Sunday

This weekend: one last winter storm (I hope... we hope) which proved to be the loveliest out of the eight+ storms we've weathered this winter. It draped and cloaked and stayed... and the whole city was quiet. I would try hard to describe it to you... but as I drove and stared, the only words that came to mind were "frosted mini-wheats"... and I felt ashamed at even trying.

It is hard to remember that the world is art. Spoken, crafted, obvious art. This last blanketing of snow... with its strategic and exact layering upon every surface... was a good reminder.

I attend a church that has columns and red brick walls. My shoes click against the expansive concrete steps as I hurry in. Sometimes I carry a coffee in one hand. I would be lying if I didn't admit all those features charm me. Did you know liking going to church says absolutely nothing about the state of your soul? Did you know I might well be growing bent? Fruitless? I might be dead.

Inside and in my pew... about five feet further down the pew, a young man, a friend, cannot keep himself from responding to the sounds and sights around him. In so far as this feature interferes with normal life, it is considered a deficiency and it has a clinical name in some diagnostic book somewhere. Every beat to the music produces some bodily reaction from him. We are singing a song by some stodgy puritan... but he is swaying, his eyes are closed, his arms are waving...

The book of Revelation describes heaven and the end of time repeatedly with descriptions of people displaying emotions in their bodies. People will stand and wave their hands and fall and cry out and... respond to the Greatness before them. For one of us in this pew, that day will be familiar and well-practiced.

"It is easy to resent where He has placed you. But relish the fact that you are in His vineyard. You are in His vineyard as His son! And let whatever you do there be absolutely for his glory."

I don't know if my pastor has been reading my journal or my mind or something... but everything he says these days is absolutely what I must hear. It is uncomfortable. I'm becoming one of those people who gets teary eyed. Every Sunday. I'm praying it grows us all together... into one glorifying, unified body...

Leaving the church... midway down the expansive steps... tap-tap go the shoes... "Hey Auntie!" I turn to see a blond head poking out one of the massive doors. He is four, but his hair has this spikey thing going on the front, and he is impeccably dressed, and he has an ornery gleam in his eye... so he looks about twenty-four, just all shrunk down... "Don't wreck your car! It's winter!"

Two things you can't change, even if you want to: your nickname, and your reputation as a driver. The latter is especially implacable if you have a four year old nephew.