[FYI, I'm renaming my "Gathering" posts. Some of you may recall how the expression "Fresh expressions of church" entered the CGGC conversation. Actually, my friend Dan Horwedel noted the importance of the phrase to this chapter of the CGGC story on his blog a few months ago. In the CGGC these days, what we do and are in our neck of the woods is certainly one fresh expression of church.]
Last week, we agreed not to meet this Sunday but Evelyn and I also mentioned that we would be going to the home to pick up our three friends there to take them out to lunch and then to, as one of them says it, the local "Walmark."
We let it be known that anyone else who wanted participate in any way was welcome. And, when we showed up at the diner and began to help the "kidz" pile out of the Buick, we saw the hosts of the Thursday, uh, Fresh Expression walking toward us to join the gathering.
It was a blessing that they did. Each of the three kidz has unique challenges and, as much a blessing as they are, they are all high maintenance. They would have been perhaps too much of a challenge for the two of us in the diner. But, the Thursday couple are both first class servants. Watching them treat our least of these friends like Jesus was a very serious blessing to me.
Walmark was its own challenge.
We have a saying that an act is not an act of mercy unless it pinches. By that standard, the Walmark part of the day was an act of mercy, for me at least. A busy Walmark on Saturday afternoon!
Still, at each moment of frustration, I was able to understand again how I frustrate the Lord with my own folly.
If, as Paul says, worship happens not when you sit your fanny in a pew but when you offer your body as a living sacrifice, we worshipped yesterday.
A blessed day!
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