Good Friday

As I sit here in my office, doing a little bit of meditation, relaxation, prayer and mental preparation for this evening’s Community Good Friday Service, I have had a few moments to reflect on how truly wonderful this Holy Week has been so far. I had an excellent time at our weekly community dinner on Wednesday night. I know that I should have spent more time doing “my job” which was pouring iced tea and lemonade, but instead I spent most of my time just sitting with different groups of people and sharing life together. I once had a pastor friend advise me that prior to walking through the door of the church I should always ask myself, “What is my purpose for being here? Is it to do dishes? Is it to help paint? Or is it to be the pastor, to talk with the people, and to help support what ever they are doing. I think that perhaps my job Wednesday night was to pour lemonade, but my purpose was to listen to the folks of our congregations and to the people of our community. Maybe they will forgive me for not doing such a good job of serving drinks:)

Then yesterday, I had the opportunity to have lunch with an old friend and share with him some of the challenges of seminary and life and hear from him in return about the challenges he is facing. One thing that I have found to be true is that each person is hurting in one way or another, and the more sensitive we are to that fact the better our conversation and communication can be with those who we come into contact with.

Last night was truly an awesome worship experience as we joined together for our Maundy Thursday/Healing Service. It was a very emotional service and the presence of the Holy Spirit was palpable. The one negative comment came from my son Ben this afternoon when he asked if there was going to be as many tears at tonight’s service as there was last night. (I am still working on increasing his sensitivity :) On the way home I received a call from another very dear fried who after finding out about some of the financial challenges that I am facing in order to be able to graduate, offered to help get me a little closer. I am truly blessed and maybe a couple more miracles and I may graduate on time yet:)

This morning Ben, Crystal, Mary, Andrew and Karen and I met for breakfast at Cracker Barrel before coming to the house and helping us clean out the garage. We are working hard to get our kids moved out of our house. Lets see, Ben has been married for six or seven years, Terri has been moved out for about that same amount of time, Why is most of our garage still full of our children’s possessions? LOL I don’t know either.

That brings me to tonight. I have put my last minute preparations into my message tonight. It will be a dramatic presentation of the events of Holy Week from the perspective of Peter. I feel like this is going out on a limb for me, I haven’t seen anything like this before at our Community Worship Services, and I didn’t ask permission. (It’s always easier to get forgiveness than permission) I feel pretty good about it right now; we will see how I feel in about three hours.

I wish everyone a very peaceful, meaningful and inspirational Good Friday.

Blessings