Something my family will never have to worry about!

The scene from the porch today was very funny! I was having supper at the window seat of the local 5 Guys burger joint. Out from the dollar store to my right walks a young woman (late teens/early 20's) and her boy friend. They stand in horror next to their shiny new BMW, wondering why neither the key or the push button mechanism wasn't working. After a few moments, they figure out why the car isn't responding, and also why the shiny new BMW parked 3 spots to the left is blaring it's horn at them! With relief they climbed into the correct BMW and drove away. At least they didn't do something drastic like breaking the window, as we saw happen in those Southwest Airline "Wanna get away?" commercials.

No, my family and I won't be facing that problem any time soon. That doesn't tend to happen when the family jalopy is a 93 Saturn with a cracked front panel and mismatched front seats!

The Silence of the Sabbath

Over the past week, I took the opportunity to read the four Gospel accounts of the events of Holy Week. It was a reminder of my seminary days, when we studied theories on who each of the gospels were originally written for. It was fun to see what was included in each gospel and what was different.

I was impressed by one of the strongest similarities in all four Gospels. Nothing happened on the Sabbath. The events of Good Friday found Joseph of Arimathea scrambling to beat darkness to get Jesus' body wrapped and placed in the tomb. But it wasn't until the day after Sabbath that Jesus' followers did anything else. Why? Because they were devout Jews, and they followed the Law, which said that nothing was to happen on the Sabbath. Christianity was indeed "First for the Jew".

What does it mean to be connected?

At a staff meeting this week we were talking about the word "Connected". What does it mean to be connected to someone? To an organization? To an idea (mission and vision)? Is connection really something that can be universally defined? As we got into the discussion, we quickly realized that connection is largely a subjective issue, and is very difficult to define. A person can have a long term association with a person or an organization and yet not feel connected to it, and at the same time, someone can have one, powerful experience with a person or organization and feel strongly connected.

The one word that kept coming to me during the whole conversation is "Relationship". Being connected to someone or something was evidenced by the presence of a relationship, not just an association.

This got me thinking about what we do in worship, because in worship, we try to encourage peoples relationship with God. Oftentimes, the result of doing this well is that a relationship is built with our church, and with the members of our congregation. This purpose should never be of first importance, worship is and should always be about glorifying God. But we can be mindful of the relationship that builds with and within the church. There are some ways we can be intentional in encouraging those relationships. This especially becomes important as we enter the challenge of worshiping without our sanctuary.