Our Blessing and Gift is Christ Himself
Long ago I knew an elderly woman named Nancy. She had the most severe case of scoliosis, or curvature of the spine, I have ever seen. Her body, as you looked at her straight on, looked like a question mark. Her chest was way off to her right, but her spine curled back. It’s hard to describe, but if you saw her, you would wonder how she even walked. Once, as she was leaving church, a big gust of wind caught one of the big, heavy front doors of the church, the doors I showed you last night, and blew it right into her, knocking her into me.
Thankfully I caught her, and in that moment, as I held her up for just a moment, I could feel how bent and frail her body was. Nancy once told me that it took her two full hours to get ready for church. That’s how important church was for her.
So I’ve always appreciated the effort people make to come to church.
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Our Sanctuary is Christ Himself
This passage from Exodus became very clear to me at a very special moment and place in our lives. In 2008, we were completing a new sanctuary at St. Mary’s in Belleview, up near Ocala. St. Mary’s had always had a red door on the front of the old church and we had talked about a red door on the new one.
There was just one problem. We had also bought huge, beautiful mahogany doors. So it came to pass one Friday afternoon that I stood with our building committee chairperson, our contractor’s site manager and our painter talking about our doors. Well, really they were patiently waiting for me to understand that you don’t paint mahogany. They may have even implied that it was actually the 11th commandment. “We can’t paint it?” No. “We can’t stain it?” No.
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His passion is our passion
Meg’s maternal grandmother was a dear and sweet lady named Margaret Stringer. She was “the” piano teacher in Wauchula for decades, everyone knew her and she was beloved by her family and the community.
When the family would gather for a big gift exchange at Christmas, we’d watch the kids tear into their presents, only pausing to look at the tags or cards on them because their parents would remind them. The adults would open theirs more calmly. Grandma Stringer would very carefully slide her finger so as to lift the tape without tearing the paper, then carefully unfold the paper and remove the bow. Then she would carefully fold the paper and stack it so it could be used again.
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