There Was a Glorious Sunrise

As I drove to work today, past this newly-built church, I began to reflect:

For twenty five years this property  sat here empty on the far northeast corner of town. For twenty five years it sported a large sign announcing the building of a  "future church home".  Finally, this year, they built it--a new building--put the finishing touches on it, and set up all the furniture for their opening dedication. That night--a week ago-- the pastor looked around and pronounced it good. He then went home and died quietly in his sleep.     Yesterday, I asked a little girl who had come to our Wednesday night children's program if she had attended Sunday School this week at her church. She said: "I can't go to my church because my pastor died." 

He was, I'm sure, the only pastor she has ever known, a dedicated man who has spent over twenty five years serving his church, loving his people, being a friend and adviser to all the other pastors in the ministerial alliance, my husband included. He would have been the first to smile at that little girl and correct her:   the pastor is not the church;  the building is not the church. The church is a group of people who gather to worship God, regardless of the circumstances, and if their shepherd were here to console his grieving flock, he would remind them that as sure as the sun sets over the town, it will rise again in the morning ...and so will he.

The Flock

They sit on Sunday morning all in rows,
Just close enough to nod, to touch, to talk.
The old ones graze,
the youngest scamper loudly.
They are the sheep, the lambs.
They are the flock.
It's been a fearsome week for some of them;
They've seen a wolf;
they've heard his howls at night..
And others suffered pain--they still endure it--but they smile and push the agony aside.
The headstrong try the fences, never settled.
The wounded hide from the balms they badly need.
My job is still to tend them, teach them, love them.
His mandate was that simple: Feed my Sheep.

Turtle the Fearless

I know this is a pretty bad video but I wanted you to see something:
Look in the back...to the left of the tree.
See that gray-haired man playing with the young people at our Christmas program?

That's my husband.

He hadn't touched his lips to a trombone for twenty five years, but he borrowed this one to play Silent Night up there with the "once-a-year" youth ensemble.

Why?

Well you see that little girl standing next to him? It's her first year in band. At practice the other night she was in tears--feeling totally incompetent and all alone. So they brought her to pastor for comfort.

There's nothing that gets to Turtle more than a little child who is crying, so he promised that he would find a trombone and play it at the program with her.
I think she looks perfectly self-assured now, and, although he says he completely had to improvise the ending, I couldn't tell it. His great sense of compassion was more important to me than perfection, and I was proud of him.

Our Sunday Scribblings prompt was Brave