Monday, June 27, 2022
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
All in place forever
How good and pleasant it is to spend time with the people of God, the sheep of his pasture, our family forever.
Reading today’s Psalm 50 with its response, I realize how blessed we are that we remember those times, can live those times now, and expect them in the future. That is so different from the psalmist’s bitter taste:
Remember this, you who never think of God. Why do you recite my statutes and profess my covenant with your mouth, though you hate discipline and cast my words behind you. Remember this, you who never think of God!
We visited Webber Street Church of Christ yesterday and sat with Jan, our friend and Melissa’s mom. Chris’ wife Melissa grew up at Webber Street, and so many of the folks there yesterday remembered our daughter-in-law with deep affection.
Tim Barber, one of our favorite pastors, preached. He’s supposed to be retired; he preaches at Webber St. once each month. We attended Northwest Christian Church in Champaign for several years when he led that church in the 1990’s. He and his wife Nancy became some of our favorite conversationalists. We had no idea we’d see the Barbers, let alone have plenty of time to talk with them after church.
So that was awesome. And in the awesomeness of our conversation I left my nice water bottle on the communion table in the back of the church. We went to Aldi, and I realized I was thirsty. Would it be there when I could look for it? I texted Jan to see if she could look for it later, since I thought the church would soon be locked. But after getting the groceries, we drove by just to see.
And we saw that this is no single-tasking church. After our service was over, Bethel Church filled the place with a new group of children and adults. I listened to snatches of sharing and teaching and prayer as I made my way through the church.
An enthusiastic teacher was talking with several 5-8 year olds. “Where is Jesus?” I heard her ask the question but then walked on past the classroom.
I walked upstairs to the sanctuary. The pastor was praying, “Lord, thank you for your protection when we are set up and knocked down! Thank you!”
Walking back downstairs I heard just a phrase from the sparsely attended adult Sunday School class: “… on the way to hell …”
And then walking back past the classroom I heard the kids’ teacher shout, “Jesus is our redeemer! He saves all the people!” And she asked the kids, “Who does Jesus save?”
HE SAVES ALL THE PEOPLE!
And she asked them again, “Who does Jesus save?”
HE SAVES ALL THE PEOPLE!!
And she asked them one more time, “Who does Jesus save?”
HE SAVES ALL THE PEOPLE!!!!!
Jan didn’t see my text that I’d found the water bottle, and like the good shepherd she is, she went back later to the church to look for it, since she had a key. Since it wasn’t there she thought it might have been stolen, and she was “pretty frustrated.”
But it wasn’t stolen. We all are grateful to be with people who mostly do not steal, God’s people, the sheep of his pasture. How good and pleasant it is to be all in the family. Always there are problems, falseness and hypocrisy, judgment and jealousy and various other family sins. But as this little sabbath poem by Wendell Berry points out, God’s love will guide us past all that, and He will make wholeness even from our separateness:
We come at last to the dark
and enter in. We are given bodies
newly made out of their absence
from one another in the light
of the ordinary day. We come
to the spaces between ourselves,
the narrow doorway, and pass through
into the land of the wholly loved.
– from This Day: New and Collected Sabbath Poems 1979 – 2012
 (Amos 2, Psalm 50, Psalm 95, Matthew 8)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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