When You Just Need A Glimpse of Your Father
I close my eyes as the bell choir fills the sanctuary with angelic chimes. I turn from the daunting pulpit reserved on this morning for me, and I focus on breathing deep the peals of peace. My churning stomach refuses to comply. You have nothing worth saying, the Enemy taunts as I pray for God’s words to flow.
Bells are gently laid to rest. Congregational prayers offered. Then the woman with a kind gaze introduces me to the quiet crowd. Recognized by some, but a stranger to most, I step up to the podium in this small town church and pray once again for grace. I am out of place behind the pastor’s ornate rostrum, but oddly grateful for the barricade that hides my trembling legs.
I thank the congregation for inviting me to be a part of Women’s Sunday. I share of how my married life started just up the hill from this stalwart brick building; how my five children have each baptized the playground beyond these walls with tears and laughter, skinned knees and silly screams. I speak of the constant noise of my days and of the God who abides in my daily clank and clamor. Knees still knocking, I read the words that frame my talk…
In the days when community was richer and faith was deeper, a new home would be blessed and its doorsills anointed with oil, or honey, or blood. Before the explosion of churches, some homes even had altars. The temple, in fact, was called the Mishkan: a place of divine dwelling. In English we call it a tabernacle: a tent. The first church in the Abrahamic faiths, in other words, was a home. God chose to live among his people. Home in this earlier understanding, was more than a venue for eating and sleeping: it was a holy place. Somewhere along the way we forgot this. We began to think that God was out there– in heaven, a sunset, an ornate temple, a mega church. We forgot that the has always come to where we are, to dwell with us. We began to think of him as being somewhere else, and told ourselves that we had to get dressed up, put on smiles, and go find him…
Yes we can to to our churches and temples to seek him out, but I wonder if sometimes our homes are not just as sacred as these buildings. It is our homes where we make love and pray, where we make children and try to raise them, where–if we are blessed– we one day are allowed to die. If God is not is such a place, in the muck of our daily existence, in our beginnings and endings, then he is nowhere…. [Home] is where the sacred and mundane meet, which is to say, where the hand of God touches the broken heart of man.
I confess that I am no preacher, nor Bible Scholar, but merely a woman who has found the Lord where the sacred and the mundane meet. I scan the room for a set of smiling eyes and wish that I had more to offer than the story of a simple penny jar, a tale more exciting than that of a woman whose life has been transformed by the power of praise. But I can not be who I am not. Nor can I weave a story that’s not mine to tell. So I carry on.
I shake the jar and as the pennies clank against one another in a tinny jingle, I speak of copper gleams and glimpses of glory. Thankfulness for the seemingly insignificant. I quote another Christ seeker who has experienced a life transformed by praise: The whole of life even the hard is made up of the minute parts and if I miss the infinitesimals, I miss the whole… There is a way to live the big of giving thanks in all things. It is this: to give thanks in this one small thing. The moments will add up.
I am wishing that I had words to speak as beautiful as hers, a testimony as poignant, a gift as evident. I am wishing that I were more or maybe less- every piece of my broken self lost in Him— when I spy someone I hadn’t expected to see. I hadn’t asked him to come but he is here. Silver-streaked head nodding in understanding, wrinkled hands resting comfortably on his lap, my father sits alone on the edge of the pew. Eyes fixed on me.
My swirling stomach stills. My racing heart rests. And I inhale the grace of one who loves me as I am.
I glance at my notes and realize that I’m tasting the truth I’ve come to tell– the wonder of finding our Father in the places we least expect Him to be. The thrill of seeing His glory right in the midst of our grit, His opulence in the center of our ordinary. This is what makes a small life BIG– eyes to see Him, the One who loves us as we are.
I flash my Daddy a smile and scan the rest of the room. The faces fade, all but one. I reach for the penny jar on the podium and savor the celestial clink of copper coins.
The Overflow:
The Overflow:
“Those who seek the LORD will praise him—
may your hearts live forever!” Psalm 22:26
may your hearts live forever!” Psalm 22:26
Once again you are the best example of bringing Christ home. I love church and I will always feel it is important. But I don’t think it replaces the home…I just think it supplements it! 🙂