My Sundays … they have changed

Sunday morning… the face of my Sunday’s have changed.

The rush to get up, get lunch prepared so that it could be on the table a few minutes after we got home from church.

Clothes pressed and ready to slip on quickly, getting there an hour early so I could open the sanctuary, turn on the lights, put music on the orchestra stands, order of service on the sound boards with a peppermint and sometimes a note of encouragement. Butterflies  in my stomach hoping all the choir members would show up and be in their choir robes so that when the curtain opened there would be a joyful noise and finally taking my seat in the section for the Presbytery and trying to listen to the sermon without falling asleep after being up and running for so long.

That was my reality as an adult. As a child I didn’t have any worries, just getting dressed in the clothes my mother had laid out for me, and hoping I wouldn’t get caught whispering to my friend while sitting on the front row right in front of my dad standing in the pulpit and my mother sitting on the piano stool!

The year my mother’s dementia and Alzheimer’s got so bad I kept her at home for a whole year until she died. I continued to have lunch prepared for all the other churchgoers but mother and I turned on Jimmy Swaggart and enjoyed their gospel music and the sermons from the various ministers. Mother wasn’t able to call my name but when the songs were being sung she would sing and rarely missed any words of the old songs, that was an anomaly, I would just watch and be amazed.

Now I get up slowly, make coffee take time to post my blog, enjoy the view from my window while my children get dressed and ready to go have lunch with their dad. I do prepare food but it is eaten much later, after the evening service that we have at our new place of worship.

Life has changed.

Worship is in my blood and bones, the strain of a beautiful hymn puts my in the presence of God.

I miss the old days but my soul does rejoice…

Revelation 5: 11-14

11 Then I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels around the throne, the living creatures, and the elders; and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands, 12 saying with a loud voice:

“Worthy is the Lamb who was slain

To receive power and riches and wisdom,

And strength and honor and glory and blessing!”

13 And every creature which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, I heard saying:

“Blessing and honor and glory and power

Be to Him who sits on the throne,

And to the Lamb, forever and ever!”

14 Then the four living creatures said, “Amen!” And the twenty-four elders fell down and worshiped Him who lives forever and ever.