Happy All Saints Day Saturday, friends!
Or for my faith tribe, Happy November 1–the day after Trunk-r-Treat Saturday.
These past few months have been my most inconsistent Saturday Pondering writing since I started consistently writing my Saturday ponderings.
Probably because I’ve traveled more days and more miles in a 3 month period than any other time in my almost 64 years of life.
(I’ll be 64 on December 24. That’s 53 days from now in case you’re saving up for my birthday present). 😉
Mrs Sweetie and I got home last Sunday from a wonderful “vacation with a purpose” ministry cruise to New England and Nova Scotia with the North Texas Singers.
It was our 7th such cruise in the past 9 years. We (our group of singers and family/friends) go on a regular cruise and do 2 concerts on the ship. These concerts are a musical buffet of Broadway, classical, gospel, southern gospel, and whatever else we throw in. When we started this in 2016, we had a group of about 45. The last few we’ve had 100 plus. (Our next one will be in 2027. Stay tuned over the next few months for details and come join us!)
Because most of the official cruise excursions—and sometimes the ports themselves—are not wheelchair friendly, I often just get off the ship by myself and explore on foot.
Maybe it’s because of my 48 years of “church work,” but one of my favorite things to do is find and photograph historic church buildings.
Denomination is irrelevant. What matters to me is that someone thought a church in this location was a good idea and they built a “sacred space” for a church to gather for worship.
Every such building causes me to ponder.
What motivated the pioneers who planted this church? What were their worship patterns and practices? How did they symbolize their faith in the structure and furnishings? How did they connect with their communities? Who did they welcome?
My hymn text this morning was “God of Our Fathers,” written in 1876 by Episcopal rector Daniel Crane Roberts for his small rural church in Vermont to celebrate America’s centennial.
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The photo I used is of the United Congregational Church in Newport, Rhode Island. The church was established in 1695 and the building shown was constructed in 1857.
Two lines from the 4th stanza from my hymnal stuck out for me:
“Refresh thy people on their toilsome way.”
Most of us have had that technological frustration on our devices of waiting and watching nothing happen. Sometimes there’s something spinning. Sometimes we get an error message. Sometimes we lose connection.
And the best thing we can do in the moment is to refresh our screen or page.
Often that’s all it takes to get us back on track—a refresh.
Maybe we could call it a refocus, a renewal, or a revival.
If you’re paying any attention at all to the church in America right now, you know we need a refresh.
And—at the risk of offending my friends who I love—anyone who thinks such a refresh can possibly come about through partisan political means does not understand spiritual revival, history, or the New Testament.
“Fill all our lives with love and grace divine;”
Love and grace are not complicated.
I don’t mean they are easy to live.
I don’t mean they are personally comfortable to exercise.
I mean they are not hard to define and when we start looking for loopholes and exceptions as to why we should only demonstrate the love and grace of Jesus to those we deem worthy, we have (in my awkward attempt at the current vernacular) not “understood the assignment.”
This is what I’m praying for in my own life and among all those who claim to be followers of Jesus—that we would experience a refresh that fills us with His love and grace in such abundance that it’s obvious to everyone we meet.
Be amazing today, my friend.
