MISSING THE SHOWERS

Maybe you, like me, were standing outside in the middle of the night looking for the Perseid meteor shower.  Three nights in a row I stood on the deck at a retreat center on Lake Webster, looking up at the sky, and never saw one meteor.  The stars were brilliant, but I didn’t see one meteor.

I was disappointed by what I didn’t see happening in the sky, but I was amazed by a miracle here on the ground.  Last weekend my Dad, three of my four siblings, and our families gathered at the family cottage at Lake Webster for a three-day reunion.  There are so many of us we also rented a nearby lodge owned by a UM congregation in Huntington, Indiana.

It was a miracle that as many of us made it there because things come up.  Things come up, calendars get tangled, and somehow almost all of us were there.  It was only the second time we’d done something like this since our Mom, Anita, died over ten years ago.

And it was so good that words can’t describe how good it was.  We’re all different (I get excited about sports talk and skiing, one of my brothers gets breathless when he talks about bird watching), some of the kids go to Ball State and Purdue, this person is quiet and that person is loud, and yet it was good.

There was conversation and laughter.  My Dad told stories about growing up in Upland and his work on the mission field (we’d be in the lodge and people would start to chant, “Story… story… story!”).  Some people swam and some people went water skiing and some went tubing and some went kayaking.  Ella and Olivia were still up at midnight playing fierce games of UNO with the adults.  One night my brother David showed up with lighted balloons and we blew those up, and then all of us batted them around and laughed till we cried.  There was too much food…and there was grace.  There was a lot of grace.

I didn’t see meteors in that dark sky over my head, but I was standing in the middle of a star-sized miracle.  As I looked around I thought about what a gift community can be.  As I looked around I thought about what God had in mind when God gave life to the church.

Different people.  Loving one another.  Respecting one another.  Doing their best to let grace guide them through the tense and tough moments.

I treasure the gift God gave our family last weekend, and I treasure the gift God is giving us at FUMCB/The Open Door in this opportunity to live and worship and serve and love together!  Paul, in Colossians 3:13 and 14, talks about bearing with one another and forgiving each other and clothing ourselves with love.  Maybe God wants the church to be like a family reunion where different people find the grace to share the same space and time.

I missed the miracle of the meteors, but God still showered us with blessings.

See you Sunday for worship and the 10 a.m. ground breaking.

In Christ and for Christ,

Mark