security prison, I’ll never know. But as soon as you try to free the prisoner from its container a warning alarm sounds through the auditorium in the form of a crinkle that causes everyone’s head to turn. As soon as this sound reverberates through the room, the candy connoisseur suddenly turns stealth and tries to cover their act. They too will look around as if they are not the culprit and wait until a more opportune moment to try again… maybe next week. What this individual fails to realize is that the distraction they cause is really of no consequence once the bathroom bandit springs into action.
The bathroom bandit is a one man procession that is only missing the signage and crepe paper to rival a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. I have yet to figure out how an individual can not figure out the timing of their bladder enough to keep them in their seats for the entire service. Maybe as part of their pre-service ritual they choose to down a Big Gulp for fear they might dehydrate from a lack of liquids. Perhaps it is simply from a claustrophobic fear of having to be in one room for longer than the length of an average sitcom. For whatever reason, these individuals will get up week after week at the same point in the service to traipse along the center aisle as if no one else notices. You could almost set your watch by some from this group. When individual “A” gets up there is twenty minutes left and when individual “B” marches to the back there is five minutes until the invitation. What is even more amusing about this group is that most of the newborns in the nursery don’t have their diapers changed as often as this group goes to the bathroom.
The next act in the Sunday Side Show takes more perception to find because they don’t advertise like the others. These are the sermon sketchers. They figure as long as the church provides them with such artistic utensils as a sheet of paper for note taking and small pencils for writing, why not turn them into something useful. These artisans will work feverishly creating any number of doodles and landscapes across the pages of the bulletin. If the sermon runs over there is no cause for alarm for the offering envelopes make an excellent canvas once the first page is filled. Now these sketchers might escape detection entirely except the artwork is left for the pew cleaner to find. I wonder if one day I might hold a gallery showing for all the beautiful artwork I’ve collected. Then again a better idea might be to enroll most of this group in an art class. They have the practice but miss the presentation. Perhaps if we provided watercolor paints instead of small pencils in the pews?
[Conclusion on Thursday]
The Sunday Sideshow - Part 1
[This is the first in a series of posts designed to take a lighthearted, pastoral look at our common Sunday morning distractions. It is also designed to encourage me to post more often.] 
Many three ring circuses don’t have a sideshow worthy enough to compete with the antics that take place on Sunday morning in pews across America. While many churches worry about keeping the attention of guests, preachers are perhaps the most captivated audience in America! There is simply no end to the cacophony of clowning around that ministers witness week in and week out from their pulpits. If you truly want to find a fun-filled time for you and your family, refund those tickets to the movie theater and fire your travel agent so that you can book a seat in the choir loft directly behind your pastor. Just try to keep your laughter under wraps as your eyes dance from one hilarity to another. You will soon develop a deep respect for your pastor’s ability to keep a straight face while you belly laugh your way through the length of the sermon. If only everyone knew that the average Sunday morning congregation is a better premise for a reality show than anything else on television. It really is quite entertaining for just as a circus has clowns, trick riders, acrobats, and tight-rope walkers so too does the church congregation have several categories of performers.
The first and largest category would have to be the slumbering saints who use the service as an extension of their naptime. Most of these performers are amateurs who try their best to stay awake as their eyes open and close with enough rapidity that you start to wonder if they are sending morse code messages. Others simply give into the urge and slip into a deep sleep hoping to soak in the message by osmosis just as their drool is soaking into the carpet in an ever-widening pool. Now every so often, if you keep your eyes peeled, a professional slumbering saint will enter into your midst. These hard-working specialists have gone to great lengths to learn the art of the nap. Does someone in your church wear dark spectacles to the services? Does a particular patron always seem to be praying throughout the sermon? Have you caught a fellow church member using eyeliner to draw eyeballs on top on their eyelids? Alright, the last one may be a stretch but the first two are definitely signs that you have caught a skilled sleeping saint. Don’t feel bad asking for their autograph after the service, just make sure you wake them up to get it.
Another common category to be found in the average American church service is the fellowship of fidgety fellows. These are the individuals who just can’t keep still and look as if they just sat down on a large ant pile which somehow found its way onto their seat. He moves to the left and then shifts to the right. Next he pulls his leg up and then puts it back down. Before long he leans forward in his seat but then jerks back suddenly. The best NFL play by play announcer couldn’t keep up with this man’s movements if he tried. It is as if this fellow stays still for one moment, he might join the ranks of the sleeping saints so he has to keep bobbing and weaving his way through the service. Eventually you wander if he is trying to combine his spiritual workout with a physical one. The only things missing are the heart monitor and a jump rope.
[Part Two on Wednesday...]
Monday Montage!
It is a good thing to not take yourself so seriously. After all, the Lord has a great way of taking pride out of us all when our heads become too large. In that spirit, I wanted to share a montage of photos on this Monday that I find humerous and light. They include: My sister proving that Ethan can get her to dress up in anything; me punching a wax representation of Leonardo DiCaprio from Titanic (which I've wanted to do since the movie came out); and Ethan enjoying a little too much icing from his cupcake. Enjoy! And remember if your week is off to a tough start that stopping to laugh can do a lot to give us a more joy filled perspective.
Alright, November is barreling toward Thanksgiving and Christmas is just around the corner. The stores have already had their shelves stocked for the holidays for nearly a month and I just can't wait any longer. I broke out the Christmas music yesterday with a new soundtrack I bought for Ethan, but I must admit I've been enjoying it too. He has a great affinity for the movie The Polar Express and so we purchased the music. The CD is enjoyable with a number of new and old songs. The instrumental theme captures the season well. It probably won't be long until I pull out the other seasonal releases I have. I wonder if you may have a favorite and if you have already caved and loaded up the Cd player or ipod?
