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| June - 2010 |
| It was actually HOT last weekend. I guess the rumors are true: summer has come! Although I grudgingly admit that I am starting sound exactly like my dad, I cannot remember a winter that took such a toll or dominated our conversations. We were cold and wet and aching from shoveling. As I grumbled to a fellow priest during one of the freezing rain storms of February, "winter has lost its charming alure!" :-( OK...so the sun is finally appearing and the days are longer and brighter and hotter. Now we Episcopalians deal with shrinking numbers of worshipers each Sunday because folks do go away on holiday. And, of course, we do! Summer is a time for rest and travel and refreshment. Such is good for both body and spirit. My concern is that we do not use this time to "take a vacation from our vocation" which is to love God with all our heart , soul, mind and strength...and love our neighbor as ourselves! It is NOT a time to ignore spending some time with the LORD in communal worship - doing as Jesus commanded us to do: to TAKE and BLESS and BREAK and SHARE bread and wine in His memory; to listen to and be fed with God's word; to worship in spirit and in truth! Summer DOES give us time off, but the temptation is too real to take that time OFF from Christ. I always wondered about the moral and canon law of another Christian tradition that mandated that one MUST attend mass on Sunday under penalty of mortal sin (with its eternal damnation consequences) ! I suspect such eternal threats do not motivate as they once did. But was it not pathetic to have had to mandate church attendance under such a threat? If you love someone, you want to spend time with that person. We claim to love God, and yet we use any excuse to avoid God's presence in the one way we were told to do. Summer is here - finally!. Will we have time for Christ in our lives this summer? It's my hope that "church" or "worship" is not merely an activity set aside during the dark winter months to fill time. In a world so troubled and filled with such pain and confusion; fear and anger; our environment at risk because humans believed they can do anything without weighing the consequences; our children at risk in a culture that cheapens lirfe...and on and on...surely we have much to pray about and think about. We need the strenght that only God alone gives. There may be places I can avoid this summer: worship is NOT one of them. |